MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Boris Kaimakov) - If Conny, Vladimir Putin's Labrador, had a mobile, I think the presidential pet's current conversations would sound like this:
- Hello, darling, what's new? This is Sam from the northwest.
- Oh, hello, Sam! You sound depressed. What's up?
- Haven't you heard about Lydia Popova's trial at the Ostankino district court?
- Sure I have! Poor girl, stray dogs' last hope! What's going to happen to her!
- She's in for five or six years behind the bars. Will you give the Master an informative bark, please?
I got the idea of the canine phone dialogue from a public rally near the Ostankino law court. I happen to live just across the street, and when I was leaving home for my office this morning, I heard a small group of picketers chanting quietly: "Free Lydia Popova!"
I crossed the street to approach them, was given a leaflet, and watched them for a quarter of an hour or so. There were no public passions boiling. No one threw stones at the courtroom windows, let alone attempted to smash the high trellis and take the courthouse by storm. Police guards were openly yawning.
I read the leaflet as I walked to the metro station. It ran:
"The Rostokino neighborhood in Moscow's northeast saw yet another murderous campaign against stray dogs on September 14, 2005. This time, the local authorities attacked clean animals from kennels, with all proper veterinarian certificates.
"Dr. Lydia Popova, 60, a speech therapist from the neighborhood, came to the rescue. She had been taking care of stray dogs for several previous years.
"Dog catchers called police patrols, who shoved the lady into their car to take her to the precinct. The dogs were dispatched to an unknown destination, and vanished without a trace. The doctor was released several hours later, badly battered, which was confirmed by a first-aid clinic certificate."
I make it a point never to quote press releases, with their dreadful official language. This time, I am quoting the leaflet in full, the concise and unassuming way Dr. Popova's defenders wrote it. I feel I should make an addition here-or my readers may say her pet-loving friends have indoctrinated me. Lydia Popova did not meekly follow the cops into their car, but made a desperate attempt to resist, just like her dogs. Not that she bit, scratched or kicked. As the police allege, she hit one of them with a tablespoon she had with her to portion out the dogs' regular meal.
The ways things look, the doctor will now have her own meals portioned out by prison wardens. She taught her patients to speak beautifully. Now, she has raised her own voice to defend basic rights-just what all conscientious Russians are doing. We live in a new country, a democracy, and as its citizens we are fully aware of its growing democratic basis. Slowly but surely we are realizing that each and every of us has the right to live according to his convictions, and to promote them.
The public recently stood up for Oleg Shestinsky, framed up on Altai Governor Mikhail Yevdokimov's fatal traffic accident-and saved him. Now, the nation opposes brutality to stray animals. Even if, driven to despair, Dr. Popova really did wave a tablespoon in a policeman's face, even if she hit him with it, her show trial is an ignoble farce. The law is the law. Assaulting the police is wrong-but it is still worse when authorities use the law to feed their paranoia instead of protecting the public.
The nation is resolutely siding with Lydia Popova and speaking up for her. That is especially clear after television presenter Andrei Malakhov's program, in which he interviewed district officials, who demonstrated a blatant paranoiac complex instead of defending for the law.
We always react painfully to campaigns against stray animals. The mind tells us that they have to be disposed of-but the heart says no. After all, can we blame them for their plight? Stray animals infesting a big city are a graphic indication of its bad mismanagement. We could say that a prosperous society is not the one with many limos, but with not a single dog without its warm nook and its slice of meat. We have delegated municipal officers the right to keep the stray animal population in check. That does not mean we need to put up with downright brutality. We are humans, just as policemen and officials, and to make this life livable is the duty we all share.
When we betray loving trustful hearts, we kill a part of our own heart, and the pain of it is unbearable.
Lydia Popova saw the defenseless in mortal danger, her own civil rights cruelly abused, and her love of animals trampled underfoot. She bravely came out for what she held precious.
