Posts Tagged ‘Cardin’
US Senate panel may vote on Russian human rights bill
Human rights legislation named after an anti-graft lawyer who died in a Russian jail is likely to be considered by a U.S. Senate committee this spring, the panel’s chairman Senator John Kerry said on Tuesday.
The Sergei Magnitsky bill would require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians or others with links to his detention and death, as well as those who commit human rights violations against other whistle-blowers like him.
The 2009 death of the 37-year-old Magnitsky, who worked for equity fund Hermitage Capital and died after a year in Russian jails, spooked investors and tarnished Russia’s image. The Kremlin human rights council says he was probably beaten to death.
Before his arrest, he had testified against Russian interior ministry officials during a tax evasion case against Hermitage.
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US trade upgrade may worsen relations with Russia
The Obama administration wants Congress to remove Soviet-era trade restrictions that have been a sore point in U.S.-Russia relations for decades. But the conditions lawmakers are demanding to make the change may only worsen America’s increasingly shaky relations with Moscow.
Republicans and Democrats are trying to tie the easing of the so-called Jackson-Vanik restrictions to a measure imposing sanctions against Russian officials linked to human rights abuses. That would infuriate Russia and would be the latest hitch in what administration officials consider a major foreign policy success: improved relations with Russia after a sharp downturn during the Bush administration. They call it the “reset.”
Obama administration officials are trying to keep the rights and trade measures apart. They are concerned about retaliation and do not want to aggravate relations further. Tensions have been growing over issues like missile defense and the international response to uprisings in Libya and Syria. But the U.S. still hopes for a degree of cooperation with Russia on other matters, such as stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
“We want to deal with trade issues in one sphere and democracy issues and human rights in another sphere,” said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia.
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Russia’s Steve Biko; What Sergei Magnitsky’s brutal death tells us about the Kremlin’s leadership
In 1977, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko was arrested by South African police, clubbed to within an inch of his life, chained, stripped, manacled, denied care and ultimately left to die in a car. More appalling was the apartheid regime’s response to his murder: denial, followed by coverup, followed by professions of indifference to Biko’s suffering.
For the generation of Westerners that came politically of age in anti-apartheid rallies—Barack Obama’s generation—Biko’s name became a byword for everything they were fighting against. So it is with most revolutionary movements. It’s not sufficient to have the example of great heroes in the mold of a Walesa or Suu Kyi or Mandela. They also require great victims: Men and women who, in the manner of their dying, demonstrate why it is their victimizers who must perish instead.
Last year, the Arab world found its Biko in Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. Now Russia may find its own Biko in the memory of Sergei Magnitsky, a mild-mannered, middle-class tax attorney from Moscow who spent the last of his 37 years in a filthy Russian prison before dying in November 2009 of medical neglect and physical torture.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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