TUESDAY 12 OCTOBER 1999

MR BILL BOWRING, MS FIONA WEIR and MS MARIANA KATZAROVA

  1. May I on behalf of the Committee welcome our witnesses. I will ask you to introduce yourselves in a moment. Today the Foreign Affairs Committee begins formally our work on relations with Russia. Our terms of reference are to enquire into the role and policies of the FCO in relation to the Russian Federation. We have agreed a number of key issues which we wish to address; and we well understand the difficulty of reaching firm conclusions on Russia at this stage because of the rapidly evolving political landscape in Russia; but human rights is very much at the fore of the concern of this Committee and this is why we are delighted to welcome our three witnesses today. We hope our eventual report will be published in about February and will be a useful contribution to the relations of this country and, indeed, of Europe with the Russian Federation. We will need in the course of our work to take advice from experts like yourselves. We have this morning representatives of Amnesty International and Bill Bowring. May I ask you if you would introduce yourselves.
  (Ms Weir) Fiona Weir, Campaigns Director of Amnesty International UK section.
  (Ms Katzarova) My name is Mariana Katzarova. I am the Researcher on the Russian Federation at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International.

  2. Mr Bowring, although you appear with Amnesty, you clearly have a somewhat different perspective and standpoint; would you introduce yourself.
  (Mr Bowring) Bill Bowring. I am from the University of Essex and I advise a number of organisations, including the Department for International Development.

  3. First, I would like to set the scene. We clearly know the tradition of autocracy during the Tsarist times which overflowed into the totalitarian position under the Soviets. Are we now seeing a fundamental change in the new Russia from previous centuries and up to the change at the end of the 1980s in terms of human rights?
  (Mr Bowring) If I could mention a couple of things. First of all, I do think it would be a mistake to see any kind of unbroken trajectory from Tsarism through the Soviet period to today because I think there were periods of significant reform: for example, the introduction of jury trial and an independent judiciary in the last century, just to name one aspect. Among the extremely positive things that have been happening recently there is Russia's membership of the Council of Europe; ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights; the very recent appointment of the Russian judge to the Court on Human Rights and matters of that kind. On the other hand, one has a disregard for legality, of which the most recent example is the decision following the explosions in Moscow to re-register everybody in Moscow and in other cities, in flagrant violation of the Constitution and of Russia's commitments to the Council of Europe and to the United Nations. That is something which is extremely dangerous, coming as it does in the period leading up to the parliamentary and residential elections.

  4. Is the movement, in your judgment, in the right direction, even though the administrative infrastructure may not be able to support always the correct positions?
  (Mr Bowring) I am an optimist and I believe that, broadly speaking, the trends are in the right direction and I can expand on that. There are many problems of the kind that Amnesty spell out in their report.

  5. Amnesty, do you agree broadly with that perspective?
  (Ms Katzarova) I want to add that 51 years ago the Soviet Union was one of only eight countries, members of the United Nations, who did not vote for acceptance of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights. What strikes us as a very positive step is that, last year, President Yeltsin announced a year of human rights in the Russian Federation to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration. That is really a positive development.

  6. It is not cosmetic?
  (Ms Katzarova) Unfortunately, we could say that it remains more or less on the books. Russia continues to be a country where massive human rights violations are permitted on a daily basis. Amnesty International operates under a very strict mandate. We primarily deal with civil and political rights violations; and in each sphere of Amnesty International's mandate there is a lot to be said about violations in Russia. Torture and ill-treatment continues in police custody. Over one million people are in penitentiary institutions under torturous conditions, as Sir Nigel Rodley[2] pointed out in 1994. The registration which Bill Bowring mentioned is an unlawful procedure which requires resident permits for people in order to leave, especially the big cities. It has been outlawed in national law. It continues to be enforced by the Mayor of Moscow, for instance. A particular target of these practices are people from the Caucasus, the darker people, the Chechens. The death penalty is not practised at the moment; there are no executions. This was a very positive development particularly undertaken by President Yeltsin, who commuted all existing death sentences. At the same time, we are concerned that Parliament has not moved yet to ratify Protocol No.6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Any political uncertainty, or any change in government in Russia, may lead to renewed executions and to renewed drawbacks to previous practices. That is my personal opinion, of somebody who has been working on Russia for the past ten years, not only with Amnesty but with other human rights organisations. In Russia it depends on individual politicians; it is very much attached to the individual person in power, whether the Tsar, Stalin or Mr Yeltsin. This is how the country operates on the lower level. Who is the police officer; who is the procurator? In many ways this allows impunity to exist and flourish. The law is not to be respected. Their own Constitution, which overall is a very positive document, is not respected.

