Posts Tagged ‘congress’
U.S. clergy back Magnitsky bill
U.S. religious figures have supported the so-called Magnitsky bill imposing visa and financial restrictions on a number of Russian officials, which is due to be debated in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, Hermitage Capital said.
The letter sent to the Congress by nine religious organizations says that the passage of this bill will help prevent repressions against fighters for religious freedom, the company spokesperson told Interfax on Monday.
According to the letter, the possibility to visit to the United States is a privilege, and foreign officials involved in abuse, murders, restriction of religious freedoms and trampling on other people’s rights, must be deprived of this privilege, the spokesperson said.
The authors hope the sacrifice made by Sergei Magnitsky will not be in vain and will lead to a new important tool in fighting against the trampling on human rights globally, the Hermitage spokesman said.
The document was signed by religious groups representing various faiths, including the United Macedonian Diaspora, the International Religious Liberty Association, the American Islamic Congress, the Hindu American Foundation of Hindus, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and the Human Rights Law Foundation, he said.
Earlier, the U.S. Senate Committee on International Relations announced its decision to consider on June 19 the Magnitsky bill, which could impose visa and financial restrictions against a number of Russian officials. The bill is already among the documents due to be voted upon on June 19, the committee told Interfax. быстрые займы на карту hairy girl www.zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com buy over the counter medicines
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FPI Bulletin: Mr. President, Drop the Russian Reset
President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin met this morning on the sidelines of the G-20 Economic Summit in Mexico. Their bilateral meeting, however, came not only after Russian internal security services recently harassed, detained, and interrogated key political opposition leaders in response to large anti-government protests in Moscow, but also as the Kremlin continues its support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s bloody campaign against opposition groups and civilians.
For over two years, the Obama administration has argued that its policy of “resetting” relations with Russia would lead to the Kremlin’s strong cooperation on a broad range of international issues. However, as the Foreign Policy Initiative has argued, it is clear that the Russian Reset has failed to fully yield the promised results.
Moscow continues to shield the Assad regime in the U.N. Security Council, and bolster Assad with air defenses and other military means. It opposes imposing crippling sanctions against Iran, even as Iranian efforts are bringing it ever closer to nuclear weapons-making capability. It continually excuses North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile provocations. More recently, the Kremlin has threatened retaliation if Congress passes the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. Named after an anti-corruption lawyer who died after being tortured in a Russian prison, the Magnitsky Act would impose a set of wide-ranging sanctions against Russian officials responsible for internal human rights violations and corruption.
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Punish the Russian abusers
Washington Post
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S hopes of forging a partnership with Vladimir Putin after his return to the Russian presidency appear to be fading fast. With a meeting between the two presidents due Monday, Russia is rebuffing U.S. appeals for cooperation in stopping the massacres in Syria, while continuing to supply the regime of Bashar al-Assad with weapons. Meanwhile the Kremlin is cracking down on Russians seeking democratic reform or fighting corruption. This month a prominent journalist was forced to flee the country after a senior government official reportedly threatened to kill him.
Apart from occasional public expressions of exasperation, the administration isn’t reacting much to the cold wind from Moscow. Instead it is pressing Congress to pass a piece of legislation much sought by Mr. Putin: repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which conditions trade preferences for Russia on free emigration. On its face the repeal makes sense; if the law is not changed, U.S. companies will be disadvantaged when Russia joins the World Trade Organization this summer. But a bill that grants Russia trade preferences and removes human rights conditions hardly seems the right response to Mr. Putin’s recent behavior.
That’s why momentum in Congress appears to be swinging behind a bipartisan initiative to couple the Jackson-Vanik repeal with a new human rights provision. The Magnitsky act, whose prime author has been Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), would sanction Russian officials “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
The bill is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who uncovered a $230 million embezzlement scheme by Russia tax and interior ministry officials, then was imprisoned by those same officials and subjected to mistreatment that led to his death. The bill is due to be taken up Tuesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could later be attached to the Russia trade bill under a deal struck between Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The appeal of the legislation is its sharp focus: It will affect only those found to be involved in Mr. Magnitsky’s death or the mistreatment of other Russians fighting corruption or abuses of human rights. It would punish people like the senior law enforcement official who allegedly threatened to kill Sergei Sokolov of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, then appoint himself investigator of the crime. Those sanctioned will be denied the U.S. visas they prize, and their dollar bank accounts — often used to siphon illicit gains out of the country — will be frozen. Importantly, their names will be published, which could make them pariahs elsewhere in the West.
