Tag: xenophobia

Cruel and Unusual

I am heating water for my coffee on a gas burner because there is no electricity.

Kyiv, the Kyiv region, Odesa region, and the Dnipropetrovsk region are in a total blackout — the result of Russia systematically destroying Ukraine’s energy system over the past months.

The Kyiv metro has stopped. There is no water anywhere.

At the same time, Russia’s State Duma Speaker Volodin, speaking on behalf of Russian deputies, openly calls for genocide — urging new strikes on Ukraine’s already devastated energy and heating infrastructure in order to cause mass civilian deaths.

This weekend the temperature drops sharply. Next week, it is expected to reach –30°C.

Meanwhile, ordinary Russians are celebrating on social media that Ukrainians are freezing.

We know this logic well. Their aspiration is simple: to make life here “like it is for them.”

In Russia, even without war, power outages in entire regions are normal.

In a gas-rich country, it is normal for many regions to have no gas at all.

This is exactly what the so-called Russian world aims for — to make us like them, if not through conquest, then through the destruction of our critical infrastructure and the physical extermination of Ukrainians.

Source: Lyuba Yakimchuk (Facebook), 31 January 2026

The number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention on a given day has skyrocketed, jumping more than sixfold since the start of the second Trump administration. The Marshall Project analyzed data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and found that ICE held around 170 children on an average day under Trump. During the last 16 months of the Biden administration, ICE held around 25 children a day.

The Marshall Project’s analysis found that on some days, ICE held 400 children or more. The data covers September 2023 to mid-October 2025, meaning it does not include the surge of arrests from recent immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota. Nor does the data include children in the custody of the Border Patrol or the Office of Refugee Resettlement, where children are held without a guardian.

The Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas is the main facility for family detention. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro spent two-and-a-half hours inside Dilley on Wednesday, visiting parents and children. He said that the 1,100 detainees housed at the facility included a 2-month-old infant. “They are literally being treated as prisoners,” said Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio, in a live-streamed video. “This is a monstrous machine.”

In 2021, Biden largely halted the practice of family detention, and the Dilley facility, which had mostly housed families, closed in 2024. But the Trump administration revived the practice last year, and the facility, which is located about 75 miles outside of San Antonio, reopened.

The detainment of children by ICE has led to protests in recent weeks, both inside and outside Dilley. On Wednesday, state police used pepper spray on people protesting outside.

Immigration attorney Eric Lee was visiting clients at the facility on Saturday when staff abruptly told him to leave. Outside, he could hear a large group of children and women detained inside chanting, “Let us out.” Lee said he later learned that families inside the detention center had gotten news that people across the country were protesting the detainment of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, whose story went viral amid the backlash against the Trump administration’s recent immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.

The Marshall Project (YouTube), 28 January 2026

Javier Hidalgo, legal director at the Texas-based immigration advocacy group RAICES said he’s seen many young children like Liam in Dilley. “That’s very much the norm,” Hidalgo said. “That’s what the government is spending taxpayer money on.”

A previous Marshall Project analysis found that ICE has booked at least 3,800 children into detention since Trump took office last year. At least 1,000 children were held longer than 20 days, a court-ordered limit on child detention.

“Every single day that a kid is in a place like this, they deteriorate,” Hidalgo said. “I’ve seen [them] withdraw. They lose weight; they just get physically worse.”

Children being detained with their families as part of immigration raids has become a common occurrence across the country. According to school officials in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, four children, including Liam, have been detained from their district during recent raids.

A 7-year-old in Portland, Oregon, was taken from a hospital parking lot in January with her family, after her parents took her to the emergency room, according to Oregon Live. As ProPublica reported, a 6-year-old boy in Chicago was detained with his mother in a large apartment raid during “Operation Midway Blitz.”

The Marshall Project spoke with three different lawyers representing children who were held with their families at Dilley. They said their clients were often taken into detention during in-person check-ins and had pending cases that could result in them remaining in the country legally. The lawyers believe their clients were detained not because of any danger they posed, but because the Trump administration is trying to deport as many people as possible.

“They’re probably the easiest catch for a lot of immigration officials,” said Veronica Franco Salazar, a Houston-based immigration lawyer.

In court documents, families have described horrific conditions while detained with their children in Dilley. They reported moldy, worm-filled food and foul-tasting, undrinkable water. With little for children to do, some resorted to playing with rocks. Parents worried about the psychological toll of detention, describing children hitting themselves in their faces or wetting themselves despite being potty-trained.

During his visit, Castro said that he heard many families talk about the psychological toll of detention. He spent half an hour with Liam, and said Liam’s father, Adrian Conejo Arias, told him Liam has been depressed and sleeping a lot. Liam remained asleep in his father’s arms during the visit with Castro. Arias said Liam had been asking about his classmates and the bunny hat he was wearing when detained. The congressman said he told the father that children at Liam’s school were still saving a spot for him at his desk.

CoreCivic, the private company running the Dilley facility, declined to answer a detailed list of questions. “Our responsibility is to care for each person respectfully and humanely while they receive the legal due process that they are entitled to,” Brian Todd, a public affairs employee at CoreCivic, told The Marshall Project in an emailed statement. Todd referred all questions to ICE, which did not respond to emails.

Kristin Kumpf, coordinator for the National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention, explained that the public may see videos or photos of the moments people are taken from their homes or snatched off the street, but there is less attention to the conditions children endure in the black box of detention.

“It’s only a matter of time before we see a child die within Dilley or another facility,” Kumpf said.

Hayam El-Gamal and her five children, including 5-year-old twins, have been locked inside Dilley for eight grueling months. Lee, who represents the family, said they’ve received poor medical care and are suffering from psychological stress.

“They’re calling me crying every day,” Lee said. “It’s an unmitigated horror show, and there’s no other way to put it.”

El-Gamal’s husband, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, is facing charges for attacking people at an event in Colorado supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza. At least 13 people were injured in the attack, and one person died, according to prosecutors. Soliman told detectives his family knew nothing of the attack, according to court documents, and an FBI agent testified they were not involved. The family’s lawyer said they are being unfairly punished for crimes they had no part in.

Lee recounted how one of El-Gamal’s children had appendicitis while in detention and “was left writhing on the floor of the facility screaming and in pain.” Lee said facility staff just gave him Tylenol, and it was only when he started vomiting that the child was taken to urgent care.

“Why is this happening to us?” El-Gamal’s eldest daughter, 18-year-old Habiba Soliman, asked in a handwritten statement provided to The Marshall Project by Lee. “It’s very easy to see the truth about this place and about us. The people need to be truthful to themselves and follow the facts.”

Lee said he believes ICE is retaliating against Habiba Soliman for speaking out about her family’s long detention. She was recently moved to a different area of the facility. Lee said the timing of the move, many months after her 18th birthday, but shortly after she spoke to the press about her long detainment, suggested it was punishment. ICE did not respond to questions about the reason for the separation. Lee said she has faced threats of being moved to a different facility altogether if she didn’t behave.

“I will never forget the look of fear and helplessness on my mother’s face as she watched me being taken away and couldn’t do anything to prevent it,” Habiba Soliman wrote in her statement. “We need everyone to step up and say that detaining families for indefinitely long periods should be illegal.”

Source: Anna Flagg and Shannon Heffernan, “‘Why Is This Happening to Us?’ Daily Number of Kids in ICE Detention Jumps 6x Under Trump,” The Marshall Project, 29 January 2026. Thanks to White Rose Resistance for the heads-up.

Judging Them by How They Look

A Russian National Guard serviceman checks residency documents during a raid outside the Apraksin Dvor clothing market, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, July 4, 2025. (AP Photo/File)

The immigrant worker from Uzbekistan entered the bank in Moscow, but when he reached the teller, she refused to serve him and she wouldn’t say why.

For him and others from impoverished countries across Central Asia who seek better lives in Russia, such hostility is woven into everyday life. Sometimes it bursts into outright violence.

“Mostly you notice it when you go to the hospital, a clinic, a government office: You stand in line and everyone shoots you dirty looks,” said the man, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions.

Such xenophobia clashes with economic realities at a time when Russia has a labor shortage, primarily due to its war in Ukraine. In the first quarter of 2025, over 20% of Russian businesses said they were hindered by a lack of workers, according to the Central Bank. 

But rather than welcoming laborers, Russian officials are fomenting anti-migrant sentiment and increasing restrictions on immigrants, which the government says number 6.1 million, but is probably higher. The government is tracking their movement, clamping down on their employment and impeding their children’s rights to education.

A massacre and a backlash

The continued crackdown comes as a trial began this month for four Tajik nationals who are accused of the shooting and arson attack at a Moscow concert hall in March 2024 that killed 149 people. The four were arrested within hours of the attack and appeared in court with signs of being severely beaten. An Islamic State group claimed responsibility but Russia sought to blame Ukraine for the bloodshed.

Anti-migrant rhetoric had been growing in Russia since the early 2020s. But the massacre in particular launched a wave of “terrible violence” against immigrants, said lawyer Valentina Chupik, who has worked with the immigrant community for over 20 years. In the eight days after the killings, she received 700 reports of injuries to immigrants, including “faces smashed against the doors of police stations,” she said.

Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin captured the public mood after the massacre, saying “migration control is extremely important” to ensure foreign nationals carrying out “illegal activity” could be deported without a court order.

The violence drew concern from human rights groups.

“Central Asian migrants seeking work in Russia due to dire economic conditions in their countries of origin today face ethnic profiling, arbitrary arrests, and other harassment by police in Russia,” Human Rights Watch said in a report on the anniversary of the attack.

