One of the most famous words regarding the Obama presidency thus far is “reset”–the administration’s term for a fresh start with Russia’s governing tandem of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The strategy behind the “reset” has been coupled with–in a break from the Bush administration–a demotion of human rights as an issue of import underpinning American cooperation with authoritarian regimes. The first result of this policy saw the Obama administration legitimize Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after his re-election, which was widely considered to be fraudulent. The Iranian people did the opposite, and rose up in rebellious protest.
Something very similar may be happening in Russia.
In late 2009, in the Russian city of Magadan, a driver was stopped by police officers, detained, beaten, and released.
Though this has become an all-too-common occurrence, what was remarkable about this case was how it ended, and why. On Sept. 1, those officers were convicted of violently violating the rights of a citizen, stripped of their respective ranks, sentenced to three years in prison, and banned for two years from serving as public officials in the law enforcement system. A local Russian news agency triumphantly reported that justice had been served.
The reason they lost the case: a resident in Magadan caught the whole incident on his cell phone video camera. Desperately in need of reform, Russia’s police force may be getting it thanks to the ubiquitous presence of cell phones and the proliferation of DIY video sharing services like YouTube.
Just prior to the affair in Magadan, a Russian police major in the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk named Aleksei Dymovsky uploaded videos in which he complained of the endemic corruption in Russia’s police department and revealed that officers are encouraged (often ordered) to falsify evidence against the innocent in order to rack up arrests. The stunning implication was that Mother Russia was becoming a country where the prisons were filled with innocent people while criminals roamed the streets unmolested.
“I’m sick and tired of being told to solve crimes that don’t exist. I’m sick and tired of being told to put [innocent] people in jail. I’m sick and tired of made-to-order criminal cases. I’m sick and tired of all that,” Dymovsky said, as reported by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Though Dymovksy was fired and then arrested for–in a display of the Russian authorities’ sense of humor–fraud and abuse of power, Medvedev ordered reform of the Interior Ministry.
Dymovsky’s case may have illustrated the brazen depth of Russia’s lawless law enforcement, but his was not an isolated incident. On Sept. 3 Tatyana Domracheva, a police major in Sverdlovsk, was fired after posting her own whistle blowing video on YouTube. The regime had become so corrupt it was losing its grip on its domestic enforcers.
And on Sept. 12, there seemed to be another breakthrough, as Russian state media RIA Novosti reported that Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the state Duma (lower house of parliament) announced that a deal on reform had been reached.
That would be the second such reform in a year–a sure sign of the progress the people have made against their oppressive government. This progress has occurred, however, without the help or even encouragement of the Obama administration, which has continued to pursue an alignment with tyrannical leaders, not their subjugated citizens.
Time will tell if the reform is effective, or even takes hold. But with video phones and new media now reaching even the distant corners of Russia, a modern irony has concretized. Where once the authorities were always watching the citizens, it is the Russian security establishment that now must look over its shoulder.
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