RUSSIA - The OmbudsCop: Controversial Ex-General Appointed to Defend Russia's Human Rights

Until a week ago, Russia's battered human rights community would have been hard-pressed to describe Tatyana Moskalkova as one of their own. Now, they are coming to terms with the reality that the 60-year-old former police general — with backcombed, peroxide hair and bright-pink acrylic nails — is their official spokesperson.

By the time Moskalkova was confirmed human rights ombudswoman by parliament on April 22, the monikers "OmbudsCop" and "ombudsman in epaulets" had already caught on. But, for many critics, it's her controversial career as a lawmaker that is more worrying.

In 2012, Moskalkova proposed criminalizing "affronts to morality" following the stunt of punk group Pussy Riot in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral. And last year, she submitted a proposal to return the Interior Ministry's former name to Cheka, the security apparatus infamous for mass summary executions during the Russian Civil War and the Red Terror. There was more to it than just a name: Moskalkova wanted the agency to have the required power to "establish order, preserve the country and bring calm and security."

For Sergei Kovalyov, a famous Soviet dissident who was Russia's first human rights ombudsman in 1993, the appointment of a representative of the siloviki — the security and military strongmen not known for pussyfooting around individual rights — is a story come full circle since President Vladimir Putin came to power.

"We now live in a country where an ex-KGB colonel is president and a former major general is our human rights defender," Kovalyov told The Moscow Times. "This is not a crisis, it's a catastrophe."

Read the complete article clicking HERE

INC News, 29/04/2016 - source: ©MoscowTime