A12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALFRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020
MOSCOW — When a group of
young Russians set up a chat
group on social media nearly
three years ago, they called them-
selves the Club of Plant Lovers,
creating an innocuous gathering
place for online discussion about
their hobbies, university studies
and sometimes politics.
After a few weeks, however, the
chat group, which had changed its
name to New Greatness, was
joined by a new member who pro-
moted unusually strident views
against President Vladimir V.
Putin and pushed to turn the on-
line chatter into a political move-
ment dedicated to radical change.
The new member, who gave his
name as Ruslan Danilov and
wrote a political manifesto for the
group calling for Mr. Putin’s over-
throw and having a “people’s tri-
bunal” prosecute him, was actu-
ally an informant and agent
provocateur working for Russia’s
security apparatus.
As a result of the informant’s
work and subsequent testimony
as a prosecution witness in what
became known as the New Great-
ness Case, a Moscow court on
Thursday found seven original
members of the group guilty of
“creating an extremist society”
with intent to “prepare or commit
extremist crimes.”
Six were given sentences, three
of them suspended, of between six
and seven years in a penal colony,
mostly in line with what prosecu-
tors had demanded. A seventh de-
fendant, Anna Pavlikova, a minor
at the time of her arrest, received
a milder suspended sentence of
four years. All had pleaded not
guilty and accused the informant
of setting them up.
Even by Russia’s low standard
of due process, the case set a grim
new benchmark for a judicial and
law enforcement system that hu-
man rights activists say is in-
creasingly untethered from any
commitment to justice. It was
trailed throughout by allegations
of entrapment by the Federal Se-
curity Service, or F.S.B., fabri-
cated evidence and physical
abuse of the defendants.
The judgment, handed down in
the Lyublino District Court insoutheastern Moscow, fit into
what has become a pattern of Rus-
sian courts, with defense argu-
ments and expert opinions ig-
nored in the prosecution’s favor in
cases seemingly driven more by
the Kremlin’s political impera-
tives than any real evidence.
After the guilty verdicts were
handed down, supporters of the
defendants who had gathered out-
side the courthouse chanted an-
grily: “Not guilty, not guilty.”
Faith in Russian courts has
plunged so low that supporters
said the outcome was inevitable.
“Miracles don’t happen,” Anna
Narinskaya, a journalist who has
followed the case closely, com-
mented curtly on Facebook.
Aleksandr Gorbunov, a caustic
Kremlin critic better known by his
online persona Stalingulag, gave
his own verdict on the case to his
million followers on Twitter.
“A provocateur from the F.S.B.
creates a completely fictitious or-
ganization ‘New Greatness,’
young people who accidentally
fall into it are arrested, tortured,
raped with a hammer, held in a
pretrial detention center and then
given real prison terms. This is
the routine of today’s Russia,” he
wrote.
In a statement from jail earlier
this week, one defendant, Vyache-
slav Kryukov, a 22-year-old law
student who has spent more than
two years in pretrial detention, de-
nounced the case as a frame-up by
prosecutors aided by the security
services.
“There is no evidence, no objec-
tive reason for my involvement in
this case,” said Mr. Kryukov, who
received a six-year prison term.
“But prosecutors know that no-
body will investigate so they can
get away with anything.”
He insisted that he had always
opposed extremism. “I think that
civil protest should be held only ina nonviolent, intellectual way.”
Alina Danilina, Mr. Kryukov’s
girlfriend, said it seemed as if the
judge simply “copied out word for
word” a decision made from
above. The informant, she said,
had been the only person pushing
an “extremist” agenda that none
of the others shared.
“It is terrifying how easily any-
one here can be sentenced to jail
for just being,” Ms. Danilina said.
With Mr. Putin’s approval rating
falling and economic hardship
growing as a result of the coro-
navirus pandemic, Russia’s vast
security apparatus has increas-
ingly sought to paint all forms of
protest, no matter how mild, as
subversive and therefore illegal.
It has been cracking down hard in
Moscow on even one-person pro-
tests, which are technically pro-
tected by law.
There is little sign of wide-
spread unrest breaking out in re-
sponse to Russia’s economic trou-
bles and general fatigue with Mr.