  7. I just wanted to pick up a specific issue which Mr Bowring mentioned. There are some general issues which will come with the flow of questioning. Mr Bowring, you mentioned the European Court of Human Rights. I happen to be a member of the British delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly and, indeed, very recently we did have a choice of two Russian judges to choose between. I had an awful feeling of how on earth do you make judgments about people you know nothing about, despite recommendations and advice. In a country where there is no real history recently or at all an understanding of human rights, what approach will a judge bring? Is it reasonable to assume that you can find a judge within the Soviet Union who has a Western European understanding of the principles of the Court of Human Rights in Strasburg?
  (Mr Bowring) The answer to the question is, the new judge, Judge Kovler, was appointed a couple of weeks ago. I was in Moscow just over a week ago and made some enquiries about it and heard pretty good things: that is, he is an extremely sound lawyer, he has many years of experience teaching in France at the Sorbonne and is very fluent in French. What was particularly good I thought was that, about two weeks ago at the time of the re-registration in Moscow, he came out publicly in one of the daily newspapers in order to condemn what was happening in human rights terms. He did so in the company of some judges of the Constitutional Court. While there is enormous inertia in the judiciary in Russia for certain, and it is going to be very hard to adapt to the European Human Rights climate, there are a number of people, not only academics but also in the judiciary at that level in the Constitutional Court, who are very familiar with international human rights standards and frequently employ them. For example, most of the decisions of the Constitutional Court relating to human rights issues directly apply international human rights standards-that is since 1992-and is extremely positive. As always there are two sides to the question. That most recent decision, the appointment of the judge, so far is seen by the human rights community in Moscow to be a positive one.

  8. In your judgment do you consider that the Russian establishment will in fact follow rulings from the Court which are not to its liking? Is the Court a positive factor within the human rights progress in Russia, or is it an irrelevance? I am not quite sure, country to country, how one views this.
  (Mr Bowring) At the point when Russian ratified the Convention there was a debate in Parliament and an overwhelming majority of deputies voted in favour. However, the arguments being deployed by the nationalists and communists were that it would not really make much difference; because even if they lost every single case there would not be that many and it would not be that expensive looking at the example of other states in the Council of Europe, for example Turkey and others, which have had a lot of decisions against them. That cynicism was, I am afraid to say, supported publicly by the former Russian judge on the former court who went public on that issue. On the other hand, one looks at what has happened in Turkey and other countries, and in Britain let us say, where the decisions of the Court have had a very positive effect. One will have to wait and see-there are two sides to it—but perhaps it will be a good thing.

  9. I understand there is a big shortage of judges within the Russian legal system. I notice in your evidence you talked about Britain exploiting its particular approach to play a distinctive role in the human rights activity in Russia. Do you think there is an opportunity in Britain to, for example, contribute positively in helping in training and support for the judicial system within Russia? Are there other modes of institution-building where we might make a more positive contribution to improving human rights activity to complement the monitoring of what is going wrong?
  (Mr Bowring) As I have said in my evidence, my own view is that the policies of the Foreign Office and the Department of International Development are extremely positive in that regard. There is a lot more money now to support those kinds of initiatives. I mentioned the Judicial Support Project which is now under-way, and that is a question of training, re-training, helping with court administration and helping with enforcement of judgments. One of the positive steps was the creation of a new Judicial Department which looks after the courts of general jurisdiction; that is to enhance the independence of the judiciary; and it is that institution which the British experts are working with. There is new law on Justices of the Peace which are being reintroduced; they existed in the period of Tsarist reform, were abolished at the Revolution and are now being reintroduced. I think it is going to be very important to work with that new structure, which is going to take 60 or 70 per cent. of the cases presently heard by the ordinary courts. There are also initiatives for alternative dispute resolution, which could play an extremely important role. The positive thing is that the institutions are very open to that kind of initiative, and there are British partners keen to help and now there is money to assist it. On the other side, of course the judiciary is an institution with great inertia. If I could tell a very brief anecdote to illustrate. When I was observing the trial of Aleksanda Nikitin for Amnesty International in St Petersburg last year (and I do not think I will stray on their territory) the judge who was appointed in 1982 was therefore a Soviet judge and did not have a very good reputation before the trial. When I went to see him, as one does as an Amnesty observer, there he was looking at his computer which had a modem and he was reading the international web pages concerning the trial, including the analysis and commentary. I am told, when he was approached very recently (because the trial is starting again on 23 November) he was very friendly and was once again engaged in reading the web material. That is an anecdote but I think it is symptomatic of changes which are taking place.

