25 November 2015

Source: HRO.org (info)

• The Courts

The career of the chair of the Constitutional Court, Valery Zorkin, has followed a very interesting path since the well-known events of 1993. He has now transformed into an ultra-conservative. For example, he has recently proposed that measures to ensure security and increase the severity of the national justice system be reviewed in the light of the need for … ‘military strictness".

Zaks.ru, citing Kommersant, has reported on a shocking speech by Valery Zorkin at a recent legal forum in Moscow. Valery Zorkin stated that the choice between freedom and security is meaningless, and that one of the main human freedoms, for the sake of which the state can restrict other freedoms, is that of security.

In Zorkin’s opinion, Western democracies are the source of terrorism, since ‘right-believing Muslims cannot fully integrate into a society which they hold to be deeply immoral,’ and ‘Islamic ghettos’ become oases for the propaganda of radical preachers and for recruitment to terrorist groups.

‘The “political bosses of the media” selectively inform and disinform the masses, “deciding” who is to be considered right and who guilty, who are considered aggressors and who the victims,’ Valery Zorkin is quoted as saying. The chair of the Constitutional Court also sees dangers in the press releases of a number of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Freedom House, and in several judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. In his view, all these take the line that freedom of expression is permissible ‘even when it discredits and insults other people’.

Experts asked by Zaks.ru say that by his statements Valery Zorkin is letting it be known that the Constitutional Court will not oppose moves to increase the powers of the law enforcement agencies.

Human rights defenders see in the statements made by the head of the Constitutional Court a call to impose restrictions on human rights.