Putin’s rule. (He recently forced
through constitutional amend-
ments allowing him to stay in of-
fice until 2036.)
Yet the Kremlin has been un-
nerved over the past month by un-
usually large street protests in
Khabarovsk, a city nearly 4,
miles east of Moscow in the Rus-
sian Far East. Many of the griev-
ances driving the Khabarovsk
protests are local, principally the
arrest of the region’s popular
elected governor on murder
charges. But the spectacle of tens
of thousands of people parading
every Saturday for weeks through
a large city has cheered Mr.
Putin’s opponents elsewhere and
pointed to deep wells of public an-
ger bubbling beneath Russia’s
surface calm.
Outside the Moscow courtroom
on Thursday, police officers de-
tained several people who tried to
mount small, symbolic protests,
including a young man who,
dressed in a police uniform, stood
next to a clothing dummy painted
with a crown of thorns and com-
pared the court’s decision to the
crucifixion of Christ. With two
friends, also dressed as police offi-
cers, he cut the throat of the
dummy with a knife, releasing a
spray of fake blood.
Memorial, Russia’s oldest and
most respected human rights or-
ganization, declared the defend-
ants, who were arrested in 2018,
political prisoners. In a detailed
study of the case, Memorial said
the New Greatness group “was es-
sentially set up by Russian securi-
ty services,” who “strove to give
the organization an extremist
character.”
Ms. Pavlikova, a group member
found guilty on Thursday, left New
Greatness soon after it was
founded in late 2017 after quarrel-
ing with other members. The po-
lice informer persuaded her to re-
turn, and she was arrested a
month later. She was 17.
Extremism has become a
catchall charge that can be de-
ployed against just about any-
body, including anti-corruption
campaigners and religious believ-
ers outside the Russian Orthodox
Church. The authorities have initi-
ated criminal investigations
against nearly 400 people for sus-
pected extremism simply for fol-
lowing the teachings of Jehovah’s
Witnesses, a Christian group that
rejects all violence but that Russia
outlawed in 2017 as an “extremist
organization.”
Others whom the authorities
view as enemies have been pros-
ecuted for terrorism-related
crimes, another broad category
that requires no evidence of intent
to commit violent acts. A court in
the western Russian city of Pskov
last month convicted a freelance
journalist, Svetlana Prokopyeva,
of “justifying terrorism” in a 2018
commentary critical of the securi-
ty services. Even the Kremlin’s
own human rights council dis-
missed the charges as unwarrant-
ed.
“We all see that anyone can go
to jail now,” Ilya Yashin, a district
councilor in Moscow and leader of
a small opposition party, said in a
Facebook post. “There are almost
two million security officials in
Russia and they all want new
stars on their shoulder boards.”
This desire for career advance-
ment in a system that rewards loy-
alty above all else, he added,
means they “often fabricate crimi-
nal cases, plant drugs, imprison
innocent people.”How a Chat Group Led
To Prison for Russians
By ANDREW HIGGINSFour of the seven defendants convicted Thursday in Moscow of
extremism related to their membership in a chat group.KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESAn agent provocateur
who posted strident
anti-Putin comments.
TORONTO — Black and Indige-
nous employees say they were
disparaged. Female employees
say they were sexually harassed.
Guides say their managers in-
structed them to block off an ex-
hibit on same-sex marriage dur-
ing tours for religious schools.
All this has happened, critics
say, at an unlikely place: The Ca-
nadian Museum for Human
Rights in Winnipeg.
In recent weeks, the museum
has been engulfed by accusations
of discrimination and har-
assment. On Wednesday the mu-
seum released a report from an
external review, which concluded
that “racism is pervasive and sys-
temic within the institution.”
For a museum devoted to the
history of human rights, the re-
port was a stinging rebuke.
“This is a tainted place as far as
I’m concerned,” said Barbara
Nepinak, an elder of the Pine
Creek First Nation who is a mem-
ber of the Special Indigenous Ad-
visory Council to the museum.
“But it can be fixed, and I strongly
believe it will be fixed.”
In June, museum officials ad-
mitted they had accommodated
requests from school groups to ex-
clude, or even hide, content they
might find objectionable and is-
sued a public apology. The institu-
tion’s president stepped down.