  10. Does that accord with Amnesty's experience?
  (Ms Katzarova) I could return the anecdote with a real situation which sounds like an anecdote. I heard about a court in one of the republics in the countryside of Russia where the judges and the judiciary officials were returning empty bottles in order to collect money to buy stamps, paper and envelopes in order to send correspondence to the people involved in trials. It really sounds unbelievable, but that is what I heard. From the judge reading the web page to this little court in the barren countryside, they are a million years distant. I think the UK government and other West European and East European governments, like the Polish government and others, have some role to play in judicial training. It is not just training the judges, it is also training the officials, the procuracy, the police officers, the people who are involved in a quite militarised system receiving orders. A police officer cannot really use provisions of the Convention on the rights of the child when he has his order from his superior to implement the rules of internal regulations. How do you make this person really look broader and read the web page of the international instruments?

  11. I was going to press you on "other institutions", apart from the legal system, that we might be supporting and helping in capacity-building?
  (Ms Weir) I wanted to say a little on the policy side in terms of changes and how the UK is developing a more positive role to support human rights programmes abroad. As many of you will know, in our audit of government policy overall which we published last month, we were broadly very positive about what we saw as a genuine and active commitment to human rights across a number of areas, although there were obviously some very strongly critical parts of that report on bits that do not pertain to this area. I think what is happening in Russia at the moment illustrates quite well some of the things that Amnesty would wish to be positive about. A lot of the kind of programmes developing are the sort of things we have been calling for and pressing for over a number of years. If I can give you some examples of the judicial support programme: support for the Penal Reform International project on improved prison conditions; development of the embassy human rights programme; the DFID study on key issues on poverty from the perspective of the poor, which includes a study on Russia; the reasonably substantive funding to OSCE missions and projects; and the ASSIST programme to promote in the military and police responsibility for international human rights standards, which has led to a number of initiatives, such as a seminar in Russia on conscientious objectors; and to a Coventry University course for military training for Russian officers. These are fairly positive developments and there is a real plethora of them. One of the challenges now is to look quite hard at whether we now have adequate review and evaluation processes to make sure these kinds of projects are meeting their objectives, and to work out which ones really are the most useful to take forward —otherwise there is a risk that one has this enthusiastic mushrooming of projects but no real understanding of which ones work and how they are coordinated. That would be one of the areas in which we would point for the need for a great deal more thinking. The second one comes to a general point we make very regularly about putting our own house in order in certain matters. If I could give one straightforward example. If we are going to continue to put pressure on Russia over torture, for example, which is a key area that the UK government wishes to push in terms of its pressure on other countries, then it is extraordinary, if we have not ourselves made a declaration under Article 22 (of the Convention on Torture) to give UK citizens the right of individual petition, that we are attempting to have dialogue with Russia when the Russians have made a declaration under Article 22. There are some small respects in which, in terms of the legal framework, Russia has taken some steps and the UK government has not and it is obviously very helpful if we can put that thing right.