Aware that the Magnitsky bill is needed to pass the trade legislation, the administration has been seeking to gut the former by introducing language that would allow the State Department to waive sanctions or the publication of names on national security grounds. Some waiver authority may be appropriate if it is narrowly cast; senators are considering a provision that would allow the names of some of those sanctioned to be classified temporarily on a case-by-case basis. What’s most important is that Congress send Mr. Putin and his cadres the message that their lawless behavior will have consequences. онлайн займы срочный займ на карту онлайн https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php быстрые займы на карту
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The Magnitsky Act and Implications for Russia-U.S. Relations
Throughout the Cold War the U.S. Congress sought to penalize the Soviet Union for its human rights record. Legislation such as the Jackson-Vanik amendment became a long-term influence on bilateral trade between the two countries. That tradition was reinvigorated this past week, when the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, in a rare example of bipartisanship. This has potentially important implications for future of bilateral trade with Russia, which is expected to join the World Trade Organization later this year. Passage of the Act just prior to President Obama’s meeting with President Putin in Mexico this coming week adds greater complexity to the cooling bilateral relationship between Russia and the U.S., and enhances the prospect of further deterioration.
The Act is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer representing Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund and asset management company that was dismantled by Russian authorities after it was accused of tax evasion. Magnitsky implicated top officials in a $230 million tax refund fraud against the Russian government. In 2008 he was arrested and died in prison after spending a year in pretrial detention; the case against him is ongoing posthumously. The U.S. State Department issued visa bans on several dozen Russian officials in connection to the Magnitsky case in 2011. Russia imposed travel bans on several U.S. officials in response.
After the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s approval of the bill, two additional committees (most likely the finance and judiciary committees since it deals with financial sanctions and criminal prosecution) must approve the bill or waive jurisdiction. Once passed in the House, the Senate is expected to introduce its own version of the bill for review.
The Obama administration has been opposed to the Act for two reasons, arguing that it will put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage in Russia, making it harder for them to compete, and possibly prompting the Russian government to favor non-U.S. suppliers or freeze U.S. corporate assets in the country. Adoption of the Act may also be inconsistent, if not oppositional, to another bill, which would grant Russia Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) as required under WTO rules.
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Russia Bans 11 U.S. Officials Over Guantanamo And Abu Ghraib
Russia barred 11 serving and former U.S. administration officials for human rights abuses at facilities including Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The ban on entry to Russia was enacted last year in retaliation for a U.S. visa ban for 11 Russian officials accused of playing a role in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said in an e-mailed statement.
“These people are linked to high-profile human rights abuses, including torture and abuse of detainees in special prisons set up by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in Guantanamo, Bagram in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq,” Ushakov said. Russia hadn’t previously made public the exact nature of its response to the U.S. visa ban, which was announced in July last year.
Russia is warning of further steps if Congress passes a law that would impose U.S. travel and financial curbs on any official abusing human rights in Russia, including all 60 people suspected of involvement in Magnitsky’s death in a Moscow jail in 2009. Ushakov criticized what he termed as an “anti- Russian” step that would complicate ties as Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama prepare to meet on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Mexico.
The U.S. Supreme Court in December 2009 refused to revive a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other military leaders by four British men who said they were tortured while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, a detention center at the U.S. military base in Cuba. Abu Ghraib photographs showing U.S. guards mistreating inmates surfaced in 2004.
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A real hero of Russia
Supposedly nobody likes a snitch. Presumably nobody who’s honest likes crooks either. That poses a moral conundrum. Not for the corrupt and the crooked infecting society. They’re incorrigible. But it does raise a problem for decent whistle blowers who too often pay a bigger price than the bad people they out.
