steering/organizing committee formation

Sun May 23 14:41:58 PDT 2004

Greetings listers!
I am really excited about the prospects of one OS that I have been dreaming about coming together: An OS on Police Brutality in Moscow.

The situation in brief: Moscow belief are often under-educated non-Muscovites (the idea here is no self-respecting Muscovite would ever become a policeman). Technically, Russia doesn't have police officers, but militisia (from the word military). So, in a certain sense it's a militarized state structure. The militsia are terribly underpaid, woefully trained, and are under tremendous pressure to solve x% of cases, i.e. they work on a quota system. Because of all this pressure, it is common practice to beat confessions out of people (often not the perpetrator, but someone in the wrong place at the wrong tiem) and use torture. Also, since the militsia need to eat, they use document checks as a way of putting food on the table (a more nonviolent form of shaking down the populace for chump change). Technically, all Russians when they go from one place to another within Russia need to register their stay with the authorities within 10 days (for foreigners it's 3 days). While only precinct police are the only police with the authority to check documents for registration and fine you, *all types of* police (especially those in the metro)  do this stopping and checking documents. I have been stopped numerous times and knowing the law (they need to present their id first and give a reasonable cause for checking my papers) I have been hauled in to the police. Only my being American has saved me from a cruel fate. Many people don't know their rights and give the equivalent of 2-4 USD when stopped, so that the police leave them alone.

And the police abuse doesn't stop there, a recent practice is to stop young women late at night in the metro under  the pretense (of an illegal) document check, detain them in the jail at the metro station (each metro station has a jail) until after the metro, and then give them a choice- be gangraped at the police station or at a policeman's apartment...

Fortunately, there are people here who are doing something about this at great risk, but as of yet I don't there there has been an OS-like forum on this topic. And until a few months ago, there wasn't one single organization that dealt with this issue (police brutality/illegal activity) wholly. People in Moscow were shocked and galvanized (more than when they hear about recent -- in the past year, that is-- terrorist actions in Moscow itself) when they learned of German Galdetsky. German is a 19 year old college student who, after learning about the militsia's gang rape practices, was so outraged he began on his own to investigate these incidences, confront the police on these things (stand by police stations when he say girls being taking in to the police station and threaten to call Internal Affairs; yes there is a Department of Internal Affairs that actually does the job of disciplining wayward police here; and apparently they do this honestly; of course they, too, are overwhelmed with work). German was shot in the head with rubber bullets in late March and was in a coma for over a month. He's still in hospital. But this event led folks to create NGO's dealing with this one issue. Finally.

There a few folks in the virtual nelegal.ru web community (see http://nelegal.ru/english.html for extensive discussion of all of this), including the author of a book in Russian: "Checking Documents and your registration in public places: 14 answers to questions about the DUTIES and rights of the militisia and about the RIGHTS and responsibilities of citizenss and also recommendations about how to carry yourself when the police check your papers and how to write letters of complaint about illegal militsia actions" who are interested in such an OS.

I am very excited about leading this OS, as this will likely be an OS I'll be leading with a significant number of participants, over a 100 I imagine.
The time frame for preparing for this OS is tight though, one of the people who will be taking on the organizing of the OS feels that it should happen no later than mid-June, before people take off for summer holidays. 

I think it is important to convene an organizing committee/steering committee that best represents the system, so we get the right theme, desired outcomes (the author of the book says just the publicity of such an event and a dialog would be a good enough outcome for him). But some of the key people for such a steering committee are likely too busy and hard to "lasso" on such short notice as they are prominent human rights activists. And I gather that just by bringing together a steering committee that doesn't represent one slice of human rights organizations (who nevertheless would be invited), I/we are bound to ruffle some feathers. There is, sadly, (like in many other parts of this wonderful planet) a lot of in-fighting, ego-flexing, and the like in the human rights community...

What can I do to make sure that the prework for the OS best reflects the whole system? We intend to invite not just human rights activists, we hope to have (and I expect we will have) police there, for example...

What other things do you think it would make sense to think of?
How are givens established for this kind of event, for a community issue? Any ideas? 

It would be nice if life were cut and dry, people come to you and say, "Hey, would you conduct an OS for us?" I recognize here that I am being both consultant, probably organizer, fundraiser (hoping to write a grant to raise the money so that the we can lead the event). Even if we don't find the money, this OS will happen!

Enjoying sharing this with the list!
Raffi

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