“The heinous massacre cannot justify massive rights abuses against Central Asian migrants in Russia,” said its author, Syinat Sultanalieva.

Raids, roundups and restrictions

While some violence has subsided, it hasn’t disappeared. In April, police raided a Kyrgyz-run bathhouse in Moscow with video showing masked men forcing half-naked bathers to crawl across the floor and deliberately stepping on them before covering the lens of a security camera.

Police also reportedly rounded up immigrants in raids on warehouses, construction sites and mosques, then coerced them into joining the military to fight in Ukraine. Some are threatened with having their residency documents withheld, while others are recently naturalized citizens who failed to register for military service. In such cases, serving in the military is presented as the only alternative to prison or deportation. For others, a fast track to Russian citizenship is offered as an incentive for enlisting.

Speaking in St. Petersburg in May, Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said “20,000 ‘young’ citizens of Russia, who for some reason do not like living in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan (and) Kyrgyzstan” were serving in Ukraine.

Those immigrants who have avoided violence still are subject to new anti-migrant laws. Much of this is targeted specifically toward workers from Central Asia.

In 2024, 13 Russian regions banned immigrants from certain jobs, including in hospitality, catering and finance, and even as taxi drivers. A pilot program starting in September in the Moscow region requires migrants who enter Russia without a visa to be tracked via an app. Those failing to comply are added to a police watchlist, impeding access to services like banking, and subjecting them to a possible cutoff of cellphone and internet connectivity.

A nationwide law banned children of immigrants from attending school unless they could prove they could speak Russian. Less than six weeks after the law came into force, officials told local media that only 19% of children who applied for the language test were able to take it, and the most common reason for rejection was incomplete or inaccurate documents.

Another man from Uzbekistan who has worked in Russia for almost two decades and lives in St. Petersburg said he’s had to wait in line for over seven hours to get needed residency documents. The man, who also spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, hopes to stay in Russia but says the climate has worsened.

“It’s hard to get paperwork,” he said. “There just isn’t the time.”

The oppressive laws sometimes force immigrants to resort to paying bribes. Chupik, the lawyer, believes that Russia’s system results in “violations that cannot be avoided.”

“This is exactly what this mass regulation is striving for: not for all migrants to be here legally, but for everyone to be illegal,” she said. “That way, they can extract bribes from anyone at any moment and deport anyone who resists.”

Encouraging anti-migrant sentiment

Anti-migrant sentiment is unlikely to diminish anytime soon, mostly because it’s encouraged by authorities like the Investigative Committee’s Bastrykin, who said immigrants “physically occupy our territory, not just with their ideology but with specific buildings” — referring to sites such as mosques.

Ultra-nationalist lawmaker Leonid Slutsky said foreign workers “behave aggressively, causing conflicts and potentially dangerous situations.”

Migrants are an easy scapegoat for many social ills, and not just in Russia, said Caress Schenk, an associate professor of political science at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.

“Closing borders, conducting migrant raids and tightening policies are all tools that are easy go-tos for politicians the world over,” she said. “It goes in cycles that are sensitive to geopolitical pressures, as we’re seeing now, but also things like election campaigns and domestic political rivalries.”

A surge of “anti-migrant propaganda” has dwarfed previous rhetoric of recent years, according to the Moscow-based Uzbek immigrant who was ignored by the bank teller.

“If every person paying attention to the TV, the radio, the internet is only told that migrants are ‘bad, bad, bad,’ if they only show bad places and bad people, of course, that’s what people are going to think,” he said.

Such anti-migrant rhetoric has become part of the nationalist narrative from President Vladimir Putin and others used to justify the 2022 invasion of Ukraine — that Russia is under constant threat.

“Russia has started lumping together all of ‘the external enemies’ that it’s created over the years for itself: the migrants, the Ukrainians, the West,” said Tajik journalist Sher Khashimov, who focuses on migration, identity and social issues. “It all becomes this part of this single narrative of Russia being this castle under siege, and Putin being the only person who is on the lookout for ordinary Russians.”

The Uzbek immigrant in Moscow said Russia has created conditions “supposedly to help people, to help migrants.”

“But the rules do not work,’ he added. ”Special barriers are created that migrants cannot pass through on their own.”

Source: Katie Marie Davies, “Immigrants from Central Asia find hostility and violence in Russia,” Associated Press, 22 August 2025

Source: SEIU California (Facebook), 8 September 2025

A prominent nonviolent activist from Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara has been detained by federal immigration officers. Jamal Fadel was seized by masked ICE agents at Manhattan’s notorious federal building at 26 Federal Plaza on August 25 after a routine immigration hearing — an arrest that was caught on video.

Fadel is from the occupied city of Boujdour in Western Sahara. He’s been protesting nonviolently against Morocco’s occupation since he was a high school student, and was threatened by Moroccan authorities so many times that he left to seek political asylum in the United States.

Fadel is currently being held by ICE at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. His attorney expects ICE will move for an expedited removal hearing. If deported, Fadel faces lengthy imprisonment, torture — or worse.

Source: Democracy Now (Facebook), 9 September 2025

I spotted some of the Trump administration’s wanted men on Tuesday, the day after the U.S. Supreme Court granted immigration agents virtually unchecked permission to continue the “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in America’s history.

The wanted stood outside of a U-Haul truck rental outlet in the San Gabriel Valley. They polished other people’s BMWs and Range Rovers at a Pasadena car wash. I saw the wanted women too, walking to jobs as nannies and housekeepers.

They looked suspicious, all right, by the definition outlined Monday by Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. They were natives of Mexico and Central America, seeking “certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction.”

They were suspect to many Californians too, but only of wanting to work, wanting to earn a little cash, wanting to pay their bills and feed their families. One hundred and seventy five years to the day after land that once belonged to Mexico became the 31st American state, California felt to many people Tuesday like it had reverted to a kind of frontier justice, where racial profiling had become the law of the land.

“I am just working hard and paying taxes,” said Mario, 50, between sips of coffee on the sidewalk outside the U-Haul station. Even before the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids began three months ago, the Honduran immigrant said, life for street-corner workers was not easy.

“People are just looking for work. Some of them are even homeless,” said Mario, who declined to give his last name. “But some people are showing them hate, sometimes even hitting or kicking the homeless. We see it out on the street.”

At the Pasadena car wash where six workers were carted away in late August, those left behind continued their buffing and polishing Tuesday.

“It feels like we have come down low, really low,” said Cesar, between checking in customers. Though he was born just blocks away at Pasadena’s Huntington Hospital, he said he does not feel immune from the raids.

“If now they are just going to judge you by how you look, or maybe how you talk, I can get pulled over. Anyone can get pulled over,” said Cesar, who did not give his last name. “It’s gonna be harder for people to live a normal life. They’re gonna just have to deal with harassment. That’s not something I would want anyone to have to go through.”

Earlier raids by Trump immigration agents have spread far beyond snagging the criminals and drug traffickers the president and his allies claimed to be after. With 10 million Latinos living in the seven Southern California counties covered by the court’s order, a rights group said the high court’s action cleared the way for “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

The action offered portentous echoes of the mistreatment and greater violence unleashed on Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s. Today, it had U.S.-born citizens, such as The Times’ Gustavo Arellano, feeling they will have to carry their passports to prove their citizenship.

Outside the U-Haul, Mario said he holds a green card. So he will continue waiting on the sidewalk for his next job.

“I believe in God,” he said. “We might think different things, but we all have the same heart. There should be the same heart for everyone. Everyone.”

Source: James Rainey, “Essential California” newsletter (L.A. Times), 10 September 2025

The United States deported 39 Uzbek nationals on a charter flight to Tashkent, the U.S. Embassy confirmed in what it described as part of ongoing efforts to remove migrants without legal status. Earlier this year, more than 100 Central Asians, mostly Uzbeks, were repatriated in a similar U.S.-funded operation. The deportations attest to close cooperation between Washington and Tashkent on migration enforcement. That partnership has been accompanied by political overtures. Last week, Presidents Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Donald Trump held a phone call in which they pledged to broaden their strategic partnership ahead of an expanded dialogue session this autumn. U.S. officials have pointed to investment opportunities in Uzbekistan, particularly in critical minerals, while both sides also highlight cooperation on security and migration.

Source: Peter Leonard, “Central Asia’s week that was #70,” Havli, 10 September 2025

No Russian, No School

My pupils at the St. Petersburg Jewish Community Center’s RFL/RSL (Russian as a Foreign Language/Russian as a Second Language) program for immigrant children), 2016. This was the day we let our hair down. \\\ TRR

Living in circumstances in which evil is consciously perpetrated every day, it is difficult to keep getting bent out of shape over stupidity and injustice. This is also true of the new law prohibiting migrant children without a proficient command of Russian from attending school — a completely outrageous law that has caused little public outrage. I feel the need to write about it, and yet I sense the utter futility of arguing against it.

When I was at art school, we had our own local confrontation with the authorities: they dreamed of banning coil water boilers and other heating devices because they were a fire hazard. We dreamed of keeping them because of the fact that we were working in our studios late at night, which is inevitable if you are studying to be an artist. The authorities shamed us, they threatened us with expulsion, and they confiscated our boilers, but the boilers inevitably reappeared. This is an example of how you can’t solve a problem through bans without providing a solution. If the director, for example, had identified some place on the floor where water could be boiled, it is likely that many people would have stopped boiling water in their studios.

This applies to the populist bill as well. Teaching children who do not speak Russian is an actual problem. Our country has a rather complicated curriculum even in elementary school, which, of course, cannot be successfully navigated by someone who does not understand everyday vocabulary. I’ve been told that some teachers just give children plasticine out of hopelessness: if they’re sitting and molding things from playdough, at least they won’t be a bother to anyone else.

