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TITLE:  RUSSIA HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1995



Section 2.d. regarding Mirzayanov's desire to travel abroad.)

The case concerning Semyon Livshits demonstrates continuing
problems.  Livshits, a naval officer, was arrested on April 23,
1990, after applying for an exit visa for Israel.  Initially,
he was accused of conspiring with Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence service, to turn the submarine on which he was
serving over to the Israeli Government.  These charges were
later dropped.  He was also accused of group rape and robbery,
for which he was tried, convicted, and given a 10-year sentence
by a Vladivostok military court.  In October 1992, the Supreme
Court struck the sentence, finding insufficient evidence and
violations of judicial procedure.  From March 1993 to April
1994, Livshits was retried by a Vladivostok court, which again
found him guilty and resentenced him to 10 years in prison.
Livshits plans to reappeal his case to the Military Collegium
of the Supreme Court.  By year's end, defense attorneys had
presented all required documents for the appeal to the court in
Vladivostok, which in turn was preparing the final documents to
be sent to Moscow.

The Constitution provides for a Constitutional Court, and
Parliament adopted a law establishing one.  But by year's end,
the Federation Council failed to confirm all the President's
nominees, leaving one vacancy on a consequently inoperative
Court.

There were no known political prisoners.  In exercise of its
constitutional prerogative, the State Duma declared an amnesty
for all those detained by law enforcement authorities in the
aftermath of the October 1993 crisis, including Ruslan
Khasbulatov, Chairman of the former Supreme Soviet, and
Alexander Rutskoy, former Vice President.

     f.  Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or
         Correspondence

Article 25 of the Constitution states that the right to privacy
in the home may be violated only on the basis of a court
decision or in accordance with federal laws.  In practice, law
enforcement organs and internal security forces fail to do this
and continue to observe the Soviet-era requirement of informing
the prosecutor's office of intent to enter private premises.

Article 23 of the Constitution provides for privacy of
correspondence and electronic communications, except in cases
in which a judge issues a warrant.  Many Russians believe
electronic monitoring of residences and telephone conversations
continues, even if at reduced levels in comparison to the
Soviet era.

Refugee organizations claim that law enforcement officials
routinely use informer networks to track the whereabouts of
persons from the Caucasus, whether resident in Russia legally
or illegally.  General societal discrimination against people
from the Caucasus area and reports of harassment against these
people by law enforcement officials lend credence to such
assertions.

     g.  Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian
         Law in Internal Conflicts

The Russian Federation's Republic of Chechnya in the northern
Caucasus declared itself independent from the Russian
Federation in 1991.  In the summer, the Russian Government
intensified its charges against the government of secessionist
President Dzhokar Dudayev, accusing it of repressing political
dissent, of corruption, and of involvement in international
criminal activities.  Meanwhile, several armed opposition
groups financially and militarily supported by Russian
government entities sought to overthrow President Dudayev.  In
August they bombed a telephone station and the Moscow-Baku
railroad line.  The Dudayev government blamed the acts on the
political opposition and introduced a state of emergency,
followed in September by martial law.  Restrictions included a
curfew, limits on exit and entry procedures, and restrictions
on travel by road in some areas.  The opposition launched a
major offensive on November 26 with the covert support of
"volunteers" from several elite regular Russian army units.
The operation failed to unseat Dudayev.

By December, Russian military forces were actively working to
overthrow the Dudayev regime.  Russian military aircraft bombed
both military and civilian targets in Groznyy, the capital of
the republic.  Russian military officials initially denied any
official involvement in the conflict.  Regular army and MVD
troops crossed the border into Chechnya on December 10 to
surround Groznyy.  Air strikes continued through the month of
December and into January, causing extensive damage and heavy
civilian casualties.  Beyond the large number of civilians
injured and killed, most residential and public buildings in
Groznyy, including hospitals and an orphanage, were destroyed.
These actions were denounced as major human rights violations
by Sergey Kovalev, President Yeltsin's Human Rights
Commissioner, and by human rights NGO's.  The United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jose Ayala Lasso,
reiterated his profound preoccupation at the reports of
violations of human rights and humanitarian law in Chechnya,
characterized by a large number of civilian victims.  The
Russian Government announced on December 28 that Russian ground
forces had begun an operation to "liberate" Groznyy one
district at a time and disarm the "illegal armed groupings."
Dudayev supporters vowed to continue resisting and to switch to
guerrilla warfare.  (See Section 2.a. for a description of the
harassment of journalists reporting on the conflict in
Chechnya.)

