Russia’s new ombudsman for human rights is a longtime communist who defends the death penalty and believes that unpaid wages–not freedom of speech or movement–may rank as the nation’s fundamental rights issue.
He is a former Soviet law professor who follows in the job a respected former dissident. And Communists in parliament had to resort to some blatant political horse-trading to push through his nomination.
Yet Oleg Mironov, 59, says he cannot understand why so many people have lined up against him.
“Why should I immediately become subject to criticism?” the amiable former federal lawmaker said. “Let’s join our efforts and act. Why struggle against me? We should struggle for human rights.”
Activists say they are eager to do just that in a nation beset by violations of basic rights.
Military conscripts are routinely beaten and robbed by their comrades. Police are accused of torturing suspects to gain confessions. Prisons can be overcrowded chambers of horrors, breeding tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.
Moscow police routinely harass dark-skinned people and others who might be non-residents, enforcing registration laws that they know have been ruled unconstitutional.
But few people express much optimism that Mironov will tackle these complex issues.
“He is the new ombudsman, but he is not a new Mironov,” said Ludmilla Alexeyeva, who directs the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organization. “He is a person of the Soviet generation, with a Soviet mentality.”
Sergei Kovalyov, a former dissident and protege of Andrei Sakharov and who was sent to the gulag, preceded Mironov in the ombudsman’s role before the parliament changed the nature of the office. He criticized the Duma, as the lower house is known, for playing politics with a sensitive post, and he warned that the Communists may try to use the ombudsman’s office for political gains.
“Mironov is a good Soviet lawyer,” Kovalyov said, making no effort to hide his sarcasm. “He is a professor from the Saratov legal school, so just go to the Lenin Library and look at what Mironov wrote. The type of the science determines the type of the scientist, and Mironov adhered to a standard Marxist approach: What is law? An instrument of power.”
The ombudsman’s task is daunting, no matter who takes it on.
Though President Boris Yeltsin has declared 1998 the year of human rights in Russia, his commitment to the issue may be better demonstrated by the fact that he meets only once a year with his own adviser on human rights, a post separate from Mironov’s. The most recent meeting with Yeltsin came last month, after which the Kremlin adviser reported optimistically that such meetings with the Russian leader may occur every six months rather than every 12.
Mironov’s office receives hundreds of complaints a week, many of them unrelated to human rights issues but directed there by people who feel they have nowhere else to turn. Some people are looking for apartments, some for help with land disputes, some for higher pensions. Not all can expect to get a sympathetic ear from the new man.
“There are many professional complainers for whom it’s just a hobby,” Mironov said. “It’s difficult to say what’s important. For a person who does not receive his salary, this is the important thing. For those with millions at their disposal, freedom of speech is probably a very important thing.
“We should help Russia to occupy an adequate place in the world community, so that the economic problems are solved, and then the human rights problems are solved,” he said.
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The ombudsman’s focus on the economic woes of Russia and those of his own office concerns rights activists.
“Financial resources are always going to be problematic with Russia in the condition it is in, especially considering the number of abuses we are looking at,” said Diederik Lohman, who directs the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch.
“Basically it’s difficult to name one area where there are no human rights violations, whether you talk about women, children, prisoners, detainees, religious people. So to deal with all of those violations at the same time for any ombudsman would be difficult.
“Kovalyov showed that with limited financial resources, but a high level of personal commitment, a lot actually can be done,” Lohman said. “That may prove to be the main problem with Mironov, that there is a lack of commitment to those fundamental human rights that an ombudsman should be working on.”