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Russian Whistleblower Cop On YouTube
AHuxley notes a series of YouTube videos that have gone viral in Russia, in which senior police officer Alexei Dymovsky — in full uniform — details police corruption and calls on Vladimir Putin to act. "[Dymovsky says:] 'Maybe you don't know about us, about simple cops, who live and work and love their work. I'm ready to tell you everything. I'm not scared of my own death. I will show you the life of cops in Russia, how it is lived, with all the corruption and all the rest – with ignorance, rudeness, recklessness, with honest officers killed because they have stupid bosses.' His series of three 2-to-7-minute long videos released over the past week have together garnered 1 million hits on YouTube, and have spread across Russia. Dymovsky was promptly fired after the clips spread across the Internet, and a local prosecutor has opened an investigation into libel. An interior ministry source accused him of working for foreign agents and hinted that the format of Dymovsky's complaint was a problem, using a medium that remains largely free of government control." It's best to visit the Global Post link with NoScript and Flashblock enabled. Here's a Google cache link in case it's needed.
and hinted that the format of Dymovsky's complaint was a problem, using a medium that remains largely free of government control.
This from the "people who completely miss the point" department. If government control was working so well, this officer would have had no reason not to stay within the (ahem!) "proper" channels.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Corruption may indeed be so common as to be considered the norm. It should never be viewed with complacency. Here is a man with morals and ethics who is speaking out. I for one would hope that his actions will bring about some kind of change for the better. The only given here is that it will be a long and hard fought battle on all fronts.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
I think the point that people miss is that every country has some degree of corruption, but it is what levels it is active at and how they deal with that corruption that is important.
In the US, what we might term "corruption" in the sense of favoritism (or deviations from a US sense of "meritocracy") tend to occur at the very local level (small town nepotism, "networking", etc), or at the more rarefied levels of government and business (quod pro quos from both of the political parties, lobbying, the kind of no-bid blackwater/Halliburton sort of think, insider trading, etc). This isn't to say that corruption at the top is not a problem (in fact, it is much more influential in the long run than corruption at the bottom), but simply in the US it tends to be limited to the upper reaches of government and finance.
In many other countries, the striking contrast to this is corruption in the middle, in addition to the top and bottom. Getting a job is basically impossible in some countries without appropriate connections, bribery is rampant and expected for basic "government provided" services, public works are often mired in those same problems of bribery (not scratching enough backs, etc). Even worse is when the guardians of civil society, the police, are dangerous to approach and more often on the side of criminals, as in Russia.
The other major dividing line is the public reaction to exposure of corruption. In societies where corruption is most widespread, "revelations" are generally shrugged off (and have been probably more widely known prior to their revelation), whereas in less corrupt economies, there is at least some backlash against corruption, rather than simple apathy or active suppression. Being a whistleblower in the US can be bad for your job. Being a whistleblower in other countries (as shown by many of the posts pointing out other instances where political opponents have been assassinated, etc) can result in indefinite incarceration and torture, perhaps with an "accidental" death in prison.
The advent of youtube, on the other hand, gives a voice to those who would be otherwise suppressed. Take the story of Imad Kabir, an Egyptian taxi driver. He was arrested (without charges) for participating in a fight. He was subsequently sodomized with a broomstick, which was video taped by the perpetrators. They were so sure of their immunity that they showed it to his co-workers, perhaps as a warning. When Kabir initially complained, he was actually prosecuted and jailed for assaulting an officer (dating back to his original assault arrest), but as the youtube video spread on various blogs, the officers were finally arrested. Without the internet, the officers who tortured Kabir probably would still be doing that kind of shit. Even the people who did post it to their blogs were threatened by the authorities.
I think you are forgetting that the man is appealing to Putin, not against him, and very respectfully, too. It's an old Russian tradition - to appeal to the czar against evil officials. Putin rather likes playing rescuer, swooping in and punishing the evildoers. So it may well turn out allright for him.