That sticky moral dilemma can have negative effects in democracies where honesty and integrity are supposed to be valued above all else, and also in corrupt autocracies where they are not.
In many places, being honest will get you not just shunned and fired, but killed. That’s particularly true in Russia, where the government and the businesses it controls under President Vladimir Putin have become dens of thieves, and some say murderers too.
Putin recently won a new term in a rigged election. He was in China this week commiserating with the masters of Russia’s old Cold War ally about how the world – and the United States in particular – gives neither of them sufficient respect and keeps telling them what to do: Like stop behaving like a mafia, and stop beating, terrorizing and jailing political dissidents and their families.
Putin is particularly upset because the U.S. Congress is threatening to punish some really rich Russian officials for stealing a foreign-run investment fund and allegedly murdering the tax lawyer who uncovered the crime.
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U.S. Senate Committee to Vote on Magnitsky List June 19
The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will vote on its version the so-called Magnitsky List bill on June 19, according to the hearings schedule published on its website.
The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, with amendments, seeks to impose visa bans and asset freezes on the Russian officials involved in the alleged torture and murder of 37-year-old Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky as well as in other gross human rights abuses in Russia.
The House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee has already approved its version of the bill and moved it to the House floor to be voted on at a later date.
The U.S. National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) has urged the Congress to oppose the legislation as it would most likely hurt U.S.-Russian trade and badly damage U.S.-Russian ties.
Magnitsky was arrested on tax evasion charges in November 2008, just days after accusing police investigators in a $230 million tax refund fraud, and died after almost a year in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center in Moscow.
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Obama set to press Putin on Syria at G20
After a week when it sometimes felt as if the cold war had never ended, Barack Obama will finally get some quiet time on Monday with Vladimir Putin to press the new Russian president on the crisis in Syria.
With senior diplomats from both countries trading unusually aggressive barbs in recent days, Mr Obama plans to use a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Mexico to privately test whether the US and Russia can find common ground on Syria, according to senior US officials.
The first encounter between the two presidents since Mr Putin’s return to presidential office will be a critical showdown in the diplomacy of the Syrian crisis. But it also will provide an indication of where US-Russia relations are headed under a leader who has a notoriously sceptical view of US power – and who declined to attend last month’s G8 summit at Camp David, a move many interpreted as a snub.
Mr Obama faces the delicate task of trying to forge a good working relationship with Mr Putin while Congress is moving close to passing the Magnitsky bill, which criticises Russia’s human rights record.
Complicating matters even more, Mr Obama is in the midst of an election campaign in which his Republican opponent is looking to pounce on any signs of concessions.
“The Magnitsky case … supports my point that we are in for much more difficult times in the relationship with the US,” says Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
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Vanik and Magnitsky vs. Mother Russia
The Senate of the U.S. Congress is ready to adopt a bill to abolish the Jackson-Vanik Amendment by early August. However, the abolition of the amendment is linked to the adoption of the law on sanctions against Russian nationals allegedly involved in the violation of human rights. This is the so-called “Magnitsky list” authored by Senator Benjamin Cardin.
“I support this position and I guarantee that these two important draft laws (on trade with Russia and the “Magnitsky list “) can be linked together, will be discussed by the (financial) Committee and adopted by the Senate this year, possibly before the recess in August,” said on Tuesday head of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baukus. He emphasized that he intended to achieve the acceptance of such a bill as quickly as possible.
Judging by the statements made by the U.S. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, the U.S. administration did not object to adopting the new bill. On the one hand, there is interest in lifting Jackson-Vanik amendment. This has more reasons than its archaism. The Obama administration believes that the amendment causes obstacles for the American businessmen first of all.
Victoria Nuland made a statement in this regard. According to her, in the case of any issues American businesses will not be able to bill Russia under the WTO rules while this legislation (i.e., amendment) is in place because they would not meet the requirements.
As for the “Magnitsky list”, until recently the U.S. administration was against linking it to the abolition of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. Moreover, last year the State Department tried to be proactive, making a list of the Russians who are banned from entering the U.S. territory. However, the names were not named (as opposed to the list of Cardin). The only thing that Washington has achieved was a counter-list from Russia.
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