My father’s message to Putin from a prison camp
His hands numb after queueing in the bitter cold outside, my father squeezes into a phone booth and dials my number. Thousands of miles away in the US, I hear his dear voice, still husky from the frosty Karelian air. His tone has its usual calm; his mood is upbeat.
We were speaking just days before Vladimir Putin’s presidential inauguration, yet we weren’t talking about what his third term would mean for Russia and its citizens. That much we already know based on the 12 years of his rule. Rather, we talked about what needs to be done in the years ahead, because the future of our country is no longer up to Mr Putin; it now depends on its people. The man in charge may not have changed, but we Russians have.
For me the struggle to make Russia a freer and more just society is personal. My father, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of Yukos, once Russia’s largest company, has been locked up for more than eight and a half years on false charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. His only crime was standing up to Mr Putin. He angered the Kremlin by financing opposition parties and denouncing the scale of corruption. I have not seen him since 2003, when I went to college in the US; he has never met my daughter Diana, who is now 2 years old.
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Disgraceful, Craven, and Cowardly
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng is now pleading for asylum in the United States, literally hours after he left the US embassy in Beijing, under the terms of a stitched together deal which supposedly guaranteed his safety and the safety of his family. His presence in the embassy was a huge embarrassment, especially in view of the impending visit of Hillary Clinton and Timmy! for talks with the Chinese leadership. Reports strongly suggest that the US pressured Chen to leave, and at the very least, did nothing to push back on Chinese threats (delivered to Chen) to beat his wife to death.
So the United States government did something exactly analogous to turning over a fugitive slave, to avoid a conflict with the slaveowner, or in response to the slaveowner’s threat to whip the slave’s wife to death.
This is disgraceful, craven, and cowardly
Obama claims that human rights are raised at every meeting with the Chinese. I can imagine the conversation now: Obama: “You need to respect human rights.” Chinese official: “Mind your own business.” Obama: “Now we have that out of the way . . . ”
Deeds speak far louder than words. The immediate and panicked capitulation shows clearly that Obama has no real interest in human rights, and is unwilling to risk the slightest displeasure from the Chinese. Not that he has succeeded in the latter: the Chinese are shrilly demanding an apology for us letting Chen step onto embassy grounds.
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Soviet Jewry group supports easing US-Russia trade
As the Obama administration tries to remove Russia from US legislation restricting trade between the two countries, it has allies from an unlikely corner: those who originally lobbied for the restriction on behalf of Russian Jewry.
The US wants to remove Russia from a list of former Soviet countries penalized economically under the Jackson-Vanick amendment, since the restriction could hurt American businesses once Russia joins the World Trade Organization as anticipated in the coming months.
The amendment hurts Russia’s trade status unless the US certifies each year that Russia is allowing its citizens to emigrate freely, a waiver the US began issuing after Russia let its Jewish population leave en masse for Israel and other countries in the 1990s. Because the waiver must be renewed annually, however, it prevents the US and Russia from having permanent normal trade relations.
Since WTO rules require that countries not have any trade barriers against member states, US companies doing business in Russia would be subject to penalties once Russia finishes the process of joining the organization.
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Defense fails to get probe extended against penitentiary service employees blamed for Magnitsky death
Investigators have refused to extend the probe against the prison employees, accused of involvement in Hermitage Capital Foundation lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death.
“I requested an additional investigation, but my request has been rejected,” Nikolai Gorokhov, the defense lawyer for Magnitsky’s mother Natalya, told Interfax.
The files related to Larisa Litvinova, a doctor with the prison where Magnitsky died, and to Dmitry Kratov, the prison’s deputy head responsible for medical services, were detached from the main case related to Magnitsky’s death. The investigation into their cases was completed and the cases are to be referred to prosecutors who are to confirm the indictment. Litvinova is no longer prosecuted because her limitation period has expired. But Magnitsky’s relatives challenged this decision. Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin announced in November 2011 that “Kratov’s and Litvinova’s prosecution was started on July 18, 2011, after a direct link was established between their actions and Hermitage Capital Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death in prison in 2009.”
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Russia Vows to Avenge U.S. Visa Bans for Russian Officials
Russian will not leave U.S. “attempts to interfere in our domestic affairs” without response, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday, referring to visa sanctions imposed on Russian officials allegedly linked to the controversial death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow pretrial detention center.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry’s attention was drawn to statements by U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul that U.S. entry bans for some of our country’s officials in the contest of the Magnitsky case were in line with the [U.S.] administration’s policy in the human rights sphere,” Lukashevich said.
“We consider such presentation of a problem unacceptable as it runs against not only the character of Russian-U.S. relations, but also the universally accepted principle of presumption of innocence,” he added.
Moscow has “repeatedly warned that such attempts to interfere in our domestic affairs will not be left without response,” he said.
Magnitsky, an anti-corruption lawyer who worked with the Hermitage Capital investment fund, died in Moscow’s infamous Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center in November 2009, a year after he was arrested on tax evasion charges. Shortly before his arrest, he claimed to have uncovered a massive fraud in which Moscow tax and police officials had allegedly embezzled $230 million of budget funds.
