This article is about a bright journalist of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, deputy chairman of the public monitoring commission, Eva Merkacheva. She is known to many readers for materials covering situations in Russian prisons and pre-trial detention centers. The materials published by her are always motivated by humanistic principles. They contribute to the formation of civil society.
Eva is a member of the Union of Journalists of Moscow and Russia, is a laureate of the national journalistic award "Iskra". She also takes part in commissions to develop laws that make life easier for prisoners while serving their sentences.
Eva Merkacheva: a biography of a man of a dangerous profession
It is impossible to find detailed information about her in open sources. And this is understandable. This fragile but courageousfemale. Her articles and materials are always targeted, they clearly show a civic position. Often, following her journalistic duty, she covers facts that are very disadvantageous to influential politicians. In view of the foregoing, Eva Merkacheva does not advertise private information about herself and her family.
However, as a public person, she periodically talks about her views on life, without being tied to dates and persons. So, from the interview it is known that at school Eva was fond of physics, mathematics, participated in olympiads. An excellent student, in her senior classes she decided to become either a journalist or an investigator.
She liked the very spirit of the investigation. Therefore, after school, she immediately entered 2 universities: Moscow State University (journalism) and the Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Voronezh. However, the desire to work in Moscow still won, and the girl took up journalism.
It is also known from open sources that Eva Merkacheva is married, the family has a son who is fond of playing the guitar.
Judging by the rather clean performance of asanas (in one of the Internet videos), she has been practicing yoga since childhood, supporting her energy and performance.
That's probably all you can find out personally about her on the Internet.
Getting Started
After graduating from Moscow State University, Eva took up journalism, and only then the profession pushed her to human rights work in prisons.
A girl at the beginning of her career as a journalist was interested in the bright and top topic of investigating the most resonant crimes over the past 10-15 years. But then Eva Merkacheva, who has systems thinking, became interested in socialaspect of prison life, the riots taking place at this time in the colonies. Studying the materials of the investigations, the girl realized: for the most part, prisoners rebel because of non-observance of their completely legal rights.
At this stage, the doors of the institutions of the penitentiary system were still closed for the journalist. However, Merkacheva did not despair, professionalism demanded from her - it is necessary to reach a new level. As a result, according to her own words, Eve managed to “break through” to the public monitoring commission.
Work in the PMC. Why there?
The activist quite consciously chose the field of activity for herself - the penitentiary system. Closed and secret in the USSR, it had to be opened to public control. In 1984, Russia, as a member of the UN, ratified the Convention Against Torture. 30 years later, on July 21, 2014, the federal law "On the Fundamentals of Public Control in the Russian Federation" was adopted, which determines the control status of the PMC.
The statutory mandate allowed the members of this commission to freely enter any premises of any correctional facility at any time.
This had a positive impact on the rule of law in the penitentiary system. In a short time, human rights activists managed to stop the organization of so-called press huts in Moscow prisons - premises where a person was played with psychological games, humiliated, treated in various ways, called and put pressure on loved ones, forcing them to pay to stop bullying.
ONK helped, first of all, those illegally isolated in a pre-trial detention center. ByAccording to Eva, the mother of many children Svetlana Davydova (8 or 9 children) in Lefortovo prison was exposed, including from the side of unscrupulous judicial protection. The PMC found a lawyer for her, thanks to which it turned out that the woman had absolutely no corpus delicti.
PMC Mandate
Thanks to the status of a member of the PMC, Merkacheva got the opportunity to engage in human rights activities directly in places of detention of citizens: pre-trial detention centers, colonies, prisons, penal colony, temporary detention centers, special detention centers. At the same time, Eva noticed with surprise that, unlike her colleagues, she did not have a feeling of moral depression after visiting places of detention.
She, trying to help the prisoners in their understandable legitimate human requests, felt like a ray of light, trying to convey to the prisoners hope and faith in the best.
Work is inseparable from personal life
Eva Merkacheva does not separate her life and work at all. She manages to organically combine journalistic work in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper with activities in the PMC. An employee of Moskovsky Komsomolets does not have a stable hourly work schedule; she can write at any time. A woman and her colleagues promptly go to a pre-trial detention center, prisons, whether it be day or night, if something happens there.
She, as a human rights activist, is respected by the prisoners. They know that the journalist will miss frivolous, far-fetched requests, but will show integrity in violation of their real rights.
In her work, Eva Merkacheva works closely with her colleague from the PMC,journalist, New Times columnist and human rights activist, Zoya Feliksovna Svetova, widely known for her documentary novel "Find an Innocent Guilty".
Merkachev about decriminalization
An important innovation in legal practice Merkacheva calls the new decriminalizing law, which transfers some articles of the Criminal Code (in the case of a single action of the accused) into the category of administrative violations. People who have broken the law get the opportunity to remain within the framework of normal civilian life, not to receive a criminal record. Thanks to the law, about 300,000 people will receive such a chance every year.
However, the journalist calls him only the first step in a long journey of decriminalization of society. She considers it important in the near future to systematically review the article of the existing Criminal Code.