Section 2  Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

     a.  Freedom of Speech and Press

During 1994 freedom of speech and press was generally
respected.  The print media, most of which are independent of
the Russian Federation Government and many of which are
privately owned, functioned largely unhindered and represented
a wide range of opinions.

The Russian Government has placed intermittent restrictions on
Russian and foreign press covering the war in Chechnya,
claiming the need to protect military secrets and to ensure
journalists' safety.  Duma deputy and Human Rights Ombudsman
Kovalev, who was in Groznyy for most of the war, reported that
the Russian Government has "continually hindered the activity
of correspondents in the war zone... and force has been used to
interfere with reporters (including) instances of mistreatment,
death threats, and confiscation of material."  He also alluded
to government pressure on the Moscow press, including threats
to dismiss state television chief Oleg Poptsov for airing news
broadcasts critical of the Chechnya operation.

The press law requires that mass media publications be licensed
by the State Committee for the Press.  Its former chairman,
Boris Mironov, who favored tight regulation of the media, was
dismissed by the President in September for allegedly asserting
he was a Fascist.  His successor, Sergey Gryzunov, announced in
December the closure of the newspaper Al-Kods (an anti-Zionist
Palestinian publication generally critical of Palestine
Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat) because of
noncompliance with a provision of the press law barring
non-Russian citizens from founding newspapers.  Gryzunov also
stated he would issue official warnings and begin legal
proceedings against about 100 newspapers he considered to be
Fascist or inciteful of ethnic and racial enmity.

Regional political authorities resorted to various devices to
close down critical newspapers.  The Glasnost Defense Fund,
which monitors press freedom throughout the former Soviet
Union, recorded dozens of such incidents.  Perhaps the best
known case occurred in early 1994 when Governor Nazdratenko of
Primorskiy Kray (Vladivostok) fired the mayor of Vladivostok
and closed down two newspapers which had criticized the
governor's actions.  A radio reporter was also fired and then
beaten by unknown attackers in September after criticizing the
administration.

Regional political authorities also cited unpaid printing bills
or other debts as a pretext for closing newspapers that were
too critical.  Many media organizations are liable to pressure
by such authorities because they occupy city-owned premises or
receive subsidies.  In towns dominated by a single industrial
enterprise, the leaders of that enterprise have sufficient
power to suppress investigative reporting and discussion of
embarrassing topics, such as environmental pollution or
privatization schemes benefiting management.

Organized crime is increasingly able to exert pressure on the
media either because of the dire financial straits in which
most newspapers find themselves or because of the corruptibility
of underpaid journalists willing to write articles favorable to
particular companies, products, or individuals.  In addition,
opponents of the Government and journalists have alleged
involvement by military officials in the murder of an
investigative reporter.  On October 13, one of Moskovskiy
Komsomolets' journalists, Dmitriy Kholodov, was notified by
telephone by one of his contacts that a package of very
important documents on illegal arms sales by the Russian army
was waiting to be picked up at the Kazanskiy train station.  He
retrieved the package and, when he opened it in the newspaper
building, it exploded, killing him.  Known for investigative
pieces on corruption in the military and intelligence agencies,
he was scheduled to testify in the State Duma on alleged
corruption in the Western Group of Forces, formerly stationed
in East Germany.  Since Kholodov's death, some journalists
covering corruption in the military claim to have received
anonymous threatening telephone calls.

In September a well-known television journalist and two
executives of St. Petersburg's Channel 5 television network
were beaten and robbed in a 1-week period.  The attacks are
widely considered to have had political motives, although the
attackers remain unknown.

