After Jackson-Vanik
The Obama Administration’s “reset” with Russia has muffled concerns over human rights and democracy and dwelled on business palatable to the Kremlin like nuclear proliferation and trade. The Senate now has an opportunity to restore balance to this relationship.
Days after Vladimir Putin won another manipulated election, President Obama responded by calling for the Senate to repeal the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links trade access to Moscow’s treatment of its citizens. The dispute in Washington isn’t whether Jackson-Vanik should stay in place, but what should follow.
With Russia set to join the World Trade Organization this summer, American companies would be hurt by Jackson-Vanik, which blocks the U.S. from granting normal trading status. Under WTO rules, Russia could adopt retaliatory tariffs. Even Russian opposition leaders consider Jackson-Vanik a “relic,” as Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov wrote in these pages Thursday. They support its repeal. As do we.
The problem is that the White House doesn’t want anything else put in its place to hold the Kremlin to account for human-rights abuses. Some senior Senators disagree, and they support a worthy successor to Jackson-Vanik.
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Echoes of 1970s Debate Resurface Over Current Russia Trade Bill
History is sometimes cyclical.
In 1974, Congress was debating the Jackson-Vanik amendment that would restrict most-favored-nation treatment to the Soviet Union and tie trade relaxation to Soviet willingness to allow Jewish emigration to Israel. The leader of this fight was the late Senator Henry Martin Jackson of Washington, a paragon of friendship to Israel and the Jewish people.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger led the fight against the amendment, claiming that the Soviet Union would view it as intervention into its internal affairs and that as a proud superpower, it would only stiffen its position on Jewish emigration; therefore, quiet diplomacy was the preferred tactic.
In the congressional hearings, American businesses and particularly the Business Roundtable, lobbied strongly against the amendment. It was 1973 and the US economy was reeling due to the aftereffects of a costly Vietnam War and the hike in oil prices following the Yom Kippur war.
It was important for American business to trade with the Soviet Union at a time that the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries were massively buying Western goods and technology in the hope of jumpstarting their economies. The Jackson-Vanik amendment would effectively close the door to American business and make sure that the Europeans would have the Russian market to themselves.
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Mr. Cardin for U.S. Senate
MARYLAND, ONE OF the nation’s most lopsidedly Democratic states, has elected just one Republican (former governor Robert L. Ehrlich) to statewide office in 30 years. With no sign of a GOP resurgence, the Democratic primary this April 3, not the general election in November, is likely to settle the race for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Benjamin L. Cardin.
Mr. Cardin, who is seeking reelection, deserves a second term. He faces eight Democratic challengers — the only plausible one, state Sen. C. Anthony Muse, is a church pastor in Prince George’s County — but none is his equal as a lawmaker. Highly regarded for his legislative know-how, Mr. Cardin has staked out a substantive agenda as an environmentalist at home and an outspoken advocate of human rights abroad.
In the Senate and, before that, for 20 years in the House of Representatives, he has been a champion of legislation that is helping to revive the Chesapeake Bay. A commissioner of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, he has also been one of the most important American critics of Russia’s disgraceful record on human rights, which the Obama administration has soft-peddled. He has led the charge to impose sanctions, including denying U.S. visas, on Russian officials responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in custody after exposing a massive tax fraud involving the Russian government.
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Morning Bits
Sorry, but when the administration is opposed to putting sanctions on perpetrators of human right abuses, there is a problem. At issue is the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011 — legislation meant to promote human rights in Russia that is named for the anti-corruption lawyer who died in a Russian prison, after allegedly being tortured, two years ago”: “Those who support repealing Jackson-Vanik without any replacement human-rights legislation include [Sen. Max] Baucus, the Obama administration, large sections of the business community, and the Russian government. Moscow has already praised and promoted the officials accused of torturing Magnitsky for their investigation into the case, and has now begun retrying Magnitsky for criminal tax violations — even though he is dead.” Good grief. займ на карту без отказов круглосуточно займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php микрозаймы онлайн
Russia-US stand apart over Magnitsky bill
The US senate is considering a resounding rap on the knuckles to Russia, in a bill that went before Congress on Thursday, lambasting the rule of law in Russia and condemning a raft of officials whom supporters of dead lawyer Sergei Magnitsky accuse of corruption and complicity in his death.
A bipartisan bill sponsored by 15 senators proposes to again freeze the assets and block visas of individuals who Washington sees as committing gross human rights violations against Russian human rights activists.
The Russian foreign ministry said the bill was “regrettable,” RIA Novosti reported.