After Wednesday’s report,
Pauline Rafferty, the museum’s
chairwoman and acting chief ex-
ecutive, vowed to take several im-
mediate steps, including the es-
tablishment of a diversity and in-
clusion committee.
“We’ve accepted the report’s
findings in full and the recommen-
dations in principle,” she said.
“The opportunity here is to make
systemic changes, but it will take
time, and it will be very hard
work.”
Still, the review is the fourth in
the institution’s short lifetime,
making many people skeptical
that systemic discrimination will
be corrected, even at a place built
to inspire visitors to combat it.
Armando Perla, a curator who
worked at the museum for years,
said he was disappointed that the
review did not recommend re-
moving a broad swath of the mu-
seum’s management but instead
focused on training. “No amount
of training is going to fix the man-
agers,” said Mr. Perla, now head of
human rights at the Montreal
Holocaust Museum.
The museum opened in 2014 in
Winnipeg — a Prairie city with a
large Indigenous population. It is
a stunning landmark in the city,
with its illuminated “spire of
hope” visible from afar, and thou-
sands of glass panels swooping
around its limestone walls to re-
semble the folded wings of a dove.
Even before the doors opened,
though, the museum inspired pro-
test and heated debate. Several
curators and outside experts com-
plained that exhibits had been po-
litically neutered and so watered
down as to become meaningless.
“It became an ethical cheer-
leading triumphalist narrative
about Canada, forwarding the no-
tion of Canada, the peacekeeping
nation, as a leader in human
rights,” said Elise Chenier, a his-
tory professor at Simon Fraser
University in Vancouver, who did
not want to be identified by the
museum as a creator of an exhibit
on same-sex marriage in Canada,
saying the institution had over-
simplified the “debate in the queer
community about marriage.”
The museum’s former curator
of Indigenous content, Tricia Lo-
gan, wrote in a book that she had
been “consistently reminded” to
match any mention of state-per-
petrated atrocity against Indige-
nous people with a “balanced
statement that indicates reconcili-
ation, apology or compensation
provided by the government.”
Maureen Fitzhenry, the mu-
seum spokeswoman, disputed the
assertion that the museum had re-
vised content for political or na-
tionalistic reasons.
Many in Winnipeg’s Indigenous
community were outraged over
the museum’s decision to use the
term “genocide” for five overseas
genocides officially recognized by
Canada’s government, including
the Holocaust and the massacres
in Rwanda, but not for the treat-
ment of their people in Canada.
At the time, the country’s first
Truth and Reconciliation Commis-
sion had concluded years of hear-
ings on the government’s long-
standing use of residential schools
as a pernicious tool of assimilation
that had forcibly removed more
than 150,000 Indigenous children
from their families and cultures.
A year after the museum
opened, the commission’s final re-
port described the schools as
weapons of “cultural genocide.”
But the museum took until 2018 to
use the term.
In June, public debate about the
institution was reignited by a local
anti-racism protest.
A former museum guide and
program interpreter, Thiané Diop,
29, wrote on social media that dur-
ing four years of working at the
museum, she had faced racism
from colleagues, the public and
donors “constantly,” and instead
of addressing it, her bosses saidshe wasn’t a “good fit.”
Others accused managers of
making racial slurs and culturally
insensitive remarks.
Shania Pruden, a 23-year-old
from Pinamutang First Nation
who worked at the museum, re-
called that a manager told her to
get “thicker skin,” after visitors
pointed to her while talking about
the history of “Indians,” making
her feel ashamed.
“When there was a problem,
management most likely wouldn’t
do anything,” Ms. Pruden said.
Four former female staff mem-
bers told The New York Times
they had reported episodes of sex-
ual harassment and, in one case,
sexual assault to management. In
all cases, they said, managers’
first response was to question
their accounts.
Wednesday’s report found that
there “are indications that sexual
harassment and stalking com-
plaints made by Black women
may not have been investigated or
addressed adequately prior to the
fall of 2016.”
Two of the institution’s previous
external reviews addressed sexu-
al harassment, said Ms. Fitzhenry,
the museum spokeswoman. The
third involved broader concerns
by museum staff, she said, declin-
ing to offer more specifics.