Broadcasters have a weaker legal basis for freedom in broadcast
programming and are potentially subject to much greater
government control due to the Government's monopoly of
transmission facilities and the expense involved in
establishing and maintaining independent stations.  However,
stations such as NTV, a privately financed Moscow television
station, TV6, and other smaller private stations are beginning
to provide competition to state broadcasting in Moscow and
other large urban centers.

Television studios at the regional level, formerly part of the
central broadcasting system during the Soviet era, now operate
more or less independently.  They function as affiliates,
opting to use programs from state-owned sources and producing
local news programming independently.  Local authorities
sometimes subject these affiliates to pressure.  All
broadcasters and cable networks, both public and private, use
foreign broadcast material.

In connection with the Russian military action in Chechnya in
December, both Russian and foreign journalists reported
efforts, including harassment and threats of force, by Russian
officials and military personnel to prevent journalists from
entering certain areas or to influence their reporting.
Although formal censorship procedures were not established, nor
was access to areas of conflict categorically forbidden, the
Russian Government did not repudiate such efforts by individual
elements within the military and the Interior Ministry to
control or suppress media coverage of events in Chechnya.

The breadth of academic freedom in Russia continues to expand.
Virtually all institutions of higher learning, from universities
to research institutes, enjoy increased autonomy.  While many
university rectors and department heads are still appointed by
the Ministry of Education, a growing number of senior university
administrators are now selected by secret ballot in free and
open elections.  Curriculums and textbooks are continuously
being revised and updated, and many institutions have developed
relations with Western counterparts.  The entrenched academic
nomenklatura (privileged bureaucracy) nonetheless continues to
exert influence through its control of some resources and
privileges.

     b.  Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

The Constitution provides for freedom of assembly and
association, and the Government generally respects these
freedoms.

Organizers of demonstrations must apply for permission to local
authorities between 15 and 10 days in advance, and officials
must respond at least 5 days before the scheduled event.
Participants in unauthorized demonstrations are subject to
civil and criminal penalties, including fines, 15-day jail
sentences, and stiffer punishment.  In December Moscow police
briefly detained members of the human rights organization
Memorial for holding an unauthorized protest in front of the
Presidential Administration building against the bloodshed in
Chechnya.  The authorities routinely issued permits for
demonstrations throughout Russia in October to mark the first
anniversary of the violent confrontation between forces loyal
to President Yeltsin and members of the former Supreme Soviet
(legislature).  In 1994 there were many public demonstrations,
few of which were marred by violence.

All public associations must register their bylaws and the
names of their officers with the Ministry of Justice.
Political parties must also present 5,000 signatures and pay a
fee to register.  There are now over 300 social and political
organizations, and the authorities are not known to have
refused arbitrarily to register any organization.

     c.  Freedom of Religion

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the
Government respects this freedom.

The Russian Orthodox Church continues to gain influence
throughout society, including within the Government.  The head
of the Church, Patriarch Aleksiy II, has asserted the Church's
belief in complete religious freedom but has been reluctant to
condemn openly anti-Semitic pronouncements by Metropolitan
Ioann of St. Petersburg.

Bureaucratic obstacles to complete religious freedom still
exist because the 1990 Soviet law on religion requires
religious groups of 10 or more persons to register with local
authorities.  Some groups view the requirement itself as
contradicting their beliefs and refuse to register.  Failure to
register precludes organizations from the right to establish
schools, own property, or engage in social work.  The
registration process is open to bureaucratic obstructionism,
such as lost or delayed applications or denial of adequate
facilities.  In Vladivostok, city authorities tried to block
the registration of a Roman Catholic parish, reportedly after
pressure from local Orthodox clergy.

In Krasnodar, after the son of a Pentecostal minister was
murdered, the local authorities claimed a church member killed
him and shut the church down.  There were credible reports that
Russian Orthodox believers prevented Pentecostals and other
evangelical groups from meeting.  (See Section 5 for a
discussion of religious discrimination.)

     d.  Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign
         Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation

Citizens are generally free to travel within Russia.  All
adults are issued internal passports which they must carry
while traveling and use to register with local authorities
visits of more than 3 days.  Travelers not staying in hotels
usually ignore this requirement.

