#4 - JRL 7250
Putin aide calls on rights organizations to "put pressure" on authorities
RIA Novosti

Moscow, 15 July: Human rights organizations should "put pressure on the authorities" demanding that legal and economic mechanisms of human rights protection be created, deputy head of the presidential administration Dmitriy Kozak said.

Kozak was speaking at an all-Russian meeting of heads of human rights commissions of constituent parts of the Russian Federation.

"It is important that the rights of every citizen be protected and it is even more important that lessons be learned from each violation of human rights in order to work out a mechanism for preventing large-scale violations," Kozak said.

He believes that the state "should exercise constant monitoring over how laws are being implemented in order to find loopholes and close them". "Human

rights and freedoms should be reliably protected by law," he said.

The deputy head of the presidential administration said "it is very dangerous when juries knowingly reach illegitimate verdicts". "This all is caused by corruption," he said.

Dmitriy Kozak believes that the issue of welfare and labour rights of people should be considered separately.

"They are very expensive, and the state often experiences money shortages while implementing these rights in full," he said. Kozak believes it is necessary to "declare realistic rights in the social sphere so that a citizen would not have the feeling that his expectations were not met".

The meeting, which will continue for two days, will be attended by the chairman of the Commission on Human Rights under the President, Ella Pamfilova, the Russian human rights commissioner, Oleg Mironov, representatives from the Prosecutor-General's Office, the Justice Ministry and a number of human rights organizations.