Russia Slams Sweden over Magnitsky List
Russian diplomats denounced the call by Swedish lawmakers for a Europe-wide blacklist of Russian officials implicated in the prison death of whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
The proposal is “an unfriendly step against Russia, an attempt to interfere in internal affairs of another state and a disrespect of the concept of its Judiciary’s independence,” the Russian Embassy in Stockholm said in a press release on Friday.
The check into the death of Magnitsky, who died in 2009 after 11 months in pretrial detention of health problem and, allegedly, a beating by prison guards, is still ongoing, the embassy said.
The “politicized initiative … has nothing to do with genuine concern about human rights” and should not be supported by the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, or the country’s government, the embassy said.
Fifty-nine of 349 Riksdag members have petitioned their government earlier to blacklist dozens of Russian officials linked to Magnitsky’s case for European Union entry and freeze their assets in Europe. A similar ban was proposed in 2010 by the U.S. Congress and is still under consideration. unshaven girl срочный займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php займ на карту
Moscow single-person pickets to protest against Magnitsky case resumption
One-person pickets will be staged outside the Russian Interior Ministry on March 24 in protest over the re-opening of a criminal case against Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail in 2009, For Democratic Russia committee activist Natalya Pelevina told Interfax.
Pelevina said that City Hall recently rejected her application for permission to hold a rally against such steps.
“Following City Hall’s denial, we decided to hold single-person pickets to protest against police arbitrariness in Sergei Magnitsky’s case. We will come to the Interior Ministry building in Moscow on March 24,” she said.
Several prominent opposition members, including Boris Nemtsov, have agreed to join the action, she said. онлайн займ займы онлайн на карту срочно female wrestling https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php займ на карту срочно без отказа
Return on Investment
Conventional wisdom – and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul – say that providing financial aid to foreign countries is a shameful waste of U.S. taxpayers dollars. However, a recent story in the New York Times suggests that this common believe, believe it or not, American politicians could actually be wrong on this point.
According to the story, in 1989, Congress approved legislation allowing the investment of U.S. federal funds in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia – to help them develop market economies. Far from being wasted, these investments turned to be quite successful, having generated a lofty $2.3 billion in returns. Part of the proceeds was returned to the Treasury, but some of the money has been stuck in Congress for years. Now, the Obama Administration wants to redirect a $50 million generated by the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund into a “civil society fund” that would underwrite democracy promotion in Russia.
The timing of the announcement is hardly coincidental. The Obama Administration has finally gotten serious about repealing the Jackson-Vanik amendment, the notorious relic of the Cold War that still deprives Russia of the permanent normal trade relations status as a punishment for restricting Jewish emigration in the 1970s. The effort has been met with a stiff resistance by the Republicans on Capitol Hill. While agreeing with the White House that the amendment should go – as keeping it on the books now, that Russia is joining the WTO, will hurt interests of American companies – Republicans argue that something else should be put in place to hold Moscow accountable for what they habitually call “human-right abuses.”
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“Not Even Stalin Did That”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee met yesterday on the heels of the tainted Russian election that put Vladimir Putin back in power. (He never left.)
A top observer characterized Russia’s leadership as “corrupt, rotten and rotting.” A quarter to a third of the economy is lost to corruption, it’s believed. $84 billion in capital flight last year alone.
Human rights abuses abound. The head of an investment fund told the story of Sergei Magnitsky, his Moscow lawyer. In 2008, Magnitsky uncovered evidence of police corruption and embezzlement. He was dead eleven months later – imprisoned, beaten and denied critical medical treatment. One Committee member called this testimony “one of the most powerful the Committee has ever heard.” Magnitsky’s case has become a cause célèbre in Russia, an example of the systemic corruption and abuse of power that has driven tens of thousands of protesters to Moscow’s streets recently.
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Why Magnitsky is Good for Business
Momentum is building in the US press for passage of the Magnitsky Act. After the liberal initially won the mindshare advocating only repeal of JVA with no further action (i.e. with this ambiguous and wimpy New York Times piece), yesterday, the Wall Street Journal rightly called Magnitsky “a bi-partisan challenge to Obama’s blind spot on Russia”:
For two years, the White House has scuttled the Magnitsky bill. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, who dreams of the top job at Foggy Bottom in a second Obama term, refuses to hold hearings. Mike McFaul, the new ambassador to Russia, last week called it “redundant” because the State Department put some Russian officials on a visa black list last year. He didn’t mention that it only did so in response to Senate pressure and in an effort to pre-empt Senate action. Nor did he say that, unlike the Magnitsky bill, State didn’t publicly name names or ban them from using the U.S. banking system.
