This article is about the bright journalist of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, 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 she publishes are always motivated by humanistic principles. They contribute to the formation of civil society.
Eva, a member of the Union of Journalists of Moscow and Russia, is a laureate of the Iskra national journalistic prize. She also takes part in commissions on the development of laws that make life easier for prisoners when they are serving sentences.
Eva Merkacheva: biography of a person in a dangerous profession
In open sources it is impossible to find detailed information about it. And that is understandable. Difficult anti-corruption work in the field of justice and serving sentences is this fragile, but courageous woman. Her articles and materials are always targeted, they clearly visible civic position. Often, following a journalistic duty, she highlights facts that are very unfavorable to influential politicians. In view of the above, 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, not being attached to dates and persons. So, from the interview it is known that at school Eve was fond of physics, mathematics, participated in olympiads. Excellent student, in the graduation classes she decided to become either a journalist or an investigator.
She liked the very spirit of the investigation. Therefore, after school, she entered immediately in 2 universities: Moscow State University (journalism department) 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, a son is brought up in the family, who is interested in playing the guitar.
Judging by the fairly clean performance of asanas (in one of the Internet clips), she has been practicing yoga since childhood, supporting her energy and performance.
That, perhaps, is all that you can learn personally about her on the Internet.
Beginning of work
After graduating from Moscow State University, Eva took up journalism, and only then the profession pushed her to advocate in prisons.
The girl at the beginning of a journalist’s career was interested in the bright and topical topic of the investigation of the most resonant crimes over the past 10-15 years. But then Eva Merkacheva, possessing systemic thinking, became interested in the social aspect of prison life, the riots taking place in the colonies at that time. Studying the materials of the investigations, the girl understood: for the most part, the prisoners are rebelling because of non-compliance with their completely legal rights.
At this stage, the doors of the penitentiary system were still closed for the journalist. However, Merkacheva did not despair, professionalism demanded of her - it was necessary to reach a new level. As a result, according to her own words, Eve managed to “break through” to the public monitoring committee.
Work in the PMC. Why there?
The activist quite consciously chose for herself a field of activity - the penitentiary system. Closed and secret in the USSR, it was supposed to open up for control by society. In 1984, Russia, as a member of the UN, ratified the Convention Against Torture. After 30 years, on July 21, 2014, the federal law “On the basics of public control in the Russian Federation” was adopted, which determines the control status of the PMC.
The legislatively established mandate allowed members of this commission to freely enter any premises of any correctional institution at any time.
This had a positive effect 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 - rooms where they used to play psychological games, humiliate, process them in various ways, call and put pressure on relatives, forcing them to pay to stop the abuse.
The PMC helped, first of all, illegally isolated in a pre-trial detention center. According to Eva, the mother of many children, Svetlana Davydova (8 or 9 children), was exposed in Lefortovo prison, including from unfair judicial protection. The PMC found her a lawyer, so it turned out that the woman had absolutely no corpus delicti.
Mandate of the PMC
Thanks to her status as a member of the PMC, Merkacheva got the opportunity to engage in human rights activities directly in places of forced detention: pre-trial detention centers, colonies, prisons, the bullpen, detention centers, and special detention centers. At the same time, Eva was surprised to note that, unlike her colleagues, she did not have a feeling of moral depression after visiting places of detention.
She, trying to help prisoners in their understandable legitimate human requests, felt like a ray of light trying to convey to prisoners hope and faith in the best.
Work is inextricable with personal life
Eva Merkacheva does not share her life and work at all. She manages to organically combine journalistic work in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets 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 with colleagues quickly goes to jail, prisons, whether it is day or night, if something happens there.
She, as a human rights defender, is respected by prisoners. Those who know that the journalist will miss the frivolous, far-fetched requests, but will show integrity in violation of their real rights.
In her work, Eva Merkacheva works closely with her PMC colleague, journalist, New Times magazine columnist and human rights activist, Zoya Feliksovna Svetova, who is widely known for the documentary “Confess innocent.”
Merkacheva on decriminalization
An important innovation in legal practice, Merkacheva calls the new decriminalizing law, which translates some articles of the Criminal Code (in the case of single acts of the accused) into the category of administrative violations. People who break the law get the opportunity to stay within the framework of a normal civilian life, not to receive a criminal record. Thanks to the law, about 300, 000 people will get such a chance every year.
