Posts Tagged ‘BBC’
Mixing Human Rights and Trade Relations: Dealing with Today’s Russia
After trying for some two decades, Russia will join the World Trade Organization, or WTO, later this month. For the Kremlin, it’s a hugely symbolic moment. Russia has joined the club.
Russia’s entry to the WTO should make it easier for nations to trade with them. By some estimates, the US could double its exports to Russia in the next five years.
But there’s a catch: A Cold War law remains on the books, which prevents normal trade relations between the two countries. It’s a law that many US businesses, ranchers and farmers want removed immediately. American Unions want Congress to take a tougher stance with Russia. The World’s Jason Margolis has more.
To understand why US companies won’t be able to trade freely with Russia anytime soon, we need a brief history lesson.
In the 1970’s, Soviet Jews, many of whom faced persecution, were prevented from emigrating from the USSR. Svetlana Boym was one of them. She’s now a professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard University.
BOYM: “I was born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. I came to the United States as a refugee. The reason I was able to enter the United States and exit the former Soviet Union was thanks to the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.”
The “Jackson-Vanik Amendment” was passed by Congress in 1974. The Amendment denied equal trading rights to countries restricting emigration. It was designed to put pressure on Soviet leaders to open their borders. Many argue it worked. Some 1.5 million Soviet Jews were able to leave.
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Russia’s growth stifled by corruption
President Vladimir Putin has said he wants to make Russia the fifth-biggest economy in the world.
It currently stands at number 11.
He wants to boost foreign investment as part of his new economic plan.
But some foreign investors are worried about Mr Putin’s return as head of state for another term of six years after allegations of vote-rigging and protests both before and following his re-election.
Furthermore, despite Russia’s rich resources and its place among the world’s fastest-growing economies, there remains a general feeling that the country is underperforming and falling far short of its potential.
According to Angus Roxburgh, former BBC Moscow correspondent and later a public-relations adviser to the Kremlin, there is one overriding reason why Russia is failing to achieve its economic potential and failing to attract outside investors: corruption.
Worsening scenario
“It is something the government acknowledges but seems powerless to combat, despite a regular stream of anti-corruption decrees and initiatives,” he says.
“In fact, it gets worse year by year. According to official figures, the average bribe in Russia is more than $10,000,” he notes.
Transparency International, which ranks countries according to perceived levels of corruption, says Russia has slumped from 46th place in 1996 to 143rd in 2011 .
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Case closed in Russian jail death
Charges have been dropped against a doctor in the case of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail amid claims of torture and neglect.
Larisa Litvinova was one of two doctors facing charges. The case was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, reports said.
Mr Magnitsky, who worked for a Western investment fund, was detained after accusing officials of tax fraud.
He died after “deliberate and inhumane neglect”, a report found.
His high-profile death at the age of 37 was taken up by human rights groups as one of the most glaring examples of corruption and prison abuse in modern Russia.
He had suffered from pancreatitis and gallstones and had been found with broken fingers and bruising to his body, the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council said in July 2011. There were, it said, grounds to suspect that he had died as a result of a beating.
‘Inadvertent act’
Dr Litvinova was the head doctor at Butyrka maximum security prison in Moscow where Mr Magnitsky died in November 2009.
In a statement his investment fund, Hermitage Capital, said he had been directly under her care from 7 October 2009 and she had “refused all medical treatment” to him.
Hermitage Capital said that news of the charges against Dr Litvinova being dropped was conveyed to Sergei Magnitsky’s mother in a legal document from the Russian Investigative Committee’s lead investigator, Marina Lomonosova.
“The crime committed by [Dr Litvinova] is an inadvertent act for which the maximum sentence does not exceed three years. Currently, the crime… is considered by law as a crime of insignificant severity, for which the statute of limitation constitutes two years,” Ms Lomonosova said.
Hermitage Capital said that the decree releasing the jail’s head doctor from criminal liability was “the latest example of the reluctance within the Russian government to hold anyone accountable for Sergei Magnitsky’s death”.
A second prison doctor, Dmitry Kratov, is still facing negligence charges. hairy woman микрозаймы онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/apply-for-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php займ на карту срочно без отказа
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UK MPs to stage debate over Russia’s human rights record
Three former foreign secretaries are backing a Commons debate and vote on Russia’s human rights record which will take place next week.
It is widely expected that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will return as President in this weekend’s election.
The Commons debate will focus on the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer investigating tax fraud who was found dead in Moscow in 2009.
MPs claim it illustrates deeper and wider human rights problems in Russia.
The debate was granted after a request by Conservative Dominic Raab and former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband to the Commons Backbench Business Committee.
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Moscow protest: Thousands rally against Vladimir Putin
Tens of thousands of people have rallied in central Moscow in a show of anger at alleged electoral fraud.They passed a resolution “not to give a single vote to (PM) Vladimir Putin” at next year’s presidential elections.
Protest leader Alexei Navalny told the crowd to loud applause that Russians would no longer tolerate corruption.
“I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and [Government House] right now but we are peaceful people and won’t do that just yet,” he said.
Demonstrators say parliamentary elections on 4 December, which were won by Mr Putin’s party, were rigged. The government denies the accusation.
A spokesman for Mr Putin, currently Russian prime minister, later said that “the majority of the population” supported him, describing the protesters as a minority.
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Russians tire of corruption spectacle
The most successful political slogan in Russia this year has been one coined by the opposition.
Say the phrase “the party of crooks and thieves”, and almost everyone knows who you are talking about – the ruling party, Vladimir Putin’s United Russia.
Although United Russia looks likely to win again in parliamentary elections on Sunday, there is growing dissatisfaction in the country.
Over the past few years, people have seen bureaucrats and politicians buying mansions and luxury cars, way beyond anything their official salaries could pay for.
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US State Dept. Demands Answers in Russian Lawyer’s Death
Listen to radio Broadcast here: http://www.theworld.org/?powerpress_pinw=94788-podcast
The name Sergei Magnitsky is not well known in this country. He was a Russian lawyer. And two years ago this week, he was found dead in his prison cell in Moscow.
The event has had serious international repercussions. For one thing, it’s spiked tensions between the US and Russia.
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Magnitsky death: Falling ill in a Russian jail
The ongoing dispute over the death in custody of Russian corporate lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has drawn attention to the Moscow remand prison where he was being held.
The gates of Butyrka, one of Russia’s oldest prisons, could well be in a museum. Made of oak and hand-wrought steel, they were installed when the prison was built 240 years ago.
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Bill Browder: ‘It’s insane to do business in Russia’
Russia is a “terrible, terrible place to do business”, according to Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital, once the country’s largest portfolio investor.
He was speaking as the British prime minister met Russian leaders in an effort to improve relations.
Much of Mr Browder’s concern relates to lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was imprisoned as a healthy man without trial in November 2008, then died in jail a year later, aged 37.
A report by President Dmitry Medvedev’s human rights council concluded that there was reasonable suspicion that Mr Magnitsky’s death was triggered by beatings while in police custody.
Mr Magnitsky had claimed to have unearthed evidence that implicated the police, officials and bankers in a massive fraud, which used Hermitage as a vehicle.
In July Russian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into his death. микрозаймы онлайн займы на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php займ на карту срочно без отказа
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