UK immigration rules tightened to keep out human rights abusers
Peter Beaumont and Toby Helm
Saturday 28 April 2012
Measure allows ministers to bar entry of non-EU citizens accused of serious charges such as torture or murder
The government is to announce tough immigration requirements that would ban non-EU citizens who have been accused of serious human rights abuses, including torture or murder, from visiting the UK.
The measures in the government’s Human Rights Report, to be launched by the Foreign Office on Monday, will allow ministers to refuse entry where credible evidence exists of past or continuing human rights abuses.
The new rules, however, would not constitute a blanket ban on visas for human rights-abusing foreign officials, with ministers still able to rule that individuals – including human rights-abusing heads of state – can visit the UK if it is regarded as part of a policy of engagement on human rights.
The change has been driven by Foreign Office ministers and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.
At present, the UK does not have a list of those who are banned from visiting, as each case is considered on its merits. Officials admit that there have been times where they have wanted to deny entry to individuals but have struggled because they are not allowed to simply on the basis of their human rights record. Currently, the individuals targeted by the new rules could only have been excluded if they were viewed as a threat to national security.
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‘Magnitsky List’ Court Chairman Fired
MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow’s Judicial Qualification Committee has suspended a judge who was previously involved in the Sergei Magnitsky scandal, from his post as chairman of the Tverskoy district court, Kommersant daily reported on Saturday.
Judge Igor Alisov personally considered one of the criminal cases against Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in pre-trial detention in 2009, accused of embezzlement of 5.4 billion rubles ($175.29 million) from the Russian budget, in the form of income tax rebates by companies controlled by the investment fund Hermitage Capital. Magnitsky was arrested by the same law enforcement officers he had suspected of embezzling the money by taking over Hermitage subsidiaries illegally in conjunction with corrupt tax officials.
Alisov was subsequently included in the so-called Magnitsky list of legal and political figures against whom the EU and the U.S. are introducing sanctions.
The Committee suspended Alisov from his post as Chairman of the court but he will continue to serve as a judge in the court.
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How to Get Autocrats to Bend
28 April 2012
Editorial
U.S. Representative Jim McGovern introduced an expanded Magnitsky act to Congress last week. The focus of the bill goes beyond the original legislation sponsored by Senator Ben Cardin, which targeted 60 Russian officials implicated in the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky in pretrial detention. McGovern’s bill contains an additional open clause that expands the same type of sanctions — visa bans and asset freezes — against Russian officials implicated in other cases involving “gross violations of human rights.”
Around the same time that U.S. lawmakers were working to tighten the screws on Russia, the European Union was seeing the results of similar economic sanctions on Belarus. Andrei Sannikov, an opposition presidential candidate in Belarus’ December 2010 election, and his campaign manager, Dmitry Bondarenko, were pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko and released on April 15 after serving 16 months in prison. The two, along with hundreds of others, were arrested for taking part in mass protests against Lukashenko’s landslide reelection, which independent monitors say was heavily rigged.
Belarussian political analysts and Sannikov himself believe that the dominant factor behind the pardons were EU economic and political sanctions levied against the Lukashenko regime in March.
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PACE to consider expediency of separate resolution on Magnitsky
STRASBOURG, April 27 (Itar-Tass) —— The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Bureau will consider the expediency of a separate resolution on the death of Hermitage Capital Management attorney Sergei Magnitsky in prison in late May, Assembly rapporteur on Russia Andreas Gross (Switzerland) said on Friday.
He said the Magnitsky case would be discussed at the Assembly Bureau meeting in Tirana. Also, the monitoring report on Russia due to be presented in October 2012 will also have a section dedicated to Magnitsky.
Itar-Tass
STRASBOURG, April 27
Some Assembly deputies insist on debating the Magnitsky case and publishing a separate resolution. The demand was made first by Pieter Omtzigt (the Netherlands). He drafted the petition in October 2011 and 53 deputies, among them PACE President Jean-Claude Mignon and head of the Assembly’s second largest political group European People’s Party Luca Volonte, signed it. The number of deputies supporting the petition has grown by approximately a third.
Omtzigt sent a parliamentary inquiry to the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers requesting to spell out the official position on that case. The Committee expressed the hope that the culprits of the Magnitsky death would be identified and brought to justice, and the investigation would be open, rapid and efficient.
Magnitsky, 37, spent almost a year at a detention ward on tax evasion conspiracy charges. He was not given medical aid on time and died on November 16, 2009. The death caused a broad public response.
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Want a response from Putin’s office? Russia’s dry-cleaning is just the ticket
The Guardian
Posted by Miriam Elder in Moscow
Thursday 26 April 2012 19.03 BST
Want a response from Putin’s office? Russia’s dry-cleaning is just the ticket
After five years of writing about corruption, human rights abuses, the murder of journalists and electoral fraud, I have finally learned the Kremlin’s true weak spot: dry-cleaning.
