Dagestani rights defender excluded from POC for his active work

Only two out of nine members of the Public Oversight Commission (POC) of Dagestan are included into its new membership. Shamil Khadulaev is sure that he was not invited there for his active human rights activities.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in Dagestan and in several other regions of Southern Russia – Adygea, Dagestan, Chechnya, Krasnodar Territory and Rostov Region – new POCs have been formed. The process continued the trend of "washing out" human rights defenders from POCs, Andrei Babushkin, head of the Human Rights Council's commission for helping POCs and reforming the Penitentiary System, believes.

Another member of the old POC of Dagestan, Magomed Gadjiev, is now under investigation for a suspected fraud.

Amid the attack on the civil society, the POC compositions began changing for the worse, said Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the "Civil Assistance Committee".

In his turn, Shamil Magomedov, a lawyer, believes that POCs have no authority to influence the situation with detainees' and prisoners' rights.

However, Shamil Khadulaev, a member of the old POC, pointed to positive results of the commission's work. Thus, after the intervention of POC members, the charge of a resident of the Babayurt District was re-qualified into a less serious one.