#6
BBC Monitoring
Russian ombudsman says state officials violating human
rights
Source: Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow, in Russian 1000 gmt 10 Dec 01
[Presenter] Today is International Human Rights Day. In Russia, these rights are being violated primarily by the government. This was the opinion expressed by the Russian [human rights] ombudsman, Oleg Mironov, in an interview with Radio Ekho Moskvy.
[Mironov] Human rights are being violated by state officials, who, instead of trying to solve a person's problems, complicate the solving of these problems. Look at what's going on at customs checkpoints, at the border. Even border guards have started to take bribes, which was once unthinkable. Those in positions of power are violating citizens' rights.
People are of course most of all concerned with economic and social issues. When people barely survive from one wage payment to the next, when utility payments are being increased, these are violations of economic and social rights.
Of course, when the police beat somebody up, then that is a most serious violation. When a court doesn't consider a case for months and the person in question languishes in a detention centre's solitary confinement cell and has to take turns with others in the cell to sleep, then that is also an infringement of his human rights.
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