Pamfilova: unemployment and corruption in Northern Caucasus give birth to extremism

At her press conference on April 23 at the RIA "Novosti", Ella Pamfilova, chairperson of the board at the President of the Russian Federation on promotion of development of civil society institutes and human rights, said that unemployment and corruption in Northern Caucasus are the main causes generating extremism.

"We'll never defeat corruption in Northern Caucasus until huge funds return to Moscow as 'kick-backs'. This is the field of action for special agencies… This is the second base for extremism, especially among the youth," Ms Pamfilova has noted.

In her opinion, the third source feeding extremism is the work of law enforcement bodies. Having noted that any unsuccessful and rudely conducted operation "forms a potential base of extremism," she offered putting law enforcement bodies in Northern Caucasus under public control, "to get the local population interested in not afraid of, since innocent people should not suffer."

Ella Pamfilova also drew attention to poor operation of the courts, which, by her definition, "avoid resonant cases." She also criticized abolition of juries for consideration of terrorism and extremism, having noticed that "other options" were necessary. In her opinion, "poor work of the judiciary pushes power agents not to bring cases to courts by using various, not always legal, methods."

As a whole, Ms Pamfilova treated the situation in Northern Caucasus as rather gloomy, having noted that in some republics "they now say: we need someone like Kadyrov, although people know that there are problems with human rights, by they prefer to close their eyes."

She also reported that there was agreement with President of Russia to hold a meeting in second half of May with human rights organizations of Northern Caucasus under the aegis of her board. She said that Dmitri Medvedev is interested in holding dialogue with human rights activists, as they "reveal such important problems, which cannot be raised by anyone else," and often the information gathered by them does not get into broad reviews.

Another topic of the meeting will be demonstration of human rights activists' influence to local authorities. In this context Ella Pamfilova recollected her meeting with Ahmad Kadyrov, father of the present President of Chechnya, after which Russian human rights organizations started their official work in the republic.

Answering the question about selection criteria for participants of the meeting, Pamfilova emphasized that her board "cooperates and interacts with all real and acting organizations."

She also dealt with the problem of opposing Caucasian natives to other residents of Russia; the problem exists in mass consciousness. "I told Medvedev that this opposition should never exist. His arrival to Dagestan after the terror acts was highly important. The most essential thing that he said there was on impossibility to separate residents of the Caucasus from the rest of Russia. I hope that this message will contribute to change of existing stereotypes," she summed up.