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Kasparov & Nemtsov: Sanction Putin’s Criminals
On Thursday, the U.S. Senate will hold a hearing to discuss the accession of Russia to the World Trade Organization and the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that impedes American trade relations with Russia. The Obama administration has portrayed it as little more than overdue Cold War housekeeping while touting the imagined economic benefits for American farmers that could result from freer trade with Russia.
But the reality on the ground in today’s authoritarian Russia is far more complex. We support the repeal, both as leaders of the pro-democracy opposition in Russia and as Russian citizens who want our nation to join the modern global economy. It is essential, however, to see the bigger picture of which Jackson-Vanik is a part.
The “election” of Vladimir Putin to the presidency is over, but the fight for democracy in Russia is just beginning. At both major opposition meetings following the fraudulent March 4 election, we publicly resolved that Mr. Putin is not the legitimate leader of Russia. The protests will not cease and we will continue to organize and prepare for a near future without Mr. Putin in the presidency. Getting rid of him and his cronies is a job for Russians, and we do not ask for foreign intervention. We do, however, ask that the U.S. and other leading nations of the Free World cease to provide democratic credentials to Mr. Putin. This is why symbols matter, and why Jackson-Vanik still matters.
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Stealing the Future in Russia
The Other Russia
The adjective “Orwellian” has become cheap currency in modern political discourse. Liberals and conservatives alike in open democracies like the United Kingdom and the United States enjoy using the term to describe nearly any infringement on civil liberties by the state. Video cameras to deter crime, wiretaps of suspected terrorists, security checks at airports – all have been deemed worthy reference to George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984. As much as I share these concerns, those of us who live in actual police states would prefer to preserve the power of the vocabulary required to describe our circumstances.
The most powerful theme in Orwell’s book is not that of the all-seeing Big Brother, but that of the control and distortion of language, especially in the form of newspeak. Words take on inverted meanings, terms expressing unapproved ideas are eliminated, and human thought itself is curtailed through the reduction and simplification of vocabulary. This attempt to warp reality via information control is not science fiction to anyone brought up on Pravda in the Soviet Union – or anyone living in Putin’s Russia today.
And so, the presidential election of March 4 — the most fraudulent in Russian history — is proclaimed “fair and clean” by the state-controlled media. Peaceful civilian protests are dubbed “extremist provocations” and the riot police who brutally suppress the protestors are “maintaining order.” The public outcry over fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections was followed by even greater corruption and the preordained reinstallation of a KGB lieutenant colonel who clearly aims to install himself as dictator-for-life.
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Trudy Rubin: Russian justice often depends upon a bribe
Two weeks ago, during a trip to Moscow, I visited an amazing family that symbolized the dynamism of the new Russia. On Thursday the husband, Alexei Kozlov, was sentenced to five years in prison.
The story of Kozlov and his journalist wife, Olga Romanova, is one of hope that Russia can change, and of despair that the old order will crush reformers. His case is a grim reminder that Russia will never reach its full potential as a developed nation until it institutes the rule of law.
We met in the couple’s comfortable Moscow apartment, where china cabinets and bookshelves lined the walls. As we sat at the kitchen table, the tall, boyish Alexei (who spent a month at Penn State in 1994) pored over legal papers while the short, vivacious Olga told me their story, interrupted by frequent phone calls from supporters.
In 2007 she published an unflattering newspaper article about a Russian oligarch who was close to the Kremlin and also knew her husband’s business partner. The partner argued with her husband about the article. Shortly afterward, Alexei was arrested and jailed on charges of money laundering and fraud; he believes the business partner paid someone to have charges brought against him.
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More senators oppose lifting trade sanctions on Russia
Four more senators joined the opposition to repealing the Jackson-Vanik trade sanctions law against Russia on Friday, unless that repeal is accompanied by a new law specifically targeting human rights violators inside the Russian government.
Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), John McCain (R-AZ), and Roger Wicker (R-MS) wrote a letter Friday to Senate Finance Committee heads Max Baucus (D-MT) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to let them know that they oppose Baucus’s effort to repeal the 1974 Jackson-Vanik law unless it is replaced with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011 — legislation meant to promote human rights in Russia that is named for the anti-corruption lawyer who died in a Russian prison, after allegedly being tortured, two years ago.
Without repeal of the Jackson-Vanik law, U.S. businesses can’t take full advantage of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, but the senators believe that the Magnitsky bill is needed to ensure the Russian government is not let off the hook for their deteriorating record on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.
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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