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Editorial: don’t trust, don’t fear, ask!
Members of the Presidential council on human rights probably supposed that after an invitation to collaborate with the authorities, they could soften their morals and make it respect the law a little bit more. But only the power can decide if it will punish or pardon, will it act by the law or rule arbitrary.
Russia needs to prolong its modernization course, just to prove it once followed it. “Our council is supported by those parts of society which think that our country needs to be modernized. The country must not fall into stagnation, it mustn’t remain so archaic in terms of social structure or state machine construction,” said Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of the Presidential council on human rights.
Meanwhile, several of his colleagues in the council are not going to collaborate with the government in helping to modernize the country. The first to leave Fedotov was the director of Transparency International Russia, Elena Panfilova, who was preparing a report on the fight with the corruption as part of her work in the council. True, it would be naïve to consider that this fight, despite all the anti-corruption rhetoric of President Medvedev and even the adoption of a national anticorruption plan, now almost forgotten, has brought any result. There’s more corruption in Russia now, not less, on all the steps of the state stairway.
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Russia’s Civil Society ‘Beats Authorities’ in Tackling Corruption
Russia’s civil society has made a dramatic leap forward over the past three years and is doing much more to curb corruption than the authorities, Yelena Panfilova, a prominent, outgoing member of the presidential anti-corruption and human rights council, said on Wednesday.
“Russia today is not the same country it was when I joined the council three years ago; first of all, it’s about the society, not the authorities,” Panfilova, who heads Transparency International’s Russian branch, said at a news conference in Moscow marking the end of the council’s term under President Dmitry Medvedev.
Panfilova announced last week that she was not planning to continue her work with the council, which is expected to be reshuffled following the inauguration of Vladimir Putin on May 7. Several other council members also said they were going to resign.
Some observers have suggested it was their unwillingness to compromise with former KGB agent Putin that forced them to leave the council. But Panfilova downplayed the allegation on Wednesday, saying her departure was due to her desire to focus on civil activism rather than a falling out with the authorities.
“I believe that the society is doing much more, much better to counter corruption … than three years ago, and more than the authorities do,” she said.
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Russian Envoy Warns U.S. on Magnitsky Bill
Russia’s ambassador to the United States warned the U.S. on Wednesday that legislation to ban Russian officials implicated in the 2009 jail death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky could damage relations between the two countries.
The U.S. State Department expressed support last week for the so-called Magnitsky Act, which is being considered by Congress and would impose sanctions on foreign officials accused of human rights abuses.
“Trying to use it as an instrument of pressure on us will not bring any results except to damage Russian-U.S. relations,” Ambassador Sergei Kislyak said on Voice of Russia radio.
He also said the U.S. government was showing a lack of respect for Russia by intervening in the investigation into Magnitsky’s death. This “is Russia’s internal affair and is being investigated in accordance with Russian law,” he said in the interview, Interfax reported.
Kislyak and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made similar comments last month, signaling Moscow’s strong irritation with U.S. actions on the case.
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Human Rights Activists Quit Ahead of Putin’s Inauguration
RIA Novosti
Several of Russia’s leading human rights advocates plan to quit the presidential Human Rights Council after President-elect Vladimir Putin takes up his post on May 7, Russian media reported on Wednesday.
According to Vedomosti business daily, among those planning to leave the human rights body are the head of Transparency International Russia, Yelena Panfilova, a political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin and the head of the non-government organization of working refugees, Civil Cooperation, Svetlana Gannushkina.
Panfilova, who delivered a report on corruption at the last council meeting on Saturday, said that she remained in the council only because of the pledge she gave to the mother of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in pre-trial detention in 2009, to investigate his death.
“I think I’ll do much more with my civil activity within my current job,” Panfilova said in an interview with Kommersant daily on Wednesday.
Another council member, political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, made the decision to leave the body after his report on electoral violations which was rejected under the pretext of the president’s tight schedule.
Oreshkin told Vedomosti that he was going to deliver the facts showing up to 14 percent of ballot stuffing in Putin’s results during the March presidential elections where he secured a landslide victory which critics said was achieved through numerous violations.
“I regard Putin as an illegitimate president. I won’t be able to work in his council,” Vedomosti quoted Oreshkin as saying.
Gannushkina of human rights group Civil Assistance will also quit the council, Vedomosti said.
Veteran human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseeva however said that the human rights advocates should closely cooperate with the state authorities and not ignore them.
In December last year, amid mass street protest against alleged fraud in Russia’s parliamentary elections, a prominent human rights activist Irina Yasina and journalist Svetlana Sorokina left the Kremlin council on human rights over what they described as “falsifications” during the December 4 vote and “brutal reprisal” against pro-democracy protesters.
The presidential human rights council is known for its independent stance but it has no legal authority and had its recommendations ignored in the past. займы онлайн на карту срочно hairy girls https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php hairy woman
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
