Posts Tagged ‘congress’
House takes lead on Russian human-rights bill
The House Foreign Affairs Committee this week will become the first panel to vote on human-rights legislation that lawmakers of both parties say is a precondition to normalizing trade relations with Russia.
The panel is scheduled to mark up the so-called Magnitsky bill, sponsored by U.S. Congressional Human Rights Commission co-chairman Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), on Thursday. The bill has the support of committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and is expected to easily pass the House despite Russian threats of retaliation.
“If this new anti-Russian law is adopted, then of course that demands measures in response,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Yuri Ushakov said last week.
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Urge Your Member of Congress to Co-Sponsor the Magnitsky Act (S. 1039 and H.R.4405)
More co-sponsors are needed to support the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in the U.S. Congress, and to ensure its passage. The legislation is essential as it is directed towards stemming human rights abuses and corruption in the Russian Federation.
As the recent fraudulent Duma and presidential elections have shown, along with Vladimir Putin’s return to the Russian presidency, the potential for continued abuses by the Russian state grows greater. The continual authoritarian backsliding of the regime, rampant corruption, human rights violations, and lack of accountability and cynicism towards rule of law endangers not only democratic forces within Russia, but poses threats to other countries, particularly neighboring ones like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
The Senate Magnitsky Act (S. 1039), introduced by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) on May 19, 2011 currently has 33 co-sponsors. The current House bill (H.R. 4405) was reintroduced on April 19 this year by Congressman James McGovern (D-MA), and currently has 23 co-sponsors. The coming few weeks will be critical for helping bring this legislation up for a vote.
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Replacement of Jackson-Vanik Amendment unacceptable – aide
ITAR-TASS
Russia considers unacceptable the replacement of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to a new decision by the U.S. authorities, presidential aide, Russia’s G-8 Sherpa Arkady Dvorkovich said.
Commenting on the upcoming talks between Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama, Dvorkovich told journalists on Thursday: “I don’t doubt that during the meeting, the names of Jackson and Vanik will come back although there is nothing to discuss because this is the internal problem of the American Administration.”
According to the presidential aide, if it necessary Russia is ready to talk about this. But “we don’t intend to the cancellation of this amendment by any means. Moreover, primarily American companies will be hurt by such actions”, Dvorkovich said.
He stressed that the attempts to replace the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to a new law, “which will solve problems and which seem to see by certain American senators, are unacceptable”.
In addition, Dvorkovich said, “We will be forced to react. But why our countries need this?”
The U.S. House of Representatives will discuss a bill that would impose financial and visa restrictions on Russian officials linked with the criminal persecution of the Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. It is expected that the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs will discuss it next week. The bill is an updated version of a previous legislation, introduced by McGovern and another Tom Lantos commission co-chairman, Frank Wolf. A similar bill has been introduced to the U.S. Senate by Senator Ben Cardin last May. The proposed U.S. legislation has sparked an angry reaction from the Russian authorities. The Obama Administration has been opposed to the bill, saying there was no need to pass special legislation to ban Russian officials allegedly linked to Magnitsky’s death from entering the United States. Earlier, Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak said this document “is America’s violent rejection of the principle of mutual respect in interstate relations”. займ срочно без отказов и проверок займ онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-in-america.php www.zp-pdl.com займы без отказа
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‘Obama has sided with Putin Against Congress’
How can Medvedev transmit that Obama will be “more flexible” after the election when the president is already doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding with Congress? Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl on the “Magnitsky bill” — a piece of legislation, authored by Democrats, that aims to restore human rights to the center of U.S.-Russian relations.
This sanction strikes at the heart of the web of corruption around Putin. Moscow’s bureaucratic mafiosi rely heavily on foreign bank accounts; they vacation in France, send their children to U.S. colleges and take refuge in London when they fall from Putin’s favor. The fear and loathing provoked in Moscow by the bill is encapsulated by item No. 3 on Putin’s new priority list: “Work actively on preventing unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the U.S. against Russian legal entities and individuals.”
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Russian Government Must be Held Accountable for Crackdown on Protest
CONTACT: Mary McGuire in Washington, +1-202-747-7035
Washington – May 7, 2012
The brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors this past weekend during a sanctioned peaceful protest in Moscow was an assault on Russians’ civil liberties. Freedom House condemns the crackdown and urges the U.S. Administration, Congress and other democratic states to support Russian citizens seeking to hold their government accountable to its international and constitutional commitments to respect and protect fundamental rights.