So here is a simple answer to this problem: let’s ban these children from going to school. They can go to school only after they have learned Russian.

The question immediately arises: where will they learn Russian? Do we have an extensive network of educational organizations with readymade programs (even ones for which parents would have to pay) for teaching Russian to children and teenagers, where they can be sent immediately after failing the language proficiency exam? No, there is no such network. Perhaps it will emerge one day, but it doesn’t exist right now.

But we have the know-how of other countries which have been trying to solve similar problems for a long time. We can choose something suitable based on foreign know-how, such as allocating extra classes, hiring visiting teachers, and instituting adaptation classes. But a ban is not a solution.

Besides, bans hit the most vulnerable groups the hardest. Loving parents will find a way to help their children with adaptation by paying for courses or tutors. Those for whom no one cares, those for whom school is the only chance to change their lives, will be left out. And it is not necessarily a matter of their turning to crime, although the rule that if you don’t want to invest in schools you’ll have to invest in prisons is inexorable. It will affect girls, for example: if they can read and write a bit (so the story goes) that’s enough for when they’re married.

Most importantly, children don’t choose to move to or choose a foreign country. It’s not their fault that they don’t know a new language. So why are you punishing them?

In fact, they are being punished for being newcomers, for being strangers. A clear xenophobic message is packed inside this entire caper: these migrants shouldn’t come to Russia, and if they do come (someone after all has to work for cheap), they shouldn’t drag their families here. Legislators are not worried about schoolteachers (who really do have it tough), but about smoking out all the “aliens” from our country. That’s how the matter actually stands. And that’s why all reasonable arguments are more or less useless.

Source: Natalia Vvedenskaya (Facebook), 12 December 2024. Translated by Thomas Campbell

Russia has banned children who do not speak Russian from being admitted to schools. This is a completely inhumane decision which could have terrible consequences.

For two years I taught Russian at the Russian Red Cross, where I had two groups of children and one group of adults. The adults were mostly women from Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and they were often learning Russian from scratch and were unable to study it elsewhere.

But the children whom I taught came from a nearby school. Our lessons were supplementary Russian lessons to speed up their integration. And after six months they were already speaking Russian perfectly well.

The usual situation for children whose parents have come to Russia to work is seeing their parents at home only at night, when they hardly communicate, because the parents have to work like crazy to earn the bare minimum for survival, to pay for housing, food, and a work permit.

If these children are not able to go to school, they stay at home and play on their phones or tablets all year long. At best they go for walks in the yard. (Often these children get into trouble, suffering burns and other injuries, because they are left to their own devices.) It is impossible to learn a language on your own at their age, nor do migrant workers have the money to pay tutors to come to their homes and teach their children Russian.

I don’t understand why the Russian government is doing this. Why are they now, in an apparent effort to save money, cancelling these children’s futures, their prospects, their opportunities?

So that in a few years we have a group of young people who can’t read and write? To reinforce racism? To reinforce the social divide — one set of occupations for locals, another set for migrant workers?

The very notion that there are certain others who are not supposed to study in mainstream classes unless they know the language is harmful to the locals as well. It is vital that children see other children with special needs, with immigrant backgrounds and other experiences of life.

At that age, language is easiest to learn at school, and ethnically mixed classes are a wonderful experience for children for later life. I know what I’m talking about: I live in emigration with my children. My youngest son has always been in multi-ethnic classes, and he has no concept of “us” and “them.” (It was funny: in the first grade he had a friend with whom he played all year long, but it was only at the end of the year that Rodion found out his friend’s ethnicity.)

Poor children, poor adults: what a mess our lawmakers have made of things. Recently it was Human Rights Day, and every time I think about it, I realize that migration is dangerous terrain where human rights lead a piecemeal existence.

Source: Daria Apahonchich (Facebook), 11 December 2024. Translated by Thomas Campbell

Russian lawmakers voted Wednesday to ban migrant children from attending school unless they pass a Russian language proficiency exam.

The lower-house State Duma passed the bill in a 409-1 vote.

“Before enrolling the children in school, there will be mandatory checks of their legal status in Russia and their Russian language proficiency,” Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said.

The new rules will take effect on April 1, 2025, after upper-house Federation Council senators vote for the bill and President Vladimir Putin signs it into law.

Volodin claimed 41% of migrant children experienced “difficulties” with Russian language skills at the start of this school year.

The latest ban comes amid renewed anti-migrant sentiment following the deadly Moscow concert hall attack in March, which was claimed by the Islamic State and allegedly carried out by citizens of Tajikistan.

The fallout from the attack included police raids and deportations of migrants, a majority of whom come from poor former Soviet Central Asian republics.

Volodin said the Duma had passed a total of 14 bills aimed at “improving” Russia’s migration policy and combating illegal immigration since the start of 2024.

Source: “Russia to Introduce Language Exams for Migrant Children to Enroll in School,” Moscow Times, 11 December 2024

The draft law banning the enrollment in school of immigrant children who do not speak Russian has caused a flurry of outrage, its critics claiming that the decision will establish an insurmountable barrier to the integration of immigrants in Russia. However, if we shift our perspective and look at the bill not in a normative but in a positivе light, it pursues a quite rational goal — to institutionalize the exclusion of immigrants from Russian society. Their integration is not only seen as needless by the authorities and a considerable number of citizens (and yes, not only Russian citizens, but also citizens in many other countries), but is seen as an extremely undesirable process. That is, the presence of migrant workers as such is generally regarded as an unavoidable evil, but at the same time the political preferences are such that migrant workers should not be granted any rights at all while all possible obligations (including military service) should be imposed on them. Thus, the goal of policy toward migrant workers is to hire them only for unattractive jobs and pay them the less the better, never grant them or their children citizenship, never provide them with any social benefits (such as pensions and insurance), and if they squeak, hit them the full range of possible penalties. From this point of view, educating the children of migrant workers only generates needless complexities toward achieving this goal.

Source: Vladimir G’elman (Facebook), 12 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

“Episodes of Swedish Russophobia”

Igor Stomakhin, “Episodes of Swedish Russophobia.” It is part of the informal series Moscow, 2023, posted on the extraordinary photographer’s essential Facebook page periodically throughout the past year

Russia’s Interior Ministry has proposed requiring foreigners who visit Russia to adhere to an “agreement of loyalty,” the state-run TASS news agency reported Wednesday, citing a draft law prepared by the ministry. 

According to the draft law, foreigners staying in Russia would be prohibited from “hindering the activities of public authorities of the Russian Federation [or] discrediting in any form the foreign and domestic state policy of the Russian Federation, public authorities and their officials.”

They would also be prohibited from “denying traditional family values ​​and distorting the contribution of the Soviet people to the victory over fascism,” according to TASS.

In addition, foreigners would need to agree that they will not “show disrespect for the diversity of regional and ethnocultural ways of life of the Russian population, traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

Valentina Kazakova, who heads the Interior Ministry’s migration department, said the draft proposal for an “[agreement of loyalty] was being discussed” and would “soon be sent to the [lower house] State Duma” for consideration, according to TASS. 

She did not provide a more specific timeline. 

At the same time, it was not clear from TASS’s report whether the Interior Ministry’s proposal would require foreigners to sign a physical agreement form upon entering Russia.

In 2021, the Interior Ministry suggested introducing a similar loyalty document for visiting foreigners, but the proposal never reached the State Duma, according to the Kommersant business daily.

Source: “Russian Interior Ministry Proposes Foreigners Sign ‘Agreement of Loyalty,'” Moscow Times, 29 November 2023

“Joking Is Not a Crime”: Standing Up for Stand-Up Comedy in Russia

“Idrak is not the enemy”: stand-up comedians of different ethnicities support Idrak Mirzalizade, jailed for a joke about ethnic Russians
Novaya Gazeta
13 August 2021

Russian stand-up comedians Garik Oganesyan, Mikhail Shats, Danila Pererechny, Ilya Sobolev, Alexei Smirnov, Timur Karginov, Ruslan Bely, Slava Komissarenko, Alexei Shcherbakov, Garik Hovhannisyan and others have released a video in support of their colleague Idrak Mirzalizade, who has been jailed for ten days for joking about renting an apartment and ethnic Russians.

“There is a punishment for a comedian: if he tells an unfunny joke, no one laughs at that moment. But you can’t deprive people of their freedom for a joke. […] Being jailed for jokes is the penultimate step before being jailed for scientific theories. The ten days [in jail] that the court imposed on [Mirzalizade] is not a terrible punishment, but a very terrible precedent that says that it will now be officially possible to jail or punish someone for making joke. […] Today it’s us, tomorrow it’s you,” the stand-up comedians say in the video.

“Joking is not a crime”: #IdrakIsNotTheEnemy: the YouTube video released on August 13 by Russian comedians in solidarity with Idrak Mirzalizade, jailed for ten days on August 9 for insulting ethnic Russians

Among those who have stood up for Mirzalizade are his colleagues of different ethnicities: Russians, Armenians, Ossetians, Jews, and Yakuts. And yet Idrak himself has been jailed for “inciting hatred or enmity,” punishable under Article 20.3.1 of the Administrative Offenses Code.

On August 9, the Taganka District Court in Moscow jailed Mirzalizade for ten days for a joke about a mattress stained by ethnic Russians. He pleaded not guilty to inciting ethnic hatred. “The performance was humorous and was meant to ridicule xenophobia, in fact,” the comedian said. According to him, people of different ethnicities were present in the audience during his stand-up routine and they understood that the joke was directed against xenophobia. On appeal, the court refused to repeal the jail sentence.

