Page 37 - Empowerment and Protection - Stories of Human Security

misha is a 28-year-old male in Simferopol, Crimea, who describes himself as an nGo activist and private entrepreneur.
You feel insecurity when going to all kinds of authorities, even the passport ofice. Insecurity
in terms of your rights to receive consultation or services. I feel insecure in terms of the knowledge of laws and the ability of inluencing the state authorities. You need to be prepared to make inquiries, to call, to read the law.
When you approach [an oficial] and say that you have read the law, they immediately start working and their attitude changes. I had a case recently with the tax inspection – I read all, learned and spoke the terms that they know, and they already started calling me back, it was a different story then. and when you say, ‘I don’t know’, there are immediately a lot of unnecessary steps you have to take – they tell you go buy something, come back tomorrow. Whenever I say that the law requires that you should do this within two days, they do it. most civil servants do not know the laws themselves, therefore, they are affected by fear, and they think you know the truth.
”Most civil servants do not know the laws themselves, therefore, they are affected by fear, and they think you know the truth.”
Awareness of legal rights and obligations was
a frequently cited coping strategy. Mykhailo explained that, “With police, you need to be calm and explain the situation. If they ask you to come along, tell them you are going to let your friends know, cite all the laws you know and don’t know, talk about what rights you have. They don’t know these [laws] anyway. They will see that you are not a simple one and that it is not going to be easy with you.”
Sources of empowerment
Media, public transparency and collective action appeared to be important sources of empowerment. Several respondents indicated that by taking things to the public, media may help make ineficient government agencies or particular oficials do their jobs. While money or political inluence may easily help hush a criminal case or make courts produce essentially unjust rulings, public opinion mobilised through media could still exert signiicant inluence. The events of the Euromaidan demonstrated to many how public knowledge on issues of common concern, including human security, could beneit the greater community interest. The most powerful wave of protests was triggered by anti-protest laws promulgated by the government in January 2014 that attempted to limit civil liberties and enshrine greater information asymmetry.7 Mounting violence against protestors was restrained when media and citizen journalists exposed illegal practices of the riot police and paid provocateurs to the public.
In the absence of state authorities to check
oficial power, the public sphere was seen as a
last recourse. As Dima pointed out, “You need to [be able to appeal] to some authorities [to have security]. Police will have to punish police, or some other organisation. You see, every now and then the police are raping and killing, and then what? Nothing [happens] to them. Only if it is made public, then they may do something about it.”
Another way of claiming citizens’ rights was collective action. For instance, rampant corruption among trafic police has prompted a growing number of drivers to organise into a movement named Road Control which aims to document
and investigate police abuse – an example of what is sometimes referred to as ‘human security from below’.8 The group grew incrementally and became more politically active during the Euromaidan protest rallies.
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