The right to choose one's place of residence freely, although
provided in Article 27 of the Constitution, is still restricted
in practice.  Under the "propiska" system, all citizens must
obtain a residence permit.  A law passed in July 1993 attempted
to change the character of the system from one in which the
authorities grant permission for a citizen to reside in a given
location to one in which the citizen simply registers to inform
the authorities of his place of residence.  The law came into
force on October 1, 1993, but has not been implemented.  The
authorities of larger cities enforce the existing propiska
system selectively, often targeting those who are not Russian,
primarily persons from the Caucasus and Central Asia.  In a few
cases, individuals have appealed propiska refusals in court and
won, but such instances are rare.  Human rights monitors cite
these cases as the absurd lengths to which citizens must go to
enforce observance of basic constitutional rights.

Some officials have called for abolition of the propiska system,
stating that it is unconstitutional.  However, officials in
major cities, especially Moscow, staunchly defend the system,
predicting widespread crime and homelessness if it were abolished.  Citing this as justification, Moscow city
authorities on July 1 imposed a system under which nonresidents
must pay a daily fee to visit the capital.  Furthermore,
Russian citizens from within the Russian Federation who wish to
change their residence to Moscow must pay a fee equal to 500
times the monthly minimum wage to purchase a permit, while
persons from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent
States must pay 1,000 times the monthly minimum wage and those
from all other countries must pay 1,500 times the monthly
minimum wage.  The authorities also enforce this system
selectively, especially harassing persons from the Caucasus and
Central Asia.

Russian citizens also have the constitutional right to
emigrate.  Under the May 1991 Soviet law on emigration and
foreign travel, which officially came into force on January 1,
1993, exit permits and formal invitations from abroad are no
longer required of travelers who are not emigrating.  Emigrants
need only show an invitation from any relative abroad or
permission to enter the country to which they are immigrating.
The law, however, continues to restrict the emigration of
persons with access to state secrets.  Special travel
regulations apply to some Russian scientists wishing to travel
abroad temporarily.

An interagency government commission reviews individual
passport applications denied on secrecy grounds.  Persons have
the right to present their case and to call expert witnesses to
challenge the continued secrecy of the information in
question.  Since the commission began reviewing cases in June
1993, the overwhelming majority of passport denials on grounds
of secrecy have been overturned.  The most famous case of a
refusal of a passport for foreign travel, that of Vil
Mirzayanov, a Russian scientist incarcerated several times for
revealing to a U.S. journalist that Russia continued to violate
international agreements on chemical weapons production, was
overturned by the commission on August 31.

The 1991 law also retains the requirement that those intending
to emigrate obtain permission from close relatives in Russia to
leave the country.  If unable to obtain this permission, the
intending emigrant may pursue a resolution of the problem in
the courts.  In 1994 Russian courts for the first time began to
accept such cases for review.  At least two such cases were
resolved in favor of the intending emigrant.

Before the events of December in Chechnya, estimates of the
number of refugees and forced migrants in Russia differed
widely, with some stating a total of 3.5 million.  Forced
migrants or resettlers are generally persons with Russian
citizenship who lived permanently in other states of the former
Soviet Union and fled due to economic hardship or
discriminatory laws.  There are three categories of refugees in
Russia:  (1) ethnic Russians fleeing conflict areas, such as
Tajikistan, who are considered refugees by the Russian
Government and in some cases under the internationally accepted
definition of refugee; (2) nonethnic Russians, such as
Armenians and Azerbaijanis of mixed marriages, who would face
persecution in either Armenia or Azerbaijan and who might be
eligible for refugee status; (3) third-country refugees, mainly
Somalis, Afghans, Iraqis, and Kurds, who could not safely
return home.  The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimates
there to be about 50,000 people in this third category.

Many forced migrants resettled to rural areas complain that
housing is inadequate, job opportunities are scarce, and they
are unprepared to work in agriculture.  Many areas have refused
to accept refugees resettled by the Federal Migration Service
(FMS).  Human rights monitors allege that the FMS also places
unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles in the way of processing
applications of persons from the states of the former Soviet
Union and sometimes expels newly arrived refugees, who may have
valid claims to refugee status, across Russia's southern
borders.