The prosecutor’s office announced on July 30 that it had found “signs of humiliation of a group of persons singled out on an ethnic basis, as well as propaganda of their inferiority” in Mirzalizade’s joke about a mattress that ethnic Russian tenants had stained with feces. In the joke, the comedian is outraged that an ethnic Slavic neighbor looked at him with contempt while he and his brother threw out the mattress.

In late June, the comedian reported that unknown people had attacked him for a reward of fifty thousand rubles. He also stated that he had received numerous threats.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Idrak Mirzalizade. Courtesy of RFE/RL

Comedian Of Azerbaijani Origin Jailed Over ‘Anti-Russian’ Performance
RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service
August 9, 2021

A court in Moscow has sentenced a Russian stand-up comic of Azerbaijani origin, Idrak Mirzalizade, to 10 days in jail for allegedly inciting ethnic hatred.

The Taganka district court issued the ruling on August 9 after several pro-government media outlets accused Mirzalizade of insulting ethnic Russians in one of his performances.

Mirzalizade pleaded not guilty to the charges, but offered apologies to “all who felt insulted by some parts of my performance which were taken out of context.”

In June, he wrote on Instagram that two unknown men attacked him after he received several threats because of his performance.

He also posted a video showing the moment of the attack.

‘Over the past three weeks, I have received several thousand threats. A man went to a solo picket in Penza carrying a placard with the slogan “Idrak Mirzalizade is an enemy of the Russian people!” And a monetary reward was announced for my head, due to which I was attacked on June 23 in downtown Moscow. In this video, I tell you what happened.’  Posted on June 27, 2021, by Idrak Mirzalizade

Mirzalizade has said the performance that caused the controversy was about problems faced by non-Russians when they want to rent an apartment in the Russian capital.

In his performance, the comedian joked about what would happen if the perception of Russians by others was based on separate incidents, drawing a parallel with situations that shape prejudices about non-Russians living among Russians.

I’ll Let the Robots at Yandex Get This One

TASS ✔
Sergei Lavrov said that on the eve of the parliamentary elections in the Russian Federation, new attempts by Western countries to “shake up the situation” and “provoke protest demonstrations” are possible.

“It can be assumed that on the eve of the elections to the State Duma there will be new attempts to undermine, destabilize the situation, provoke protest demonstrations, preferably violent, as the West likes to do. Probably, then a campaign will be launched to not recognize our elections — there are such plans, we are aware of them, but we will focus primarily on the position and opinion of our people, who themselves are able to assess the actions of the authorities and speak out about how they want to further develop their country,” he said.

Translated by Yandex Translate. Source: Telegram

Yandex.Rover, a driverless robot for delivering hot restaurant meals, is seen in a business district in Moscow, Russia, December 10, 2020. Photo: Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

Russia’s Yandex driverless robots to deliver food at U.S. colleges with GrubHub
Reuters
July 6, 2021

Driverless robots will soon deliver food to students on college campuses in the United States after Russian tech giant Yandex (YNDX.O) and online food-ordering company GrubHub (GRUB.VI) agreed a multi-year partnership, Yandex said on Tuesday.

Sometimes described as Russia’s Google, Yandex offers a raft of services, from advertising and search to ride-hailing and food delivery. It began testing autonomous delivery robots in 2019 and already operates at some locations in central Moscow and in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Yandex did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership.

“We are delighted to deploy dozens of our rovers, taking the next step in actively commercializing our self-driving technology in different markets across the globe,” said Dmitry Polishchuk, CEO of Yandex Self-Driving Group.

Yandex’s delivery robots will join GrubHub’s platform, with the service to be made available at select college campuses this autumn. GrubHub partners with more than 250 college campuses across the United States.

“While college campuses are notoriously difficult for cars to navigate, specifically as it relates to food delivery, Yandex robots easily access parts of campuses that vehicles cannot — effectively removing a major hurdle universities face when implementing new technology,” said Brian Madigan, vice president of corporate and campus partners at GrubHub.

The technology behind Yandex’s delivery robots is the same that powers its self-driving cars.

Song and Dance

“Horses, men and nonsense”: song and dance as matters of state
Ivan Davydov
Republic
April 4, 2021

I must admit that I am quite unfamiliar with the work of Dima Bilan. You could even say that I’m not familiar with his work at all. It’s probably nothing to brag about, but it is what it is. I am truly grateful to Dima Bilan, however. It was he who jumped out of the piano with a violin (possibly on skates) and gifted Russia a few years of not having to discuss the “Russophobic conspiracy” at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Or maybe it was not Bilan who jumped out of the piano. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of Eurovision either, and I could have mixed up the details. But Bilan definitely won the 2008 contest in Belgrade, after which Russians calmed down a little, putting up with Eurovision for the next two or even three years.

Eurovision does strange things to people. Once a year, even people with decent taste who listen to normal music in real life, and not what Russia (like all the other participating countries) sends to the contest, suddenly start following the antics of comically dressed people, counting up the points and muttering to themselves, “Ukraine… The hell with them… What can you expect from them? But the Armenians?! How could the Armenians not vote for us?”

Then, for another week, the results of the competition are discussed not only on TV talk shows, but even in serious publications, not to mention social media.

New trends
Before Bilan’s victory, Russians every year rediscovered Europe’s alleged dislike of Russia: they would suffer fits of outrage and curse a blue streak, wasting time and fraying their nerves. Bilan broke the goddamn chain: Russians calmed down and, for a few years, reconciled themselves to the musical freak show. At first, they were proud of Bilan’s victory and, the following year, of the incredible show (costing many billions of rubles) that Moscow put on. Then… Well, to me, an inattentive observer, it at least seemed that the controversy around the contest had subsided, and only sincere fans of bad music were still getting worked up about it.

Now the contest has not even started, and yet passions are already boiling. The singer Manizha, who will represent Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest this year, has been threatened. The lyrics of her song have been analyzed by members of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, at their sittings, and spokesmen for the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Muslim leaders have weighed and judged the song before TV viewers have even voted. Hired and voluntary Twitter campaigners against “Ukrainian fascism” have forgotten their vocation, denouncing Manizha without mincing their words. I won’t even quote them: there is not a word in what they’ve written that is not punishable under the Russian Criminal Code. (By the way, have you noticed that professional Russian fighters against “fascism” are mostly brownshirts and smell accordingly?)

Interestingly, drift of the polemics has changed. Previously, people looked for a conspiracy after the contest was over, and they looked for it outside Russia. Now we have achieved total clarity about the conspiracy “from without”: all high-ranking officials talk about the “hybrid war” against Russia every day in unison, and to prove its existence, they no longer need to refer to the results of the Eurovision Song Contest. Now they are hunting for internal enemies, and prior to any international vote.

Manizha, “Russian Woman,” Russia’s entry for the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest

I know the work of the singer Manizha a little better than I know the work of Dima Bilan, because I listened to the song about Russian women that is going to the contest. But I don’t want to pretend to be a music critic. I’m not going to discuss the song’s merits of the composition. Instead, I intend to talk about the reaction of high-ranking Russian officials.

Offended women
I wasn’t joking about the discussion in the Federation Council. Elena Afanasyeva, a member of the Federation Council’s international affairs committee (Eurovision is an international event, after all!) subjected Manizha to a withering critique: “The song has no meaning. It is a random set of phrases by an immature thirty-year-old girl with unresolved personal problems who doesn’t know what she wants. Excuse me, what does this have to do with Russian women? The style of the performance, African-American dances, a costume similar to that of an American prison inmate. Aggressiveness, senselessness, a negative image of the Russian family.”

That is, the song smacks of a provocation: it is an obvious machination on the part of Russia’s internal enemies.

Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the Federation Council, supported her colleague: “I recommend anyone who is not familiar with the lyrics of the song [to read them]. It’s about horses and men, and is basically nonsense. I don’t understand at all what it means.”

The speaker also demanded an inquiry to find out who had selected the song for the competition and how it was selected.

High-ranking Russian women have thus taken offense at the song “Russian Woman.” By the way, there is no mention of “horses” in the song, but it is quite clear why Matviyenko thought of them. They come from Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “Borodino”:

The ground shook like our breasts,
Horses and men mingled in the battle,
And the volleys of a thousand guns
Merged into a long-drawn-out howl.

So, even oblique associations put the speaker on the warpath.

Konstantin Ernst (after all, the song was chosen on Channel One) was forced to explain that the audience had voted: nothing could be done, it was will of the people. Ernst’s strategy is clear: we remember how in 2014, on the eve of the occupation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine, he managed to sell the world the image of a kind-hearted and open-minded Russia by putting on a show at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi. A song about the plight of a woman crushed by the patriarchal world, performed in Russian and English by an ethnic minority singer, is a similar move (and alas, it is possible that it is also being made on the eve of a new war). It is quite consistent with European trends, and could work. But it’s not a matter of trends. Europe is the same, but Russia has changed.

No black jack
The overripe Putinism of 2021 is not remotely the equivalent of the Putinism of 2014. Today’s Russia not only aspires to total control over anything its citizens do, but has been trying to exercise this control in practice. And so a pleasant freak show has been turned into a national affair in which the fatherland’s prestige is at stake. What we need now, supposedly, are not pop songs, but a solemn oratorio about the Russian nation’s acts of valor during the Second World War.

I would, by the way, send Dmitry Rogozin to the contest. He could handle the mission: it is not too late to dial everything back. It’s a shame to waste such an enormous talent.