  12. Could I ask each of our three witnesses to respond briefly to this question. We have, of course, been briefed by the Foreign Office as to what the British government has been doing to support and advance human rights in Russia. I would like each of you to tell us what are the specific steps you would like to see the British government taking which have not been taken so far to further human rights in Russia?
  (Mr Bowring) If it is an answer to your question: I think that steps are already being taken in the right kind of direction—that is the new policy directions by the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, and the kind of funding which is now being made available for human rights. I would certainly want to see more of the same. On the educational level, as one has been reading recently, although more money is being made available in that direction it is still much less than some other countries. Really there is more that could be done. Certainly in terms of the Council of Europe which we heard about earlier—while the Council of Europe has been outspoken on the issue of the death penalty there are other issues, in particular the issue of prison conditions, where Britain certainly has a large role to play. Penal Reform International has already been mentioned; the International Centre for Prison Studies, headed by Andrew Coyle, the former governor of Brixton Prison; those are organisations which are very active in Russia. Those are the kinds of issues in which the Council of Europe could be taking much more of a stand. That is the kind of direction I would like to see.
  (Ms Weir) The ones I would wish to prioritise are: international pressure to make sure that Russia sticks to the very clear commitments given in 1996 to the Council of Europe. On the death penalty the recent developments have been very positive, and there is a real opportunity through sustained international pressure to press that home and ensure we do get effective abolition and ratification of the relevant international instruments. The one that is perhaps most worrying is the commitment Russia gave on armed conflict and international humanitarian law. We see unfolding at the moment a crisis in Chechnya where there are over 100,000 internally displaced persons and growing evidence of civilian casualties. It is very clear that those commitments are not being respected. The UK is in a difficult position, and I return again to my theme about putting ones own house in order. Amnesty International earlier this year repeatedly pressed NATO governments for full investigations during the Kosovo conflict of a number of incidents in which civilian casualties occurred; to ensure that all effective steps were being taken; to ensure that the way in which targets were selected and procedures followed ensured that civilian casualties were not disproportionate or indiscriminate. Despite those repeated calls by Amnesty for such investigations these have not happened. It is very unfortunate that we did not establish a very good model of practice for how you adhere to and are seen to adhere to international humanitarian law. Had NATO done so the international community might have been in a much better position to put pressure on Russia at the moment. Clearly, given the unfolding crisis, the Council of Europe pressure on respect for international humanitarian law has to be a high priority at the moment.
  (Ms Katzarova) Following on from what my colleague has just said, there are three issues which are connected with the renewed armed conflict in the Chechen Republic. One is respect for the rules of war, respect for humanitarian law in protection of civilians, and we are getting more and more information that there are allegations of the Russian Federal forces not respecting the rules of war, not giving warnings to civilians. The Chechen side has claimed civilian casualties. Of course, it is very difficult for us to establish what exactly happened. There is no independent media in the region, and there are no independent observers on a regular basis under the bombings in Chechnya. The second issue is the situation with the internally displaced people. There were over 100,000 a few days ago, but each day we are witnessing increasing amounts of people fleeing the conflict to the neighbouring Republic of Ingushetia. I read about people leaving towards Georgia, so they are not just internally displaced but turning into refugees. The Russian authorities, the Ingush authorities, we believe have not done enough to ensure the protection and wellbeing of these internally displaced people. I read yesterday in the press (we have not confirmed it through our sources) that an eight month old internally displaced baby has died in Ingushetia because there was not enough food or a roof over the heads of the family. We have a number of concerns we would like the UK government to be taking up with the Russian authorities in bilateral meetings, and also within the European institutions like the Council of Europe and the OSCE. The issues are relating to the death penalty, ratification of Protocol No.6 in order to ensure some legal assurance for keeping executions abolished in Russia. We also have concerns about torturing and ill-treatment in police custody. Virtually anyone could become a victim of torture and ill-treatment. The Russian procedural code which is enforced at the moment is still the old one which was adopted in the 1960s. That is a document heavily amended but is still in contradiction with the Constitution and with international standards. In the practice of the Russian law enforcement officials, one of the very important principles is still the principle of Mr Vichinski, which is that the personal confession of guilt is the queen of evidence. The police officers are trying to obtain confessions of guilt through colourfully called torture methods like "elephant torture" with the gas mask when the supply of oxygen is stopped in the mask, through to all sorts of electric shocks and other forms which are listed in our written evidence.