However, his journalist calls only the first step in a long way to decriminalize society. She considers important in the near future a systematic review of an article of the existing Criminal Code.
The following requirements of the law were also positive:
- Obligatory employees of the penitentiary system to carry out video recording of the use of special equipment;
- prohibiting the use of stun guns against prisoners, as well as water cannons at low temperatures.
Innate sense of justice
The human rights activist helps fellow citizens to recognize the need to reform the current prison system. When an innocent person is placed in prison, he finds himself in a very special environment where psychological changes are possible under pressure. The investigation acts on him to admit his guilt. He is being pushed to this fatal mistake. If he takes the blame on himself, an uncompromising mechanism of applying criminal punishment is launched against him. In this case, by and large, the whole society suffers: the criminals turn out to be unpunished, the person himself and his relatives lose faith in justice, the destinies of people are ruined, the entire system of observing the rule of law is deformed.
Eva Merkacheva is an operational journalist, she is keen and urgent in responding to cases when lawyers are treating innocent people by posting their reviews on social networks.
This was the case with the 65-year-old hunting expert from Tuva, Yuri Nikitin, whom the poachers - an employee of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and an ex-policeman - were beaten half to death while on duty and left to die. Hunting professionals of the country are well aware of this decent person and a high specialist in their field with 40 years of experience. It is noteworthy that shortly after the incident on the night of February 15, 2014, the pictures of the beaten mysteriously disappeared. At the trial, the villains accused the huntsman of libel, and the judge imposed a considerable fine on him.
Journalist about torture in jail
Merkacheva Eva Mikhailovna considers her work extremely important for society. Prior to the publication of its materials, many Muscovites did not know anything about the Moscow pre-trial detention center-6, where law enforcement officers too zealously put women suspected of committing crimes.
The journalist opened the eyes of millions of fellow citizens to arbitrariness taking place in the detention center. Overcrowding is 80%; there is no free space in the cells. Women sleep on thin mattresses anywhere. Prisoners there are practically not treated. Many suffer from simple but neglected gynecological diseases, bleeding. They are afraid that they will subsequently become barren.
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 about the state of minors: “We do not provide such services.” It happens that in a pre-trial detention center women give birth, and children are taken from them. And in this case, they also feel an information blockade.
Sometimes they are specially placed in the cell for people suffering from various diseases. Situations where suspects may become ill with tuberculosis or syphilis break women. For fear of their lives, they agree to sign everything in order to break out of this hell. According to European legal standards, this practice amounts to torture.
According to the journalist, the irreversible consequences come later, when similar conditions already in the second term of punishment break women, make them aggressive, masculine, tattooed, smoking monsters talking on a hair dryer.
The terrible thing is that a prison deprived of the principles of humanism and justice does not re-educate, does not intimidate criminals, it deprives them of femininity, destroys fate, and cripples lives.
Merkachev on the restriction of pre-trial arrest
The journalist considers the indiscriminate practice of pre-trial detention in pre-trial detention centers of persons who committed minor crimes, especially mothers. Inherently cruel is the deprivation of their ability to raise children before sentencing. In addition, the judge, determining the measure of restraint, is not obliged to choose a pre-trial detention center, even if the investigators request this.
Eva Merkacheva, having studied the statistics on this issue, was much 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 is bad when nationality in Russia is an occasion to accuse a decent person of Jewish appearance. Even some readers of this article must have seen frank libel on Eva Merkacheva on the sites.
To whom does this fragile woman who courageously opposes violence and arbitrariness in places of deprivation prevent? Obviously to those for whom such legality is disadvantageous. We give two examples:
- After one of her investigations, Eve 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, guards took him to restaurants, let him go home. An impudent criminal even went to the Cannes Film Festival.
A young woman does not hesitate to write the truth, even if she is contrary to someone else's guidelines. A journalist, for example, in defiance of propagandists idealizing the Stalin era, can publish material about the reprisal against a “gang of nuns” who served in the Assumption Monastery (in Tula), urging fellow citizens to think about humanity and dictatorship.
It is obvious that Merkachev is more afraid of corrupt officials in uniform, cultivating prison lawlessness.