The following requirements of the law were also positive:
- obliging employees of the penitentiary system to video-record the use of special equipment;
- prohibiting the use of stun guns and water cannons against prisoners at low temperatures.
Innate sense of justice
A human rights activist helps fellow citizens realize the need to reform the current penitentiary system. When an innocent person is placed in a place of detention, he finds himself in a very special environment where, under pressure, psychological changes are possible. The investigation influences him so that he admits his guilt. He is pushed towards thisfatal mistake. If he takes the blame on himself, an uncompromising mechanism for applying criminal punishment is launched against him. In this case, by and large, the whole society suffers: criminals go unpunished, the person himself and his relatives lose faith in justice, the fate of people collapses, the entire system of law enforcement is deformed.
Eva Merkacheva is an operative journalist, she reacts sharply and without delay to cases when lawmen bully the innocent by posting their comments on social networks.
So it was in the case of 65-year-old hunter Yury Nikitin from Tuva, who was beaten half to death by poachers - an EMERCOM officer and an ex-policeman - in the line of duty and left for dead. Hunting professionals of the country know well this decent person and a high specialist in his field with 40 years of experience. It is noteworthy that shortly after the incident that occurred on the night of February 15, 2014, the pictures of the beaten man mysteriously disappeared. At the trial, the villains accused the huntsman of slander, and the judge imposed a considerable fine on him.
Journalist about torture in jail
Eva Mikhailovna Merkacheva considers her work extremely important for society. Prior to the publication of her materials, many Muscovites did not know anything about the Moscow SIZO-6, where law enforcement officers are too zealous to place women suspected of committing crimes.
The journalist opened the eyes of millions of fellow citizens to the arbitrariness taking place in the pre-trial detention center. Overcrowding is 80%, there is no free space in the cells. women sleep onthin mattresses anywhere. Prisoners are practically not treated there. Many suffer from simple but advanced gynecological diseases, bleeding. They are afraid that they will later become sterile.
The human rights activist complains that the current laws lack the very principles of humanism, even in relation to mothers. According to her, there are frequent situations when the mother is detained, and the children are given to relatives. No information is provided to the suspects' requests about the condition of minors: "We do not provide such services." It happens that women give birth in a pre-trial detention center, and their children are taken away from them. And in this case, they also feel the information blockade.
Sometimes they are specially placed in the cell of people suffering from various diseases. Situations where suspects can get tuberculosis or syphilis break women. Out of fear for their lives, they agree to sign everything in order to escape from this hell. According to European legal standards, this practice is tantamount to torture.
According to the journalist, irreversible consequences come later, when such conditions, already in the second term of punishment, break women, make them aggressive, masculine, tattooed, smoking monsters, talking on a hair dryer.
The scary thing is that the prison, deprived of the principles of humanism and justice, does not re-educate, does not intimidate criminals, it deprives them of their femininity, breaks destinies, cripples lives.
Merkachev on limiting pre-trial arrest
The journalist considers indiscriminate practice of pre-trial detention in pre-trial detention of persons who have committed minor crimes, especially mothers. Cruel in its essence is depriving them of the opportunity to raise children before the verdict. In addition, the judge, when determining the measure of restraint, is not obliged to choose a pre-trial detention center, even if the operatives petition for it.
Eva Merkacheva, having studied the statistics on this issue, was quite surprised: most of these inhuman decisions were made by female judges. The inhumanity replicated in society by a woman - what could be worse?
Merkacheva Eva: nationality
It's bad when in Russia nationality is a reason to accuse a decent person of Jewish appearance. Even some readers of this article have probably seen frank libels on Eva Merkacheva on websites.
Who is bothered by this fragile woman, who courageously opposes violence and arbitrariness in prisons? It is obvious to those who do not benefit from such legality. Here are two examples:
After one of her investigations, Eva released material that served as the basis for dozens of documentary chronicles. The facts are impressive: one Moscow criminal banker, placed in a colony, "bought" the administration. In the evenings, the guards took him to restaurants and let him go home. The insolent criminal even went to the Cannes Film Festival
A young woman does not hesitate to write the truth, even if it contradicts someone's attitudes. A journalist, for example, can, in defiance of propagandists who idealize the era of Stalin, publish material about the massacre of a “gang of nuns” who served in the Assumption Convent (Tula),calling on fellow citizens to think about humanity and dictatorship
Obviously, Merkachev is more afraid of corrupt officials in uniform who cultivate prison lawlessness.
Conclusion
Fortunately, Eva Mikhailovna Merkacheva, journalist, deputy chairman of the PMC of Moscow, is not alone in her opposition to prison injustice. Together with like-minded journalists, the journalist ensures that criminals and defendants are not subjected to violence in isolation.
This is necessary for the he alth of society. After all, after serving time, prisoners return, find work, and marry. Therefore, it is extremely important that they return from places of deprivation of liberty not embittered, but renouncing crime.
According to the human rights activist, conditions must be created in places of detention to prevent the suppression of a person when, under pressure or due to deceit, he takes on someone else's guilt.
The sprouts of publicity in the penitentiary system, which the journalist contributes to with her work, are very important. They are laying hope that society will respond and justice will prevail in places of detention.