The Eurovision Song Contest scandal has become a purely political story, another example of what the Russian state has been turning into. And yes, of course, the desire to interfere in cultural life is very important here, because the Russian state, which claims to be total, considers culture to be its exclusive bailiwick. This was the case back in the twentieth century, and the current proprietors of the state are in awe of Soviet best practices. We ordinary people hear a song that we like, dislike, or could not care less about, but they think about ideology, influencing opinion, and the blow to Russia’s image. And they see nothing else.

Dmitry Peskov, the president’s press secretary, thus sounded surprisingly reasonable when he commented on Matviyenko’s initiative: “We are talking about a show business competition at which different images are presented: there is a bearded woman performing, there are singers in chicken outfits… We do not consider it possible to comment on this or to intervene in any way.”

But let’s not forget that Peskov’s immediate superior once bluntly said that Peskov often “talks rubbish,” and his comments do not necessarily reflect the innermost thoughts of the best friend of singers and composers. The president met with young cultural figures not so long ago. Although they did not discuss Manizha, of course, the context was still legible. One of people at the meeting, the pianist Oleg Akkuratov, voiced a sore point to the supreme leader: “There is another problem. I really love songs in Russian, which are in short supply right now: at all competitions, including children’s ones, a lot of songs are sung in English. But I think that’s wrong. We need to encourage love for the Motherland, love for our country, love for our native tongue, because I think this is important for all of us. Maybe what we are missing is a Russian-language song contest? We have not, of course, completely lost our love for Soviet poetry, especially Russian poetry. But what we hear today is not meant for our ears, and especially not for children, because it is, of course, horrible.”

“I will immediately start with what I think is a large-scale and important idea – a Russian-language song contest: we will definitely think about it. I ask my colleagues in the Government and in the Administration to submit relevant proposals,” Putin replied.

Let’s have our own patriotic “Eurovision” without bearded women! Belarus, I am sure, will support us, and if we are lucky, Kazakhstan will close ranks with us, too.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Manizha, “Russian Woman” (Russia ESC 2021). Lyrics and music: Manizha, Ori Kaplan, Ori Avni

Russian text

English translation
Поле поле поле
Я ж мала
Поле поле поле
Так мала
Как пройти по полю из огня
Как пройти по полю если ты одна?
А-а-а?
Ждать ли чьей-то ручечки, ручки?
А-а-а?
Кто подаст мне ручку девочки?
Из покон веков
С ночи до утра
С ночи-ночи
Ждем мы корабля
Ждем мы корабля
Очень очень
С ночи до утра
Ждем мы корабля
Ждем бы корабля
А что ждать?
Встала и пошла.

Every Russian Woman
Needs to know
You’re strong enough, you’re gonna break the wall

Шо там хорохорится?
Ой, красавица?
Ждешь своего юнца?
Ой, красавица
Тебе уж за 30
Ало? Где же дети?
Ты в целом красива
Но вот бы похудеть бы
Надень подлиннее
Надень покороче
Росла без отца
Делай то, что не хочешь
Ты точно не хочешь?
Не хочешь?
А надо.
Послушайте, правда.
Мы с вами не стадо
Вороны пщ-щ-щ пыщ-щ-щ
Отвалите
Теперь зарубите себе на носу
Я вас не виню
А себя я чертовски люблю
Борются, борются
Все по кругу борются
Да не молятся
Сын без отца
Дочь без отца
Но сломанной Family
Не сломать меня
You gonna
You gonna break the wall
Every Russian Woman
Needs to know
You’re strong enough, you’re gonna break the wall
Every Russian Woman
Needs to know
You’re strong enough, you’re gonna break the wallHey, Russian woman
Don’t be afraid, girl
You’re strong enough
You’re strong enough
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid

Борются, борются
Все по кругу борются
Да не молятся
Сын без отца
Дочь без отца
Но сломанной Family
Не сломать меня

 Fields, fields, fields
I’m so small
Fields, fields, fields
I’m too small
How do you cross a field through the fire?
How do you cross the field if you’re alone?
Heeeey?
Should I wait for a helpful hand?
Whaaat?
Who will stretch out for me, girls?
For ages now
From night till dawn
From the deepest of the night
We are waiting for a ship
A Sailing ship
Waiting very much
From night till dawn
Waiting for a ship
Waiting for a ship
But what’s the wait?
Stand up, let’s go!

Every Russian Woman needs to know
You’re strong enough, you’re gonna break the wall
Every Russian Woman needs to know
You’re strong enough, you’re gonna break the wall

What’s the rattling about?
Hey, beauty!
Are you waiting for your prince?
Hey, beauty!
You’re 30!
Hello? Where are your kids?
You are cute overall
But should lose some weight
Wear something longer
Wear something shorter
Oh you grew up without a father?
You should do what you don’t want to
You sure you’d don’t want to?
Don’t want to?
You SHOULD!
Listen up, really!
We’re not a flock
Hey, crows, shoo!
Leave me alone (give me a break)
Now learn it by heart:
I don’t blame you a bit
But damn do I like myself

They just fight, always fight
Go round and round to just fight
But never pray
Boy without a father
Girl with no dad
But this broken family
Can’t break me

Every Russian Woman needs to know
You’re strong enough, you’re gonna break the wall
Every Russian Woman needs to know
You’re strong enough, you’re gonna break the wall

Hey, Russian woman
Don’t be afraid, girl
You’re strong enough
You’re strong enough
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid

They are fighting, they are fighting
Everyone around is fighting
Yes, they don’t pray
Son without father
Daughter without father
But a broken family
Does not break me

Source: Wiwibloggs

Kill the Bill (That Will Kill Independent Culture and Education and Introduce Total Censorship in Russia)

“This is direct censorship. Withdraw the bill—don’t disgrace yourselves!”
Nikolai Nelyubin
Fontanka.ru
February 8, 2021

Vladimir Putin has received a letter from the progressive intelligentsia. The masters of culture, science and education have asked the guarantor not to touch the law on education by introducing “licenses for educational outreach.” For the depths are lower, and Gorky has nothing to do with it.

Professionals in culture, education and research involved in educational outreach work in our country, are concerned about the future of culture, education, and research. The reason is the draft law “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Education in the Russian Federation,'” adopted by the State Duma in its first reading, which, in particular, would make official vetting of “educational outreach programs” mandatory.

On February 8, more than a thousand Russian professionals in the field of educational outreach published an open letter to the authorities demanding that they reject the amendments, since they  would “open the door to repressive regulation and censorship.” [See my translation of the open letter, below—TRR.]

On February 9, the details of the legislative initiative are slated for consideration by the State Duma Committee on Education and Science, chaired by Vyacheslav Molotov’s grandson Vyacheslav Nikonov. The bill could pass its second reading as early as February 10.

A co-author of the legislation, Dmitry Alshevskikh, a United Russia MP representing Sverdlovsk Region, earlier shared with Fontanka.ru his arguments for adopting the new norms, which would destroy “anti-Russian propaganda” disguised as “educational outreach.”

“Certain forces are trying to introduce Bandera,” the people’s deputy explained.

The authors of the open letter to President Putin, Prime Minister Mishustin, State Duma Speaker Volodin, and all the co-sponsors of the sensational bill are no strangers to post-postmodernism in art, but in this case they are unanimous. There is nothing to be quibble about: we are getting closer to obscurantism and pathological tendencies that are better to nip in the bud.

It will be more difficult to work
Supporters of the independent cultural scene are convinced that the regulations governing educational outreach would complicate the work of people who organize exhibitions, lectures, discussions, and other public events.

“There are currently no requirements for vetting exhibition projects and the educational programs that accompany them (lectures, seminars, and meetings) except for cases when the project is funded by state grants,” says Tatiana Pinchuk, director of Petersburg’s Street Art Museum, about the current state of affairs.

Natalia Karasyova and Elizaveta Zinovieva, co-founders of the Big City Art project, which holds “art breakfasts” featuring lectures and excursions, are afraid of the vagueness of the mechanisms for obtaining a license, the lack of a list of documents for making such application, and, importantly, the cost of the entire procedure.

“It will be virtually impossible to obtain a license due to the cost and bureaucratic hurdles. So, we will be operating outside of the law,” they say.

Moreover, players on the independent education market cannot understand what exactly they would have to license.

“It is not clear from the bill what exactly ‘educational outreach’ includes,” wonder the women at Big City Art. “It is one thing to get a license for an educational center, and another thing to get one for small-scale meetings and blogging.”

Art scholar Anastasia Pronina also argues that the bill is vaguely worded.

“Officials would have additional levers for pressuring and regulating us, while those engaged in educational outreach work would find themselves in a tough spot,” says the curator. “If the bill is passed into law, it will be a problem to vet the topics announced by our speakers, and we will be obliged to draw up contracts for all our lectures and public events. The lectures at Benoit 1890 Cultural Center are educational in nature and free to attend. During the pandemic, we have introduced a nominal entry fee to regulate attendance. Our project promotes contemporary art in a bedroom community in Petersburg. I think it is clear that this is not an easy job, and we are grateful to all the lecturers who speak to our audiences for free.”

Curator Lizaveta Matveeva notes that a separate item in the draft law would require organizations that partner with and hire foreign specialists to obtain special permits.

“This is another go-round in our government’s maniacal desire to rid us of the presence of foreign colleagues and stop the dissemination of their ‘values and information,'” Matveeva argues. “My field cannot function without interaction with foreign colleagues, without a bilateral exchange of know-how. Culture and art cannot survive in isolation. Our country has already been through this experience, and it led to nothing good.”