Russian opposition leader Ilya Yashin blogs today in a post made “best post of the day” in favour of retiring the Jackson-Vanik Amendment but passing the Magnitsky Act. He describes a recent meeting with Ambassador McFaul about JVA — and it’s good that Russian opposition figures are making clear their support for the Magnitsky bill since McFaul tried to portray the opposition as only interested in JVA.
He then talks about how Russia should not be punished and kept out of the modern world economy and JVA is essentially an anachronism. Ok.
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Moscow authorities prohibit rally calling for justice for Sergei Magnitsky
City officials denied permission Monday for a rally on behalf of a lawyer who died in police custody in 2009, revealing deep sensitivity to a case that has provoked accusations of high-level corruption here and set off threats of sanctions as far away as Washington.
The death of Sergei L. Magnitsky has prompted debates in Congress and among lawmakers, human rights advocates and the Obama administration over how U.S. foreign policy should address trade issues and human rights abuses in Russia.
Moscow authorities have refused to allow a rally on Saturday calling for justice for Magnitsky, even as they have permitted a series of provocative demonstrations during which Russians shouted insults directed at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, only recently an unimaginable situation.
“How can you say rallying for justice is wrong?” asked Natalia Pelevine, a playwright and activist who applied for the permit. “Justice is wrong?”
She said city officials, who could not be reached for comment Monday evening, told her that such a gathering would influence court proceedings.
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Replace Jackson-Vanik With the Magnitsky Act
A number of opposition leaders — including myself, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny and others — recently made an appeal to the U.S. Congress. We proposed that Congress repeal the outdated 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment and replace it with a tough Magnitsky act. The proposed law would allow the United States to target sanctions against more than 60 specific Russian politicians and officials who are directly responsible for the death of citizens, for illegally seizing the property of others and for falsifying elections.
Not everyone understood our position on Jackson-Vanik correctly — as if we had somehow become soft on Russia’s poor human rights record. They couldn’t be more wrong. Our position differs substantially from that of the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, and even more from the position taken by Kremlin hard-liners.
President-elect Vladimir Putin, in dealing with the West, would like to exclude any discussion of democracy, human rights and corruption. This would get in the way of the ruling elite’s main goals: to reap profits from the sale of the country’s natural resources and to transfer those funds into safe havens in the West.
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City Hall Refuses Permission for Magnitsky Rally
Moscow City Hall has refused to grant permission for a March 24 protest against alleged police misconduct in the case of former Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, protest organizer Natalia Pelyevina said in an email to journalists.
Pelyevina, who is coordinator for the organization Committee for Democratic Russia, told Interfax that City Hall based the refusal on the grounds that the event “may influence the judicial process” in the Magnitsky case.
The group had planned an event for March 24 on Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad as a show of support for Magnitsky’s relatives and to protest what it called “police violence” in the case.
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Why Russia’s Opposition Supports the Magnitsky Act
Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center
Last week The New York Times published an interesting story articulating, somewhat by mistake, a profound irony at the heart of the Russia’s contentious political debate: both the opposition as well as their tormentor, Vladimir Putin, believe it’s high time to normalize trade relations with the United States. Where they differ, is on what should remain in place as a check on human rights abuses.
Currently Russia is denied Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) due to the antiquated Jackson-Vanik amendment, a Cold-War-era trade-restricting apparatus put in place to guarantee emigration rights for Soviet Jews. Russia’s opposition thinks repealing Jackson-Vanik-a top priority for President Obama-will deny Putin “a very useful tool” for his “anti-American propaganda machine…helping him to depict the United States as hostile to Russia using outdated Cold War tools to undermine Russia’s international competitiveness,” while Putin and his allies want the lower tariffs and other perks PNTR provides.
But most media coverage failed to capture the most significant position included in the opposition’s statement: they indicate their support for “smarter” sanctions such as the Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act to replace JV. In order for one antiquated law to be taken off the books, they are asking for a more modern one to take its place: legislation meant to promote human rights in Russia that is named for the anti-corruption lawyer who died in a Russian prison two years ago after being denied medical care. More importantly, the new legislation specifically targets individual bureaucrats who have been accused of human rights abuses and corruption in a high effective manner, leaving all other normal Russian citizens the full
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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
