On 26 June 2015 INGO «The Committee Against Torture» performed a series of street pickets dedicated to the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Actions took place in Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg and Yoshkar-Ola. In Moscow such an action was conducted together with the Amnesty International activists. In addition, the human rights defenders offered everyone to take part in a flashmob. In order to do that one had to make a selfie with a sign plate against torture and upload the photo in any social media.
In 1997, upon the recommendation of the Economic and Social Council, the UN General Assembly proclaimed June 26 International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. This day is observed with the purpose of attracting the public attention to ending torture and ensuring effective implementation of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984 which entered into force on June 26, 1987.
Lawyers of the Committee Against Torture office in the Republic of Mary El started their picket in support of torture victims earlier than their colleagues from the other regions. At 10 a.m. together with their partners from civil society group «The Man and the Law» once again reminded Yoshkar-Ola citizens about the oath that the law-enforcement officers pronounced, and about the necessity of its observance.
In Moscow a joint action of the Committee Against Torture and Amnesty International was conducted for the second year in a row. For two hours that the picket lasted non-indifferent passers-by were communicating with the picket’s participants and asked about the nature of the action, about the people subjected to torture, learned about the ways to support them. Activists told about the human rights organizations work in Russia, distributed leaflets among the passers-by with description of cases from the experience of the Moscow office of the Committee Against Torture, as well as other information materials.
The picket in Nizhny Novgorod gathered about forty participants: human rights defenders, applicants and their relatives, civil activists.
Torture victims also supported human rights activists in Orenburg by taking to the streets together with them.
The flashmob of the Committee Against was supported in Nizhny Novgorod, Yoshkar-Ola, Orenburg, Moscow, Dzerzhinsk, Yekaterinburg, Lipetsk, Grozny, Voronezh, Nazran’, Italy, France, the Republic of Belarus, England, the United States, the Czech Republic, Norway.
Author of documentary «286» lawyer of the Committee Against Torture Yevgeny Chilikov: «The documentary is called 286, it is a number of the article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation concerning abuse of office, the article the punishment under which, as a rule, the sadists in uniforms manage to escape from. Most of the times the torture cases have to be literally dragged to the court, overcoming an immense resistance of the state machine. Unfortunately, it is only a small fraction of thousands of similar cases, but it is only by attracting the public attention to the problem of illegal police violence that we may hope for getting rid of such practice. This is a distress that every person can be subjected to, from a common citizen to a police officer. As we know from experience, for torture there are no untouchables».