“The blatant use of force in the last two days sends a clear message that the days of tolerating opposition protests in Russia are a fleeting thing of the past,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “We wholeheartedly express our solidarity with Russian citizens’ exercising their right to free assembly. The return to intimidation techniques and detention of activists without cause are a desperate attempt to prevent protest activity in the country and should be widely condemned.”
In the lead-up to Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to his third term as president of the Russian Federation on May 6, police violently dispersed the so-called “March of Millions,” an opposition demonstration which authorities had earlier approved. Violating participants’ freedom to peacefully gather, law enforcement descended upon Moscow’s streets, gassed crowds, beat journalists and women, and detained up to 600 protestors, including three leading opposition figures. Officers have continued to detain participants well into Monday.
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Soviet Jewry group supports easing US-Russia trade
As the Obama administration tries to remove Russia from US legislation restricting trade between the two countries, it has allies from an unlikely corner: those who originally lobbied for the restriction on behalf of Russian Jewry.
The US wants to remove Russia from a list of former Soviet countries penalized economically under the Jackson-Vanick amendment, since the restriction could hurt American businesses once Russia joins the World Trade Organization as anticipated in the coming months.
The amendment hurts Russia’s trade status unless the US certifies each year that Russia is allowing its citizens to emigrate freely, a waiver the US began issuing after Russia let its Jewish population leave en masse for Israel and other countries in the 1990s. Because the waiver must be renewed annually, however, it prevents the US and Russia from having permanent normal trade relations.
Since WTO rules require that countries not have any trade barriers against member states, US companies doing business in Russia would be subject to penalties once Russia finishes the process of joining the organization.
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Putin’s Choice
Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin as Russia’s president was always a foregone conclusion. But, when he is sworn in on May 7, he will retake formal charge of a country whose politics – even Putin’s own political future – has turned unpredictable.
Putin’s return to the presidency, following a period of de facto control as prime minister, was supposed to signify a reassuring continuation of “business as usual” – a strong, orderly state devoid of the potentially destabilizing effects of multiparty democracy and bickering politicians.
Instead, the Russian people have now challenged the status quo. Their reaction to Putin’s plan – from the announcement last September that President Dmitri Medvedev would stand aside for his mentor, to the deeply flawed parliamentary and presidential elections – and their accumulated resentment of Kremlin cronies’ massive enrichment, has placed pressure on Putin and the top-down system of government that he created.
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Why the Magnitsky Act Makes Sense
Senator John Kerry recently postponed—once again—the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s consideration of the Sergey Magnitsky Act. This is wrong. Individual- and property-rights violations in Russia are undermining government legitimacy, destabilizing the country and preventing investment and business development—and the proposed Magnitsky Act can provide the tools to combat this sad state of affairs.
A weak rule of law and pervasive corruption—including the failing court and law-enforcement systems—are at the heart of these persistent rights violations, which reflect both the Soviet legacy and the older Russian tradition of the patrimonial state. Bad cops and courts are challenging everyday Russians, as well as Western and domestic investors. Top Russian leaders, including presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, have complained bitterly about the state of affairs but done little to improve things.
Now, Congress has a chance to press for trade reforms that are in the best interests of the United States while supporting the cause of human rights for all. The bipartisan bill was drafted in response to the death of Sergei Magnitsky. He died in detention following his whistle-blowing on massive fraud allegedly committed by Russian officials. It provides a practical and balanced way forward—something that can serve as a prerequisite for the lifting of the obsolete Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a 1974 restriction on trade with authoritarian regimes. The new Magnitsky Act would accommodate Russian membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) while signaling long-term American commitment to the rule of law beyond Jackson-Vanik.
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How to Get Autocrats to Bend
28 April 2012
Editorial
U.S. Representative Jim McGovern introduced an expanded Magnitsky act to Congress last week. The focus of the bill goes beyond the original legislation sponsored by Senator Ben Cardin, which targeted 60 Russian officials implicated in the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky in pretrial detention. McGovern’s bill contains an additional open clause that expands the same type of sanctions — visa bans and asset freezes — against Russian officials implicated in other cases involving “gross violations of human rights.”
Around the same time that U.S. lawmakers were working to tighten the screws on Russia, the European Union was seeing the results of similar economic sanctions on Belarus. Andrei Sannikov, an opposition presidential candidate in Belarus’ December 2010 election, and his campaign manager, Dmitry Bondarenko, were pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko and released on April 15 after serving 16 months in prison. The two, along with hundreds of others, were arrested for taking part in mass protests against Lukashenko’s landslide reelection, which independent monitors say was heavily rigged.
Belarussian political analysts and Sannikov himself believe that the dominant factor behind the pardons were EU economic and political sanctions levied against the Lukashenko regime in March.
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