Posts Tagged ‘congress’
Russia trade bill stands at the ready
Better late …: After months of delays, the House is prepared to pass a bill normalizing trade relations with Russia before heading off for some turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie.
Pressure from business groups has been intense on the issue, with the National Association of Manufacturers fanning out and knocking on 100 doors on Capitol Hill on Thursday to round up support.
The bill also includes language related to human rights in Russia, which specifically calls for denying U.S. visas to Russian officials involved in the 2009 death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, as well as the freezing of any U.S. assets of those officials.
But Democrats said Thursday that the inclusion of the Magnitsky language makes it easy to support the bill, because it is now much more than just a regular trade bill.
Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Democrats can vote for the bill “with good conscience” because of the Magnitsky language. He and other lawmakers are looking to expand the language to include global human rights violations.
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Congressman McGovern remarks on the Rule for HR 6156, the Magnitsky Bill
Congressman McGovern remarks on the Rule for HR 6156, the Magnitsky Bill
I thank the gentleman from California, the honorable Chairman of the Rules Committee, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. And I thank him for bringing this rule to the floor. He and I co-authored a “Dear Colleague” in support of the underlying legislation, and it was a pleasure to work with him on this important bill.
M. Speaker, H.R. 6156 joins together two pieces of legislation that deal with trade and human rights in the Russian Federation. The distinguished Chairman has provided a clear description of the provisions in the bill that grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations – or PNTR – to the nations of Moldova and the Russian Federation. It is fairly straightforward.
Simply put, after more than 18 years of negotiations, Russia joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in August. That membership will require Russia – for the first time – to play by the same rules of trade as the United States and virtually every other nation in the world.
But, under WTO rules, the United States cannot take advantage of Russia’s WTO membership unless and until Congress grants Russia “permanent normal trade relations,” replacing the 1974 special bilateral agreement with Russia known as the “Jackson-Vanik” amendment.
The United States is not required to change any U.S. law as a result of Russia’s WTO membership, other than this change to the 1974 trade law. This is in contrast to bilateral free trade agreements, where the United States is required to provide duty-free treatment.
If that were all there was to H.R. 6156, it would pass or fail along familiar lines of trade-related legislation. But H.R. 6156 will become known as a landmark piece of trade legislation not because it grants PNTR for Russia and Moldova, but because it includes Title IV, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.
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The Sergei Magnitsky Act and Human Rights
Senators Ben Cardin (D–MD) and Jon Kyl (R–AZ) have joined together to sponsor a modern piece of human rights legislation, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act.
The legislation is designed to punish gross violators of human rights while allowing the U.S. to extend permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Russia.
Sergei Magnitsky was a 37-year-old attorney and accountant who worked for Hermitage, then the largest Western private equity fund in Russia. In the course of his work, he uncovered a giant corruption scheme that involved embezzlements of $230 million from the Russian Treasury by law enforcement and tax officials. After making accusations, he was arrested on fabricated tax evasion and tax fraud charges.
Magnitsky died in isolation at a Russian prison, where he was denied medical care and beaten mercilessly by guards, as confirmed by an investigation by the Russian Presidential Council on Human Rights.
Although the Magnitsky Act is targeted toward human rights abuses in Russia, Cardin and Kyl would apply the act to major human rights violators based in all countries.
Congress should extend PNTR to Russia so the U.S. can benefit from that country’s recent admission to the World Trade Organization. This would mean that Russia would no longer be subject to the Jackson–Vanik Amendment, an important tool for promoting human rights during the Cold War that is no longer relevant in the 21st century.
Replacing the Jackson–Vanik Amendment with the Magnitsky Act would more effectively encourage Russia—and other countries that systematically abuse human rights—to respect the rights of their citizens. займ онлайн на карту без отказа hairy girl zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займ срочно без отказов и проверок
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Bill sustains fight against human-rights abuses
In 2008, a young Russian attorney chose to do something courageous. That man, Sergei Magnitsky, took the daring — and in his country, unprecedented — step of publicly exposing a vast web of corruption and tax fraud presided over by some of Russia’s most senior officials. Those authorities, stung by his insolence, quickly arranged for Magnitsky to be tossed in jail on trumped-up charges. Over the course of a year, he was beaten, tortured and denied medical treatment; he ultimately died on Nov. 16, 2009.
Magnitsky could then have become just another statistic, another smothered voice for freedom, another example of the corrupt prevailing over the crusading.
Fortunately, that did not happen. Magnitsky’s story found a voice through a diverse coalition of human-rights activists, business leaders, academics, think tank scholars and journalists — a coalition that helped inspire us to draft bipartisan Senate legislation that would hold accountable officials from all over the world who disregard basic human rights, who fail to uphold the rule of law and who unjustly jail, abuse and murder whistle-blowers like Magnitsky.
Indeed, despite our differences on other issues, we both agree on the need for this so-called Magnitsky bill.
