This week our guest on the Russian-language podcast is Yulia Fedotova, a lawyer with a PhD in law who lives in the city of Ekaterinburg.
The issues discussed in the podcast include: the Russian legal profession; legal specializations; the Russian judicial system; successful legal cases; major human rights problems in Russia today; the role of the European Court of Human Rights; the recent constitutional amendments; Russia and the Council of Europe; and the future of human rights in Russia.
This podcast is in Russian. You can listen to the podcast in full here:
You can also listen to the podcast on Podcasts.com, SoundCloud, Spotify and iTunes. The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.
Given the length of the podcast, we have also divided it into two parts that you can listen to separately.
Part 1: Career as a lawyer – Legal Cases – European Court of Human Rights – Health Care – Independence of Courts – Case of Evgeny Roizman – European Court of Human Rights – Successful Legal Cases:
Part 2: The Constitution – European Court of Human Rights – Human Rights Issues – Torture – Fair Trial – Freedom of Expression – Anti-Extremism Legislation – Human Rights Ombudsman – Human Rights and Politics – The Future of Human Rights:
Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “From childhood I was attracted to the criminal law, and I actually wanted to become a police investigator. But I couldn’t accept a compromise with my conscience, work from 9 am for as long as they wanted and obey orders. So after an internship I changed my plans: I became a lawyer. A human rights lawyer.” These are the words of our interviewee this week, Yulia Fedotova, a lawyer with a PhD in law who lives in the city of Ekaterinburg. In addition to her work in the capital of the Urals federal district, Yulia manages to work in Krasnodar region. In our conversation she interestingly compares the state of justice in these two regions, figuratively describing the law enforcement system of the sunny southern region as “like a big ball of snakes kissing.” Her words are confirmed by two incidents when courts in Krasnodar tried to frame Yulia herself as a member of an organization the Russian authorities have been coquettishly calling “undesirable.’ Yulia has filed fifty-three applications to the European Court of Human Rights (of which the Court deemed 17 inadmissible, but accepted the rest) and has won many cases in the domestic courts. Fedotova is sharp-tongued, saying that a lawyer in today’s Russia could be compared to someone diving to the depth of the Marianna Trench with a broken aqua-lung in bloody faeces. Simon Cosgrove and I listened with great interest to Yulia, and you can hear her stories, including how a nine-day sentence for Evgeny Roizman turned into one day, thanks to the efforts of our interviewee.
Simon Cosgrove adds: A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.