Section 3  Respect for Political Rights:  The Right of Citizens
           to Change Their Government

Pursuant to the Constitution, the Russian people have the right
to change their government at both the federation and regional
levels, although this right under the provisions of the 1993
Constitution has not yet been tested in practice.  In December
1993, concurrent with voting on the constitutional referendum,
voters elected representatives to the Federal Assembly in
national parliamentary elections.  This body consists of a
450-seat lower house, the State Duma, and an upper house, or
Federation Council, comprising two representatives from each of
the federation's 89 constituent regions.  (The breakaway
Republic of Chechnya refused to participate in the elections.)
The next parliamentary and presidential elections at the
federation level are scheduled to take place in late 1995 and
1996, respectively, although many prominent politicians have
called for their postponement.

President Yeltsin was democratically elected to an exceptional
5-year term in 1991.  After he prorogued the Supreme Soviet in
October 1993, he emerged in a stronger position politically
vis-a-vis the legislature.  In order to avoid legislative
delays in the Federal Assembly and to overcome political
opposition in Parliament to bills proposed by the Government,
the President makes heavy use of his constitutional power to
issue decrees.  Although presidential decrees may not
contradict the Constitution or the Federal Assembly's statutes,
the constitutionality of many decrees is openly questioned in
the Government and the press.  With the Constitutional Court
not yet in operation, there is no entity which may definitively
determine the constitutionality (and hence the validity) of
either presidential decrees or legislation of the Federal
Assembly.

In contrast to national political institutions, most executive
branch leaders at the regional level have yet to be elected by
voters.  For example, almost all sitting regional governors
were appointed by the President and have not yet stood for
popular election, although, by contrast, almost all heads of
ethnically based republics within the Russian Federation have
been properly elected.  Most regional legislatures, disbanded
by presidential decree in 1993, had been reactivated by year's
end.

The Constitution provides for equal rights and freedoms for men
and women, but women do not occupy many leading positions in
politics and government.  However, the Women of Russia bloc
received around 8 percent of the seats in the State Duma
through proportional balloting.  Women hold 8 of the 170 seats
in the Federation Council and 59 of 450 seats in the State
Duma.  Although members of Russia's ethnic and religious
minorities face no legal limitations on political
participation, some ethnic and religious minorities face
societal discrimination that makes it difficult for their
members to be elected.  Most major ethnic and religious groups,
however, do have some representation in Parliament.

Section 4  Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
           Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations
           of Human Rights

Numerous local human rights groups were active during the year,
including the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial, the Center for
Human Rights Research, and the Union of Councils.  They
investigated and publicly commented on human rights issues,
generally without government interference or restriction.
There was one reported incident in which a human rights group
was denied access to several prisons for the purpose of
conducting inspections, although other groups gained access and
reported extensively on prison conditions.

It is perhaps too early to assess the impact of events in
Chechnya on the effectiveness of human rights organizations in
Russia.  On one hand, several organizations (for example, the
Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, Memorial, Glasnost Defense
Fund) have gotten considerable exposure and recognition both at
home and abroad for their stand against the incursion.  On the
other hand, one official government response to reports of
human rights abuses in the theater of conflict criticized
"biased" political figures and human rights organizations who
fail to see that the situation in Chechnya "has made human
tragedies and losses actually inevitable."

President Yeltsin late in 1993 established a special Commission
on Human Rights headed by Sergey Kovalev, a former dissident
and political prisoner widely respected in human rights
circles.  By the end of June 1994, the Commission had drafted
an unprecedented, highly critical report on human rights
practices in Russia in 1993 which was leaked to the press and
then published in full by an official government newspaper.

While openly critical of his style and many of his policies,
human rights monitors gave the President high marks for
creating Kovalev's Commission.  However, the Government's
dialog with human rights organizations broke down as a result
of the Russian military operation in the Chechen republic.
Activists, including Commissioner Kovalev, charged the
Government with indiscriminate use of force, disseminating
disinformation, and attempting to muzzle critical reporting in
the mass media.