The United States has long been a global leader in the fight against corruption and human-rights abuses, and there is broad, bipartisan support in Congress for continuing to honor that important tradition. However, even as the House and Senate have begun to advance versions of this legislation as part of a comprehensive legislative package to grant normal trade relations to Russia (and in so doing, repeal Cold War-era Jackson-Vanik sanctions), a key difference has emerged between the two bills: While our Senate bill would hold these types of officials accountable no matter where they might prey, the House’s version would deal only with Russian authorities.
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Dreier: Support Russia trade bill even though Putin is ‘not a good guy’
House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), who will retire at the end of the 112th Congress, called on his colleagues Tuesday to support a Russia trade bill up this week even though Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not a good guy.”
“Vladimir Putin is not a good guy,” Dreier said on the House floor. “Vladimir Putin has inflicted horrendous human rights policies on the people of Russia, we’ve seen crony capitalism take hold.
“And that’s why it’s very important … that the United States of America be at the table as part of the WTO’s effort to force Russia to live with the rules-based trading system.”
The House this week is expected to pass H.R. 6156, a bill giving Russia permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status with the United States. This status is needed if the U.S. is to benefit from the trade concessions Russia agreed to when it joined the World Trade Organization over the summer.
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House to vote on Russia trade
The House next week is expected to pass legislation that would give Russia permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status, which would allow the United States to benefit from Russia’s August accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The House Rules Committee announced Friday that it will hold a meeting on Tuesday to approve a rule that governs floor consideration of the bill, H.R. 6156. That implies that the House will start work on the bipartisan measure as early as Wednesday, and complete it by the end of the week.
The bill removes Russia from the Jackson-Vanik rule, which requires the U.S. to review the trade status of some countries annually, and grant temporary normal trade status based on the emigration policies of the listed countries.
But WTO members are required to give each other permanent trade status, and failing to grant PNTR to Russia would mean the U.S. cannot benefit from the concessions Russia made when it joined the WTO.
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Russia Trade Bill Provides Opportunity for Bipartisanship
Elected officials will face many contentious issues affecting economic and foreign policy during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress and heading into 2013. However, one issue on which they should be able to work together is extending permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Russia.
Russia officially joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in August. However, U.S. businesses will not be able to fully benefit from the concessions Russia made to join the WTO unless Congress first repeals the Jackson–Vanik Amendment, a powerful tool that the U.S. successfully used to promote human rights in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc.
Failure to repeal Jackson–Vanik could place U.S. companies at a disadvantage vis-à-vis companies in other WTO members, which would benefit from significantly increased access to the Russian economy.
Congress and President Obama can demonstrate bipartisan leadership by extending PNTR to Russia while also passing the Magnitsky Act, which would deny U.S. visas to individuals who are guilty of massive human rights violations and freeze all of their assets within the purview of the U.S. government.
Both actions have broad bipartisan backing, and they provide a good opportunity for President Obama and Congress to immediately demonstrate their ability to work together.
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BERMAN: U.S.-Russia ‘reset’ hasn’t changed stance
You might not be familiar with Sergei Magnitsky, the 37-year-old Russian lawyer who died of medical complications while languishing in a Moscow prison back in 2009. You should be — Magnitsky’s case is worth knowing, both because of what it says about the nature of the Russian state and because it could soon prompt a substantial shake-up in U.S.-Russian relations.
A lawyer for the Moscow-based Hermitage Capital investment fund, Magnitsky ran afoul of Russian authorities when he stumbled across, and dutifully reported, evidence of massive official corruption. For his trouble, he was imprisoned and held without trial for nearly a year in squalid conditions on trumped-up charges of tax evasion and tax fraud. Toward the end of his incarceration, Magnitsky developed gall stones and pancreatitis, but he was denied proper medical attention by prison authorities. He died in November 2009 as a result.
To add insult to injury, Russia’s Interior Ministry has since posthumously moved ahead with prosecuting Magnitsky. Like the rest of the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky’s demise, the current case is fraught with absurdity. Hermitage lawyers believe that documents relating to the affair have been falsified, but so far — in time-honored Soviet tradition — they have been denied permission to see the case file for their client.
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Russian-American Voters Address members of Congress to Support Magnitsky Act
American Russian Speaking Association
American Russian-Speaking Association for Civil & Human Rights with its friends and allies mark the Day of Political Prisoners with online campaign in a dozen of states
October 30 is observed by many Russians around the world as the Day of Political Prisoners. It was introduced in 1974 in Soviet labor camps by human rights advocate and author Kronid Lyubarsky and a hero of the Soviet Jewry struggle for the right to emigrate Alexey Murzhenko. In 1991, Russian parliament officially recognized it as the national Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions.
20 years later, Russia is losing, at an ever increasing speed, the last vestiges of its democratic accomplishments of the 1990s, for which Soviet-era human rights defenders paid a heavy price. According to The Memorial Society, Russia’s most authoritative source of human rights information and research, there are currently about 80 people in jail or under prosecution for political reasons, even if official charges against some of them are of a different nature.
This situation has a negative impact on Russia’s neighbors, where authoritarian regimes are also increasingly persecuting their opponents, and poses a threat to international peace and security. It also increases pressure for emigration from Russia, a country which is currently the 7th largest source of asylum seekers in the world. Over the past two years, the number of Russians granted asylum in the United States increased by 35 percent.
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