Putin calls on human rights activists to be civil while evaluating law enforcement system
MOSCOW. Dec 17 (Interfax) -At a meeting of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged human rights campaigners to be civil while evaluating the Russian judicial and law enforcement systems and noted that their employees are part of the Russian society.
The full text of the transcript of the meeting held on December 11 was posted on the Kremlin website on Monday.
The judicial and law enforcement systems were discussed during the meeting, a participant in it said that the Russian investigation and justice "have completely sadist overtones." The instance when the judge ruled to place the 77-year-old man to a pre-trial detention facility for 25 days was used an example of such "propensity for sadism."
"As for our investigation and much less our justice having propensity for sadism. I believe that's an allegory, artistic hyperbole. Otherwise, what judicial system do we have? You've just said that, the judicial system. The system includes the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court to some extent, what does it mean, do only sadists work there? Let us be more civil while expressing ourselves," Putin said.
Employees of courts and law enforcement agencies are also Russian citizens, he said.
"They live in the environment, where we all live, they were brought up in the same families, where we were brought up. They are part of our society. Probably there are different people in all mass organizations, as anywhere, and different people also work there," Putin said.
The number of convicts among former employees of law enforcement agencies has significantly increased recently, he said. "It means that the purging of the ranks doesn't stand still, it's intensifying and in general yields certain results. But in order to minimize all that, we need serious, multifaceted, multidimensional work rather than repressive actions against the judicial or law enforcement system," the president said.