  13. Going back to the Supreme Court, it seems to me the test of the robustness of a democracy to some extent is, when you get arbitrary action by the executive branch of government, is there the capacity to be able to appeal up the court's procedure; and if there is a judgment by the Supreme Court adversely against the action of either an individual or a collective executive branch, whether or not they accept the referee's decision. I was not quite clear whether or not the Supreme Court had really been tested. In other words, if they find for an individual or against the government, whether or not government accepts the decision of the Supreme Court.
  (Mr Bowring) The new court is the Constitutional Court; no such court existed in Soviet times. Experience with the Constitutional Court has been, by and large, positive. About half of its decisions have concerned human rights. Most of the decisions have been respected by the government; laws have been amended and so on. There are two main problems there: one concerns the regions; and there are quite a number of occasions where the 89 regions, many of which are increasingly independent, have ignored the decisions of the Court; and the other, which we have already referred to, is the blatant violation of the Court's decisions by the Mayor of Moscow and the mayors of other cities. That really is something which undermines the rule of law perhaps more than anything else. The older structure is the Supreme Court, which is still largely people who were trained and appointed in the previous times. There are occasions though when that structure has acted independently, has come up with surprising decisions and frequently decisions have been upheld. An awful lot of that and on the Procuracy, which is something which was founded by Peter the Great but maintained in the Soviet period, is the main means for enforcing the rule of law in legality and is still very much a Soviet structure.

  14. We are in a mindset here, we think of a unitary state. The comparator is the United States, is it not? Firstly, you will clearly get conflict between the jurisdictions if the state argue it is a matter for their competencies and the federal structure. Secondly, presumably the question of a death penalty, as in the United States, is both a federal matter and a matter for the provinces or the states. Thirdly, you use, perfectly properly, the Mayor of Moscow and the Mayor of St Petersburg and so on, but we tend to think of municipalities; but these are in fact states. When we talk about Russia and we talk about the judicial system and so on we really have to think in terms of Massachusetts Texas vis-a-vis a relationship with DC, do we not?
  (Mr Bowring) There are two differences. One is that the subjects of the Russian Federation have less competence than the states in the United States with regard to many aspects of legislation. On the other hand, the United States does not have ethnic republics amongst the states; and it does not have states which have their own presidents, constitutions and constitutional courts and so on as Russia does. Russia is in a position where it ratifies human rights treaties, like the European Convention on Human Rights, and that then applies to everybody in Russia; and the principle is that the local legislation in the subjects of the Federation cannot contradict those international obligations; they come first and they have direct effect.

  15. In Russian law?
  (Mr Bowring) In Russian law. The constitution has direct effect everywhere. Then of course you have Chechnya which introduced the death penalty and has been executing people, and is still formally part of the Russian Federation.

  16. Which Chechnya government are we talking about?
  (Mr Bowring) Since 1995.

  17. Separate to this one?
  (Mr Bowring) Yes.

  18. Freedom of information—I was in Moscow recently and was very interested in this, looking for models. There were some areas where freedom of information might be superior to ours. Is that fair?
  (Mr Bowring) When I am in Moscow I buy six newspapers every morning and a number of them are very good indeed. The serious press contains a lot of very critical comment, and at that level there is freedom of the press. At the mass media level there is at least one channel which takes an independent view and is quite hard-hitting. The press as a whole are dominated by big financial interests which in turn are the same financial interests that jockey for influence with governments .

  19. It sounds familiar! I read paragraph 15 of your paper two or three times. "My recommendations are therefore as follows: Any tendency to allocate disproportionate resources to Russia (as compared with other former USSR states) should be resisted." Then your next point says do not focus just on Moscow etc. Are you saying here (because it is not quite clear to me) that we have to concentrate on Russia but do not forget about Belarus and Ukraine, etc?
  (Mr Bowring) That is exactly what I am saying. I work in those other places quite frequently. My impression, and I am not party to the internal workings or decisions, is that very substantial resources are going to Russia, which is one of the inheritances of the Soviet period, but some considerably smaller resources go, for example, to Belarus.