Where have the censors been rummaging?
“The more vague a law is, the more repressive it is,” Matveeva argues. “Currently, oversight is implemented correctively, but there are concerns that this draft law and subsequent secondary laws may introduce preventive regulation that would require vetting educational materials before they are published, and this is real censorship.”

“It could reach the point that talking about Andy Warhol’s paintings would be considered promotion of the western way of life,” say Karasyova and Zinovieva. “It is absurd, but it is possible.”

According to the organizers of informal cultural events, censorship can manifest itself even more easily in the field of contemporary art. The young women give examples.

“This could concern projects that criticize the government by artistic means, or projects produced in cooperation with foreign colleagues,” they say.

“If cultural institutions are required to clear every exhibition project involving a cultural program with the state, then implementing any project would turn into a bureaucratic hell,” argues Pinchuk. “Also, it is not clear how broad the powers of the supervisory authorities would be. If they don’t like the theme of an exhibition or the subject of a lecture, would they simply ban it?”

Historian Lev Lurie is horrified.

“Educators also tell us about Ohm’s law, after all,” he says. “The question arises: aren’t they hyping the achievements of foreign scientists? Maybe they underestimate the successes of the virologists from the Vector Center in Novosibirsk? We need balance in the natural sciences, too! So, now we need to expand the training of these facilitators. Retired officers—political workers—can handle it. If, God forbid, [Vyacheslav] Makarov is not re-elected to the [Petersburg] Legislative Assembly, he could well attend such events, because he has a sense of who has the “Siege of Leningrad gene” and who doesn’t. He could run such events himself, but monitoring them is more important.”

Who would be affected by the law?
No one has actually counted how many independent educational platforms there are in Russia today. It is clear that this sector was growing quite dynamically until quite recently. There are professional educational platforms and schools, and there are hobby clubs.

“Meetings and lectures are also held in bookstores, libraries, cafes, independent galleries, and other places,” Matveeva explains.

“Based on the blanket statements [in the draft law] we can surmise that a project dealing with the oeuvre of a single artist and a show of his works would be defined as educational outreach since an analysis of the artist’s career constitutes, in one way or another, dissemination of information about the artist’s know-how and expertise,” argues Pinchuk. “Along with doing exhibition projects, museums, including the Street Art Museum, also do cultural and educational projects, and various events—meetings, seminars, and lectures—are held as part of these projects. During these events, knowledge about art is disseminated, and members of the cultural scene share their know-how and competence. That is, the activities of museums fall under the definition of educational outreach as provided in the draft law.”

It comes down to money
“Russian citizens, including vulnerable segments of the populace, would thus also lose the opportunity to gain knowledge from highly qualified specialists on a regular, often pro bono basis,” it says in the open letter to Russian officials.

Matveeva answers the question “why.”

“If organizers and lecturers have to produce and reproduce paperwork to get permission to hold each of their one-off lectures in a library or a cafe, it would be easier not to organize anything at all and wait for better times to arrive in Russia,” she says. “Many events are organized by enthusiasts, by professionals passionate about their work. Events are often held for free or for a nominal fee. They are attended by people who don’t have the opportunity to pay for an expensive course or time to study, but they can periodically go to lectures to learn something new, and maybe meet and hobnob with other people. Educational events are also popular among the elderly: for them it is a form of leisure.”

Karasyova and Zinovieva agree.

“If commercial educational events simply increase in price and part of the audience peels off, then non-profit organizers are likely to fall by the wayside, as they will not be able to carry the costs,” they say.

Lurie is categorical.

“People will show up and say that you are not telling the right story about hedgehogs. ‘You can’t talk about hedgehogs like that,******!” they will tell you. ‘And if I give you fifty thousand, will I be telling the right story about hedgehogs?’ you will ask. ‘Well, for fifty it would be better, but for sixty it would definitely be a good story about hedgehogs.’ That’s all you need to know about this law,” he says.

What history teaches us
“Increasing the amount of paperwork has never helped the cause of popular education,” Pinchuk argues.

There are also examples in history of how to introduce state control.

“The Cultural Revolution in the USSR at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s,” recalls Lurie. “Then all private NEP outfits were put under control. They became state-owned. They were made part of the overall structure. In particular, the Knowledge Society (Obshchestvo “Znanie”) emerged from this arrangement. Or there were the times of [Konstantin] Pobedonostsev, when a bailiff came to every event and could shut it down.”

“We are being dragged into the Middle Ages. Or into the USSR,” says Marina Rudina, an employee of the Russian Museum who specializes in its educational and research work. “This know-how was perfectly tested back then. There is a persistent sense of obscurantism. And, from my point of view, strange information is flowing from every corner, including from federal and state TV channels. We need protection from extremist influences? There is already a law for this. I don’t understand why we have this business about ‘combating extremism’ in the new law again. Apparently, this is a clear formula: there are only enemies everywhere, and we must defend ourselves from them. Are we going to sacrifice everything?”

Lurie recalls other specific examples.

“We feel great about the valiant deeds of Alexander Matrosov and Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Valentina Tereshkova and Dmitry Donskoy. We don’t expect anything bad. The problem is that there is imperfect censorship in Russia. There are no firm guidelines, for example, on whether Pobedonostsev and [Georgy] Malenkov are positive characters, and so we don’t know what to expect. There is uncertainty. We are afraid to talk positively about Malenkov. What if suddenly it turns out that he was working against the Motherland?”

To avoid this, says Lurie (who even at the start of Putin’s constitutional reforms spoke about the inevitability of total censorship), there must be “special people” who attend excursions and other events, lectures, and quests, either openly or undercover.

The historian sketches a new dystopian novel on the go.

“They will write a note to their superiors. They will have to record everything with surveillance devices so that it won’t be their word against [their opponents]. Then it will transpire that someone berated Matrosov. This means that a regulation stating that Matrosov cannot be derided will be needed. After all, such thoughts about Matrosov could be whispered by the enemy, while an educator might not have known it was forbidden. We must protect educators!”

“Why are they doing this?”
“The bill will drive another nail in the coffin of private cultural institutions in Russia. It seems that the current policy is aimed at ensuring that there are fewer and fewer educated people with a broad outlook, and that knowledge outside of the school curriculum can only be obtained abroad,” Pinchuk argues.

“The censorship and repressive laws already adopted by our government have greatly changed the climate and environment, and have complicated the already extremely difficult lives of cultural professionals,” says Matveeva. “We can no longer publicly and openly touch on certain topics, we cannot work with certain organizations, and it is better for us not to receive grants from international organizations and foundations. Given that the government provides no support to artists, art historians, and other producers of culture and art, it is not quite clear how officialdom expects people to work and support themselves.”

“Why are they doing this?” Rudina asks, immediately answering her own question.

“To completely obliterate education, to make it impossible for there to be flights of thought and broad spaces to think. There should be many opinions, many sources of knowledge and trends. When everything is regulated, is approved by people at the top, this is direct censorship, the exclusion of any opinions other than those ‘approved by the government line.’ Just withdraw the bill—don’t disgrace yourselves!”

Late last year, Petersburg MP Elena Drapeko told Fontanka.ru that voters had asked the State Duma to introduce censorship in Russia.

As of February 9, over 210,00 people had signed a petition against the proposed amendments.

__________

This session of Petersburg’s Street University, held on Elf Square in the city center circa 2008-2009, would have been impossible under the proposed amendments to the Law on Education. 

__________

February 8, 2021

Open Letter

To:

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin

Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin

Russian Federation Council Members A.A. Klimov, E.V. Afanasyeva, A.V. Vainberg, L.N. Glebova, and O.V. Melnichenko

Russian State Duma Members V.I. Piskarev, A.G. Alshevskikh, N.I. Ryzhak, A.K. Isaev, R.D. Kurbanov, I.V. Belykh, N.V. Poklonskaya, D.I. Savelyev, A.V. Chep, A.L. Shkhagoshev, E.A. Yampolskaya, V.V. Bortko, S.M. Boyarsky, O.M. Kazakova, E.G. Drapenko, A.M. Sholokhov, O.L. Lavrov, S.A. Shargunov, O.M. Germanova, V.Yu. Maksimov, N.N. Pilus, and S.B. Savchenko

Russian Federal Minister of Culture O.B. Lyubimova

Russian Federal First Deputy Minister of Culture S.G. Obryvalin

We, the undersigned, are cultural, educational, and academic professionals engaged in educational outreach work in Russia, as well as Russian citizens concerned about the future of culture, education, and research in our country. We write to you in connection with Draft Law No. 1057895-7 “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Education in the Russian Federation’” (hereinafter referred to as “the Draft Law”), which was passed by the State Duma in its first reading. If the Draft Law becomes law, it will, in our opinion, open the door to repressive regulation and censorship. In its current form, it threatens the constitutional rights of Russian citizens and the growth of our country’s educational and cultural fields due to its vague wording and rawness.

The Explanatory Note to the Draft Law states, “The federal draft law is aimed at improving the legal regulation of educational activities in the Russian Federation,” and “the draft law […] would generate additional conditions for developing human culture, encouraging individual socialization, and motivating individuals to form an active civic stance.” However, it contains no detailed comparative risk-benefit analysis proving that the stated goal would be pursued, rather than its opposite.

At the same time, the rules and regulations that would be issued if the Draft Law were passed, as well as the content of the Draft Law itself, have rightly caused fears among professionals that administrative barriers to educational outreach work would be raised that infringe on constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, including:

  • the right to education (per Article 43, Paragraph 1 of the Russian Federal Constitution)
  • the right to seek out, receive, transmit, produce and disseminate information (per Article 29, Paragraph 4 of the Russian Federal Constitution)
  • and freedom of literary, artistic, scientific, technical and other types of creativity, as well as freedom of instruction (per Article 44, Paragraph 1 of the Russian Federal Constitution).

