Get off of your butts people,

[Guest guest]

> Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:32:47 EDT

 

 

> Sat, 14 Aug 2004 18:35:27 -0700 (PDT)

> Get off of your butts people, or

> this could be coming next...

>

>

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/08/11/007.html

>

>

> Police Are at War With the Russian People

> By Yulia Latynina

>

> In the Moscow metro, a policeman walked up to a

> Tajik man who had no ticket and asked if he was

> looking to get himself shot. Before the man could

> answer, the policeman shot him in the mouth. The

> bullet passed through the man's throat and lodged in

> his back. Miraculously, Ruslan Baibekov survived.

>

> How many people must you have beaten and killed

> before you forget that you're not supposed to kill

> anyone in a public place, only back at the station

> where there aren't any outside witnesses?

>

> In Nizhny Novgorod, Alexei Mikheyev gave a ride to a

> young woman he knew. When she didn't come home that

> evening, Mikheyev was arrested. He was tortured in

> the usual way -- the way Indians tortured white

> settlers and Chechen fighters torture Russian

> contract soldiers. Among other things the cops

> attached electric wires to Mikheyev's earlobes, a

> technique they like to call zvonok Putinu, or " a

> phone call to Putin. " Mikheyev confessed to rape and

> murder. At this point the cops went for a cup of

> tea. Half-dead, Mikheyev threw himself out of a

> third-story window, breaking his spine and leaving

> him permanently disabled. Four days later the girl

> showed up at home, alive and well.

>

> Mikheyev has taken his case to the European Court of

> Human Rights in Strasbourg.

>

> In the town of Serov a young man named Smolyaninov

> was strolling with his girlfriend when the cops

> hauled him in. It seems that a robbery had just

> occurred nearby. Smolyaninov was beaten to death.

> The cops recorded the whole gory scene:

> Smolyaninov's clothes were soaked in blood, his head

> beaten to a pulp and his buttocks ripped apart. In

> their report, they wrote that the corpse bore no

> signs of " injury inconsistent with life, " and that

> Smolyaninov had died from an overdose. To

> substantiate this, they injected his lifeless body

> with narcotics.

>

> And that would have been the end of that if the cops

> hadn't started bragging and showing the video to

> their buddies.

>

> These cases are exceptions, of course -- in the

> sense that the cops got caught. How many men like

> Mikheyev have admitted to crimes under torture but

> the girl never did come home? How many people like

> Smolyaninov were beaten to death, but the cops kept

> the video to themselves?

>

> While these crimes are horrifying, society's total

> indifference to the war that the police are waging

> against their own people is even more disturbing.

>

> In the West, any one of these crimes would have been

> front-page news for months. The trial of Mikheyev's

> torturers or Smolyaninov's murderers would have

> relegated even the news about Iraq's Abu Ghraib

> prison to the inside pages. In Russia, however,

> these stories aren't news, just the way of the

> world. Every Russian knows that the cops have the

> right to torture and kill, just as the Japanese

> samurai had the right to test the sharpness of their

> new swords on passing peasants. And it never

> occurred to the peasants to protest.

>

> In the West, people don't flinch when they see a

> policeman. We flinch. We relate to the cops not as

> citizens to the defenders of law and order, but as

> inmates to prison guards. We just hope they'll leave

> us alone. The cops have killed and maimed more

> people in Russia than the Chechen fighters.

>

> Russia is a feudal state, like 13th-century Japan.

> There's no point in getting upset when the police

> refuse to investigate your complaint, when they beat

> you or arrest you for no reason. That's not their

> function. Like the samurai, the cops aren't

> defenders of law and order; they are given the right

> to commit acts of violence in exchange for

> preserving the regime that gives them this right.

>

> They're just not supposed to kill people in public.

> The cop who shot Baibekov in the mouth forgot this

> simple rule, and he got caught. The cops who

> tortured Mikheyev were smarter, and they're still on

> the streets. They've even installed bars on the

> precinct house windows so they can call Putin

> without interference.

>

>

>

> Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho

> Moskvy radio.

>

>

>

>

" I am only one, but I am one.

I cannot do everything, but I can do something.

And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse

to do the something that I can do.

What I can do, I should do.

And what I should do, by the grace ofGod, I will do. "

- Edward Everett Hale

>