On Tuesday, I wrote a column about the horrors of getting dry-cleaning done in Moscow. It was a cathartic expression of the frustration that comes from living in a city where the most menial tasks are often infused with the paper-pushing, stamp-stamping and time-wasting so loved by Russia’s bureaucracy.
Many people were not amused, it turns out. Among them was Dmitry Peskov, longtime aide and spokesman to Vladimir Putin.
“I am sorry to hear about Miriam Elder’s experience at the dry cleaners, in which she lost her receipt and so had an hour of her time ‘stolen’ in providing the necessary personal details to retrieve her woollies,” Peskov wrote in a letter to this newspaper. “But I am also amazed that this anecdote can be passed off as any sort of insight into the state of Russia today.”
Peskov went on to write that cutting red tape was a high priority for the government. And then the kicker: “Let me remind British readers of the thousands of hours that are ‘stolen’ from Russian citizens when they complete the UK’s visa application forms, which are a whopping 10 pages. The time, money, effort and inconvenience that Russians face in obtaining UK visas put Ms Elder’s ordeal into perspective.”
Those wishing to understand the link between handing in dry-cleaning and applying for a UK visa would do well to look up “whataboutism”. The term emerged at the height of the Cold War, used to describe a favourite tactic of Soviet propagandists. An article in a US or UK paper calls out the Soviet government for locking up dissidents? Well then, a Soviet paper responds: “What about the US campaign against the Black Panthers?” The practice is alive and well in modern Russia. Western papers upping their coverage of the protest movement against Putin’s regime? Russia Today starts in with “What about the Occupy movement?”
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European MPs call for international enquiry into Magnitsky affair
26.04.12 @ 18:13
BY ANDREW RETTMAN
BRUSSELS – Sixty nine MPs from across Europe have called for an international enquiry into the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The deputies – who hail mostly from EU countries, but also Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland – signed the motion at the human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe (CoE), in Strasbourg on Wednesday (25 April).
If the council’s steering group at its meeting on Friday gives the green light, the motion will trigger an in-depth investigation on the model of previous enquiries into CIA renditions, organ smuggling in Kosovo and death squads in Belarus.
“The competent authorities have … failed to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for Mr Magnitsky’s death,” the motion says.
“For the sake of its own credibility and that of the Russian Federation, the [CoE] should now engage in co-operation with Russia, through the preparation of a dedicated report, in order to fully elucidate this landmark case.”
The man behind the initiative, Dutch centre-right MP Pieter Omtzigt, said the level of political support for his proposal “suggests the truly emblematic nature of the Magnitsky case.”
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PACE Receives Magnitsky Resolution Proposal
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has received a motion to consider a resolution on lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death in custody, the head of Russia’s delegation said.
“Such a motion exists, I saw it,” Alexei Pushkov said, adding that his view of the proposal was “negative.”
A source in the Assembly earlier said that the initiative was put forward by Dutch parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt, with the support of 69 parliamentarians from Moldova, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and other countries.
In the draft resolution, PACE offers Russia cooperation in preparing a report on the circumstances surrounding the lawyer’s death. The author believes that such document would benefit the Russian side.
Magnitsky was working for the Londruon-based Hermitage Capital investment fund when he was arrested in 2008 as part of an embezzlement and tax evasion investigation. The auditor died after almost a year in custody. His death triggered an international outcry.
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Magnitsky death inquiry prolonged once again – Hermitage Capital (Part 2)
Interfax
26 April 2012
MOSCOW. April 26 (Interfax) – The criminal investigation into the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail in 2009 has been prolonged once again, the investment advisory firm said in a press release, received by Interfax on Thursday.
As European Union countries and the United States discuss sanctions and other tough measures in relation to Russian officials standing behind the Magnitsky case, the Russian authorities have prolonged the inquiry into his death for the 12th time, it said.
Russian Investigative Committee officials have so far been unavailable for comment.
Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in January that the investigation into the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky’s death had been prolonged until April 24.
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State Department Sends Mixed Message on Rights Bill
The Moscow Times
25 April 2012
The U.S. State Department says it is in favor of punishing Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses, but does not necessarily support a congressional bill designed for that aim.
Asked if the department encouraged or discouraged the so-called “Magnitsky bill,” spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said late Tuesday that “we do support the goals of the legislation,” according to the state department’s website.
Nuland also said it was wrong to link the bill to a repeal of the Jackson-Vanik legislation, something that is pitting President Barack Obama against a number U.S. lawmakers.
The bill is motivated by the death of Sergei Magnitsky, whose supporters say he was tortured to death in jail.
It was resubmitted to the House of Representatives last week, prompting Moscow’s Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak to warn that it would significantly hurt ties with Washington.
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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