The Draft Law is extremely restrictive

According to Article 43, Paragraph 5 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, “The Russian Federation establishes federal educational standards, [and] supports various forms of education and self-education.” In its current version, however, the Draft Law and the accompanying regulations adopted if it is implemented (as suggested by the public statements of its authors) are aimed not at supporting but at limiting educational outreach as sponsored by federal cultural and educational organizations, as well as by independent platforms, private organizations, and grassroots groups.

The text of the Draft Law defines educational outreach work as “activities, implemented outside the framework of educational programs, that are aimed at disseminating knowledge, skills, values, know-how and competence in order to develop individuals intellectually, spiritually, morally, creatively, physically and (or) professionally, and meet their educational needs and interests, and that touch on relations regulated by this federal law and other legislative acts of the Russian Federation.” The vagueness of the wording means that educational outreach work can be defined as any public activity in which knowledge and competencies are disseminated. Hence, we can conclude that educational outreach work could include not only individual lectures and workshops organized by licensed educational institutions, but also exhibitions, festivals, conferences, the work of popularizers of science and art, openly accessible blogs and vlogs, and much more.

The Draft Law introduces redundant regulations and opens the door to censoring educational outreach work

The Draft Law prohibits incitement to social, racial, ethnic or religious strife, and incitement to actions contrary to the Russian Federal Constitution. At the same time, the dissemination of information for these purposes is already prohibited by current Russian federal legislation, whose norms are also applicable to educational outreach work (per Article 10 of the Federal Law “On Information,” Article 13 of the Federal Law “On Countering Extremism,” and the corresponding provisions in the Administrative Offenses Code and the Criminal Code).

Currently, oversight is implemented correctively (ex post). We are concerned that the secondary legislation could introduce preventive (ex ante) regulation requiring that educational materials be approved before they are published, thus restricting freedom of opinion, as well as significantly complicating the work of law-abiding educators while not affecting the activities of banned extremist organizations.

The Draft Law is isolationist

The Draft Law obliges educational organizations to obtain the approval of the executive authorities when negotiating educational agreements with foreign organizations and foreign nationals involving expenditures. The provision would cover not only financial contracts involving state educational institutions (to which the laws on public procurement apply), but also other agreements, including non-financial cooperation agreements, which are signed in large numbers by all major educational institutions, as well as contracts made by non-governmental educational organizations.

The introduction of additional restrictions and controls on international exchanges and the engagement of foreign nationals by educational organizations inevitably entails an additional bureaucratic burden that most non-profit independent organizations would not be able to handle because they lack the necessary resources. Consequently, international exchanges would face the threat of significant cuts, leading to the stagnation of culture and research in Russia: growth in these fields is impossible without a constant exchange of know-how and ideas with colleagues from other countries. The lack of an opportunity to build stable, permanent relations with the international professional community would inevitably lead to a lag in the growth of culture, research and education in our country.

Educational outreach is carried out not only by large state institutions, but also by independent non-profit organizations, as well as by grassroots groups who find it difficult to secure the minimal resources needed for engaging foreign colleagues and implementing international projects. In this regard, introducing requirements for obtaining additional permits to engage foreign nationals in educational outreach projects would make it impossible to implement grassroots and non-profit undertakings. Russian citizens, including vulnerable segments of the populace, would thus also lose the opportunity to gain knowledge from highly qualified specialists on a regular, often pro bono basis.

The Draft Law delegates unregulated oversight to the Government

The Draft Law adopted by the State Duma in the first reading is extremely vague: it does not specify procedures and boundaries for overseeing educational outreach work, does not delimit regulatory entities, and does not define the types of international cooperation pursued by educational organizations that would require official approval. Essentially, the State Duma (a legislative body) has wholly delegated policymaking in the educational outreach field to the Government of the Russian Federation (an executive body) without setting any criteria and restrictions. This makes it possible, when adopting secondary legislation, to interpret the will of the legislators quite broadly, in a variety of directions. The vagueness of the wording, as well as the delegation of further rule-making to the Government of the Russian Federation, raises concerns in the professional community that the regulation would be repressive and involve censorship, thus considerably complicating the implementation of educational outreach work.

Oversight and restriction of educational outreach based on extremely vague reasons, thus allowing for varying interpretations “on the ground,” are contrary to the constitutional rights and freedoms of Russian citizens. In this regard, we, cultural, educational, and academic professionals engaged in educational outreach work in Russia, call on you to reject Draft Law No. 1057895-7 “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Education in the Russian Federation,’” as its adoption, in our opinion, would open the door to repressive regulation and censorship due to its vague wording and rawness.

[Signed, in the original, by Lizaveta Matveeva (St. Petersburg), curator of the Main Project of the Seventh International Moscow Youth Biennale, the Art Prospect International Public Art Fair, and the DYI Fair, and 1,002 other signatories]

Thanks to Susan Katz for asking me to translate the open letter and sending me the link to the article from Fontanka.ru. Both texts were translated by the Russian Reader

Stopping Foreign Agents, Killing Russian Education

“Entry is prohibited”

Control, Censorship and Foreign Agents: How the Amendments to the Law “On Education” Will Affect All of Us
Ella Rossman
Mel
December 24, 2020

On December 23, the State Duma passed in its first reading a bill that would amend the law “On Education.” After the bill is passed into law, “anti-Russian forces” will no longer be able to “freely conduct a wide range of propaganda activities among schoolchildren and university students.” Tatyana Glushkova, a lawyer at the Memorial Human Rights Center, joined us to figure out what is happening.

Regulation International Cooperation
On November 18, 2020, fifteen Russian MPs proposed amendments to the law “On Education” that would regulate international cooperation on the part of educational organizations, as well as all educational activities in Russia itself.

The law would regulate interactions between educational organizations (i.e. licensed organizations) and foreigners. If the law is adopted, schools and universities would, in fact, be banned from engaging in all types of international cooperation without the approval of federal authorities. In this case, any interaction by an educational organization with foreign organizations or individuals would fall under the definition of “international cooperation.”

“International cooperation is when a Russian educational organization develops and implements joint educational programs with an organization or individual, sends pupils, students and instructors abroad (and they receive scholarships there), accepts foreign students and instructors to study and work in Russian organizations, conducts joint scholarly research, organizes international conferences and participates in them, and simply exchanges educational or scholarly literature with an entity or individual. After the law is adopted, all these activities, except for the admission of foreign students, would be possible only with permission from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education or the Ministry of Education.”
—Tatyana Glushkova, lawyer

According to Glushkova, the procedure for issuing permits would  be established by the government. “How would this affect international cooperation on the part of educational organizations? Obviously, negatively.”

“This is actually a revival of the idea that instructors should have to obtain permission to take part in international conferences, not to mention more meaningful interactions with foreign colleagues. Moreover, these permits would not even be issued by university administrations, but by a ministry.

“Given such conditions, universities and schools would engage in much less international cooperation. Obtaining any permission is a bureaucratic process that requires resources. It would be easier for some organizations to cancel international events than to get approval for them,” Glushkova says.

According to Glushkova, it is currently unclear what conditions would need to be met in order to obtain permissions. This would be established by new Russian government regulations, and so far we can only guess what they would look like.

Control of All “Educational Activities”
As the bill’s authors write in an explanatory note, the new bill must be adopted, since without it, “anti-Russian forces” can almost freely conduct a “wide range of propaganda activities” among schoolchildren and university students.

The Russian MPs argue that many such events are “aimed at discrediting Russian state policy,” as well as at revising attitudes toward history and “undermining the constitutional order.”

The amendments would affect both official educational organizations in Russia (schools and universities) and those engaged in “educational activities” outside of these institutions. At the same time, the proposed law defines the concept of “educational activities” as broadly as possible—in fact, it encompasses all activities in which new skills, knowledge, values or experiences are taught “outside the framework of educational programs.”

Anyone from tutors to bloggers could fall into this category.

The bill gives the authorities the right to regulate the entire sphere of educational activities. It not yet clear of how this would be organized: the details of what would be controlled and how it would be controlled are not spelled out in the bill.

Sergei Lukashevsky, director of the Sakharov Center, dubbed the amendments “revolutionary in the sad sense of the word,” as they would allow the government to declare the exchange of almost any type of information as “education” and therefore subject to regulation, that is, to what amounts to censorship.

Glushkova outlined the context in the new bill has emerged.

The bill was submitted to the State Duma at the same time as a whole package of other bills that, formally, would significantly limit the activities of different civil society organizations in Russia.

To put it simply, they would simply crush the remnants of Russian civil society that haven’t been killed off yet.

One of these bills would institute full government control over NGOs listed in the register of “foreign agents.” It would give the Ministry of Justice the right to suspend (in whole or in part) the activities of such organizations at any time. Another bill introduces the concept of “unregistered foreign-agent organizations,” and also expands the scope for designating individuals as “foreign agents.”

If an unregistered organization or individual is included in the register of foreign agents, they would be required to report to the Ministry of Justice, including their expenses. At the same time, all founders, members, managers and employees of foreign-agent organizations (whether registered or not) would be required to declare their status as “foreign agents” when making any public statement concerning the government.

For example, if a cleaning lady who works for an NGO wanted to write on her social network page that her apartment is poorly heated, she would have to indicate that she is affiliated with a “foreign agent.” Naturally, sanctions are provided for violations of all these regulations, and in some cases they include criminal liability.