“It was a culture of violence,”
said Gabriela Aguero, a former
guide and program developer who
took a mental health leave last
year because, she said, of the
stress of the museum’s workplace
culture, as well as its content.
In an interview with the Canadi-an Broadcasting Corporation, Ms.
Aguero exposed the museum’s
former practice of asking guides
to skip the exhibit on the legaliza-
tion of same-sex marriage in Can-
ada during tours for religious
schools and for guests who ob-
jected to the content.
“This practice is contrary to the
Museum’s mandate, and contrary
to everything we stand for,” the
museum’s executive team said in
a June letter confirming the prac-
tice had happened for two years.
The outside report said L.G.B.T.
and queer content was omitted or
hidden on six occasions in 2017
and on one occasion in 2015.
It also noted critically the ab-
sence of any representation in ex-
hibits of two-spirit people, a term
used by some Indigenous people
to describe those who have both a
masculine and a feminine spirit,
despite years of requests for inclu-
sion from that community.
“The censorship was not just
around same-sex marriage,” said
Albert McLeod, a director of the
Two-Spirited People of Manitoba,
a community group that tried to
get the museum to include stories
of the struggles of two-spirit peo-
ple.
“Even a human rights institu-
tion can be rife with discrimina-
tion unless it practices its own
teachings,” said Karen Busby, a
recently retired law professor and
founding director of the Centre for
Human Rights Research at the
University of Manitoba. “It won’t
go away with good intentions.”
After the museum’s announce-
ment that it would conduct an in-
dependent review by a feminist
lawyer who is Black, Jewish and
identifies as queer, former em-
ployees reacted with a mix of re-
lief that it was happening, sadness
that it was necessary and cyni-
cism that anything would change.
“A lot of us have felt isolated do-
ing this work for a long time,” said
Mr. Perla, the former curator, in an
interview before Wednesday’s re-
port. “Now we’re realizing we are
not alone.”
When Mr. Perla worked at the
Winnipeg museum, he said, there
were only three managers from
visible minorities in the building
— a pervasive situation in Canadi-
an museums, he said.
“When you have managers who
are only white,” said Mr. Perla,
who is gay and came from El Sal-
vador as an asylum seeker, “with
no visible minorities to challenge
the status quo, you will keep doing
things as you have done them.”
Some Indigenous staff mem-
bers and advisers said the mu-
seum had made strides in ad-
dressing their concerns.
In a 2018 speech, the museum's
president, John Young, said the
“policies and practices of colonial-
ization” in Canada were genocide.
Museum signage was changed.
The museum also began to in-
corporate Indigenous “ways of
knowing and being” into its insti-
tutional processes, said Jennefer
Nepinak, its former senior adviser
on Indigenous relations. In 2019,
the museum entered into a con-
tract with Carey Newman, an art-
ist from Kwakwaka’wakw First
Nation, by taking part in a pot-
latch — a traditional ceremony.
“Learning is very difficult, and
change is very difficult,” Ms.
Nepinak said, calling the agree-
ment a highlight of her career.
Glen Murray, a former Win-
nipeg mayor and Ontario cabinet
minister, stepped down from the
museum’s fund-raising board. He
said he hoped the museum’s inter-
nal reckoning would become a
template for other organizations.
“The museum should be an ex-
ample now of how to move for-
ward,” said Mr. Murray, the first
openly gay mayor of a big city in
North America, “to correct this,
for how you honestly resolve
problems, bring people together
and rebuild trust.”
He added, “That could be its
own powerful story for change.”Thiané Diop, a former museum guide, wrote on social media that she had faced racism from colleagues, the public and donors.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY AARON VINCENT ELKAIM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESRacism ‘Pervasive’ at Canadian Human Rights Museum
By CATHERINE PORTER
and IAN AUSTENCatherine Porter reported from
Toronto, and Ian Austen from Lake
of Bays, Ontario. Karyn Pugliese
contributed reporting.
Top, an exhibit on same-sex marriage rights. Gabriela Aguero,
middle, a former guide, said such exhibits were excluded from
tours for religious schools. Shania Pruden, above, from Pinamu-
tang First Nation, said a manager told her to get “thicker skin.”