In my opinion, these bills are not a reaction on the part of the authorities to any actual foreign or domestic political events. They are just another round of “tightening the screws” and attacking civil society.

The regime’s ultimate goal is the ability to do anything, however lawless, without suffering the consequences and without having to endure even critical feedback from society. This process has been going on since 2012 at least.

In order to achieve this goal, the regime seeks, first, to declare everything that has at least some connection with foreign countries (which, in its opinion, are the main source of criticism of events in our country) suspicious, unreliable and harmful. Second, it is trying to take maximum control of all public activities related to the dissemination of information and the expression of civic stances.

The amendments to the law “On Education” would affect not only all educators, but also people who probably have never considered themselves educators. For example, if I publish an article on the internet on what to do if you buy a defective product, I am engaged in “activities aimed at disseminating knowledge.”

If I do a master class on embroidery, that would be deemed “an activity aimed at disseminating skills.”

Both activities would fall under the definition of educational activities. In fact, any dissemination of information could be declared an “educational activity.” All educational activities, according to the bill, would now have to be implemented on the terms established by Russian federal government and under its control.

We still do not know what the rules will be. They could be quite mild, or they could be harsh. Don’t forget that an indulgent regime can be tightened at any time. You merely need to adopt a regulation—not a law, whose approval entails a complex procedure, but only a government decree.

Thanks to Valentina Koganzon for the heads-up. Photo and translation by the Russian Reader

Shohista Karimova: Convicted of Someone Else’s Crime

Shohista Karimova. Photo courtesy of RFE/RL

Shohista Karimova: Convicted of Someone Else’s Crime
Natalia Sivohina
Zanovo
December 6, 2020

Tomorrow, December 7, a court hearing will be held in the Moscow suburb of Vlasikha on the appeal of the verdict against of Shohista Karimova. The name of this middle-aged woman from Uzbekistan, who worked as a food prep worker in the Moscow Region, surfaced in the media in connection with the criminal case into the 3 April 2017 terrorist attack in the Petersburg subway—and, most likely, it was immediately forgotten. Journalist Natalia Sivohina recalls Karimova’s story.

On 3 April 2017, an explosion occurred in the Petersburg subway on a train traveling between the stations Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut, killing 16 passengers and injuring about a hundred.

The security forces voiced several conflicting explanations of the tragedy, but soon reported that the perpetrators had been found.

In the dock were eleven people, migrant workers from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. According to investigators, they were members of an Islamist organization.

On 5 April 2017, relatives of one of the future defendants in the case of the Petersburg Eleven, Muhamadusup Ermatov, reported him missing. As he later told human rights activists and journalists, he had been kidnapped. The kidnappers (presumably FSB officers) put a plastic bag over Ermatov’s head, beat him up, intimidated him verbally, tasered him, and demanded that he give the testimony they wanted to hear.

Other defendants in the subway bombing case also claimed they had been subjected to the same “investigative methods.” The evidence obtained under torture was the basis of the sentences the defendants received on charges of terrorism. Karimova, the only woman among the defendants, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Karimova worked as a food prep worker in a café near Moscow. According to the case file, she “provided the [terrorist group] with means of communication.” As she said later, she lent a phone to her coworker and, later, co-defendant Abror Azimov. That was the extent of her alleged involvement in the bombing.

When FSB officers came to her house, the Uzbek national meekly complied with all their demands: she held the detonator in her hands, leaving her fingerprints on it, and let them take DNA swabs of her mouth and scalp.

Karimova trusted the authorities and hoped to the last that the truth would out. In the end, however, she was found guilty of possessing a bomb on Tovarishchesky Lane in Petersburg, a city to which she had never been before she was arrested.

Karimova had come to Russia to help her daughter. She worked for 25 thousand rubles a month [approx. 400 euros a month in 2017] and sent money home to her family. The verdict sent her into shock: her terrible screaming during the reading of the verdict was included in journalistic accounts of that day. But few journalists wrote anything about Karimova’s own story.

Screenshot of a letter, quoted below, sent by Shohista Karimova from prison, dated 18 May 2020

“When a guard at Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 2 asked why I didn’t go out for a walk, my cellmate replied that I was afraid. I was so afraid that a man in the uniform might hurt me—I was scared and cried constantly. My brain was just turned off. After a year, I started to recover from the stress and the extreme emotional state. And I was very afraid for my loved ones: they could have been framed as well,” Karimova wrote in a letter to a friend, adding, “I now believe that any innocent person can be charged [with a crime they did not commit].”

What the Defense Says
I spoke with Karimova’s lawyer, Viktor Drozdov.

How did you end up taking Shohista’s case? How did it all begin?

I received a call from a person who had previously been in prison and knew the law enforcement system firsthand, and then from other human rights defenders. They asked me to work pro bono on the case, whose defendants were initially represented by court-appointed lawyers. We met and talked, and I agreed to serve as Shohista’s defense counsel.

The tragedy in April 2017 and the media coverage that followed it had attracted my attention. I followed the case quite closely, comparing various reports. It raised a lot of questions, and I decided to find answers to them. I found them.

You have appealed the apparently wrongful verdict. Why do you think it is important to go all the way in this trial?

The defense lawyer’s job is to debunk the prosecution (during trial) and the illegality of the sentence (as now, on appeal), and always be ready to defend their client in subsequent phases in the process. What does “going all the way” mean? The real end came long ago: the justice system was completely “bankrupted” by this trial. It has neither been willing nor able to respond to any of the defense’s arguments.

Does Shohista believe in the possibility of getting justice? What does she think about the upcoming appeal?

Until recently, she had great faith in Putin. She wrote him letters to which she received no response. I don’t ask her that question now. Shohista is painfully aware of the circumstances that caused her to end up in prison completely unexpectedly and absurdly. She knows perfectly well and shares my position on her defense, which is that by defending her, I am defending the Russian justice system, first of all, and her future  depends on it.

Shohista is a hostage to the political interests of people who are now quite powerful.

I have started naming these people on my little Telegram channel. They all were involved or somehow complicit in the #Metro17 case.

After the verdict, Shokhista wrote a letter to Judge Andrei Morozov, congratulating him on finally pacifying Russian society by “finding the terrorists” and wishing him health and happiness.

How many lawyers are currently defending Karimova?

Two: the lawyer Sergei Shostak, who joined the defense at my request, also pro bono, and fully shares my position, and me.

Despite the obvious inconsistencies in the trial of the Petersburg Eleven and the defendants’ complaints of torture, the case did not fall apart in court, and the defendants received huge sentences. Why do you think this happened?

The answer, perhaps, can be found in the verdict itself and in the way the trial was run. The text of the verdict does not cite any of the arguments the defense made, nor does it analyze the events of 3 April 2017 themselves. The court point-blank refused (sic!) to examine the [bombed] subway car as material evidence or the improvised explosive devices, entered into evidence by the prosecution, nor did it uphold any significant defense motion on the merits of the charge. And it allowed the illegal presence of unidentified and unmarked masked persons armed with firearms in the courtroom.

The court was neither independent nor fair. I personally feel very sorry for the judges. They did something vile.

Can ordinary people help defendants in political cases?

“Ordinary people” cannot do anything. But I believe in the capabilities of my fellow citizens—caring, thoughtful, and ready to tell the truth. The internet, petitions, collective appeals, and publicity can help—especially publicity.

* * *

The obvious inconsistencies in the case and testimony by the defendants that they had been subjected to hours of torture during the investigation did not prevent the trial court from finding them guilty and sentencing them to long terms in prison.

So far, there has been no massive grassroots campaign demanding a normal investigation of the case of the Petersburg Eleven. The medieval division into “friends” and “foes” has been firmly established in Russian society. Actually, this is nothing new: this is what usually happens amidst the wreckage of social institutions that have become obsolete.

First, people are evaluated by skin color, then people from the “wrong” ethnic groups are imprisoned: all this happened relatively recently by the standards of history. The country that conquered fascism interrogates hundred-year-old veterans who sacrificed their health and strength in that long-ago war with fascism. The so-called prosecution throws random people behind bars—disempowered construction workers, maintenance men, and kitchen workers from the former fraternal republics. So-called public opinion equates the concepts of “immigrant” and “terrorist.” The so-called state turns into a madman fleeing from its own shadow.

Zanovo Media will keep you updated about the plight of Shohista Karimova and the other defendants in the trial of the Petersburg Eleven.

_____________________

Earlier today, Natalia Sivohina posted the following on her Facebook page by way of prefacing her article: “Recently, I posted a link to the website Zanovo, and today I published my first article there. The article is about Shohista Karimova, who worked as kitchen prep in the Moscow Region and was a defendant in the case of the terrorist attack in Petersburg. This ordinary, very nice woman visited our city for the first time after her arrest. No one knows the current whereabouts of the people actually involved in the crime committed in April 2017. But it is now quite clear to me that the defendants in the case of the Petersburg Eleven are random people who incriminated themselves under torture. Alas, this is the case in today’s Russia, which likes to rant about the ‘fight against fascism.’ Knowing about this case makes me uneasy. I felt quite scared when I wrote this article and talked to Shohista’s lawyer. But, you know, there are things that you can’t keep quiet about, because they concern everyone. Please, if you haven’t heard anything about  Karimova, read this article about her. The hearing of the appeal against her verdict is scheduled for tomorrow. I really want to hope for the best.”

Translated by the Russian Reader. Please read my previous posts on the presumed terrorist attack in the Petersburg subway, the case against its alleged “financers and planners,” its roots in the Islamophobia that has infected Russia under Putin, and the shocking lack of local and international solidarity with the eleven Central Asian migrant workers scapegoated and convicted in the case: