Posts Tagged ‘david kramer’
House Passes Bill Barring Russian Human Rights Abusers from U.S.
Freedom House applauds the passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act by the House of Representatives on Friday and calls on the Senate to pass the legislation as soon as possible. The Magnitsky Act, as it is known, was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support as part of a larger bill that normalizes trade relations with Russia and Moldova, which Freedom House also supports.
The bill, named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in jail after exposing a multimillion-dollar fraud by Russian officials, would place visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials involved in human rights abuses. The legislation’s passage falls on the three year anniversary of Magnitsky’s murder in prison due to abuse and lack of medical treatment after he was accused of the very fraud he exposed.
“Corrupt Russian officials involved in gross human rights abuses should not be allowed the privilege to travel to the U.S. or use our financial system,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “Tying normalization of trade to accountability for human rights abuses honors the sacrifice of Sergei Magnitsky and countless others who have been targeted, jailed, and killed for speaking out, spotlighting corruption, and exercising their fundamental freedoms. The Magnitsky Act targets only those responsible, not Russia as a whole, and demonstrates that the U.S. Congress will not stand by silently in the face of such egregious crimes.”
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How Will Russia React to Obama, Round Two?
The question posed by my title doesn’t quite hit the mark. Just as one cannot really speak of a single “America”, there is no one “Russia” anymore but rather several Russias. But while each different Russia has its own interests, attitudes and moods, there is something that unites them all with respect to America: The United States is on all of their radars. All of the various Russias hope to use the United States and its policy to serve their own domestic agendas. (In contrast to this, Russia largely fell off America’s radar after the fall of the Soviet Union.)
How, then, will the various Russia’s react to the renewed Obama presidency? Let’s start with the official Russia—that is, Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. Along with David Kramer, I have already discussed what the Russian establishment and Putin’s regime could have expected from either possible election result on November 6. I will only add here a couple of brushstrokes to that landscape now that we know the results of the election. Moscow’s official rhetoric and actions over the past year—that is, after Putin officially returned to the Kremlin—allow us to conclude that the Kremlin’s position on the United States would have been based on the following premises no matter who America hired as boss in the White House:
• America is weak. It is teetering on a “fragile foundation” and will continue to decline. The United States today can no longer continue as a world leader, and its ongoing fall from grace will give Russia more room to maneuver on the global scene.
• America needs Russia more than Russia needs America. The United States needs Russian help on Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Central Asia, nuclear issues and counterbalancing China. All of these issues put the Kremlin in a stronger bargaining position with respect to Washington.
• America’s decline and European stagnation demonstrate that liberal democracy is in crisis. This fact justifies the Kremlin’s decision to return to the idea that Russia represents a “unique civilizational model.”
• America is bogged down by domestic problems. It is turning its focus inward, thus making it less prepared to react to the Kremlin’s turn toward repression. Moscow can dismiss Washington’s criticism; its bark is worse than its bite.
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Russia Demands U.S. Agency Halt Work
The Kremlin sounded its stiffest rebuke to U.S. democracy-building efforts in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, ordering the U.S. to halt work of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Russia by Oct. 1.
The move is a blow to the Obama administration’s avowed “reset” in relations between the U.S. and Russia, prompting leading Republicans to demand a strong U.S. response. The decision also adds Russia to the list of countries such as Egypt whose leaders, seeing disorder at home, have singled out U.S.-funded democracy-building programs for blame.
The U.S. State Department confirmed Tuesday it had received the Russian government’s decision to end USAID’s activities in the country. The Kremlin didn’t respond to calls to comment.
USAID, created in 1961 to promote democracy, human rights and public health, now works in more than 100 countries. With approximately 70 U.S. and local staff members in Russia, it has provided a backbone to U.S. efforts to foster a Western-style political system in the country.
Russian leaders, and President Vladimir Putin in particular, have been leery of U.S. support for democracy movements ever since the so-called color revolutions in Eastern Europe, and more so in the wake of the Arab Spring. Mr. Putin once described Russian NGOs that accept U.S. aid as “jackals.” Last December, he engaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a public and heated exchange after she described Russian elections as flawed.
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Freedom House – The Magnitsky Files
The Magnitsky Files
Freedom House President David Kramer on July 12 called for justice in the case of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was killed in Russian detention in 2009, at an event featuring Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) and a screening of the documentary “The Magnitsky Files: Organized Crime Inside the Russian Government.” Freedom House has pushed the U.S. to adopt the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act, which has received widespread bipartisan support in Congress.
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John McCain & “The Magnitsky Files” Premiere Discussion in Washington, DC
26 June 2012, William Browder, Sen. John McCain, and David Kramer, Director of Freedom House, were in attendance to screen the premiere of “The Magnitsky Files”, a new film detailing the crimes committed before, during, and after their persecution of Sergei Magnitsky. This is the discussion they had afterwards with a Q&A.
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A bill that cracks down on Russian corruption
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled today to take up the most consequential piece of legislation in years related to Russia: the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. With strong bipartisan support, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), the Magnitsky bill is the most serious U.S. effort to address human rights and the rule of law in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The legislation is named after the 37-year-old lawyer who was jailed unjustly in 2008 after exposing a massive tax fraud by officials of Russia’s Interior Ministry. While in jail for almost a year, Magnitsky became ill but was denied medical treatment. In the end he was brutally beaten and left to die.
The proposed legislation is not about one man, however. It is about a Russian system choking on corruption, illegality and abuse. The new law would impose a visa ban and asset freeze against theofficials responsible not only for Magnitsky’s murder but also for other human rights abuses, including against individuals who “expose illegal activity” carried out by Russian officials or who seek to “defend or promote internationally recognized human rights and freedoms.” This includes journalists who have been murdered when they have dug too close to powerful officials or oligarchs. It includes human rights activists who have been beaten and crippled or killed for exposing the mistreatment of their fellow Russians.
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Investor doubts hold back Russian oil powerhouse
The Russian oil company Surgutneftegaz owns refineries and gas stations, sells a valuable product and makes a profit. But it sometimes fails another test of the capitalist world.
The company is valued by the Russian stock market at even less than its cash and easily sold assets. That astonishing fact suggests that investors see no real value in the business.
Surgut, as it is known for short, is Russia’s fourth-largest oil company after Rosneft, Lukoil and TNK-BP. Its sprawling oil fields, pipelines and drilling rigs should be highly valued in the investment arena. It pumps 1.1 million barrels of oil a day. So the struggle to raise its stock value in the eyes of portfolio managers, while more extreme than many of its Russian peers, is emblematic of investors’ broad lack of confidence in the country’s economy. Outsiders view Russia’s companies, however cash-rich, with an incredible degree of skepticism.
Shares in Surgut have fallen in recent weeks to a level where the market value of about $28.5 billion (U.S.) for its common shares on the Russian Micex stock exchange is now lower than the $31.4 billion in cash and liquid assets on its balance sheet, according to Troika Dialog bank in Moscow.
“It’s an illogical valuation,” Chris Weafer, the chief strategist at Troika Dialog brokerage in Moscow, wrote in a research note last week about the company.
The Russian market this spring fell faster than others of the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China and since mid-March is down 18.8 per cent. Global oil prices have slumped, reducing expected earnings.
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One Year Before Russia’s Presidential Election, Systemic Corruption Subverts Reform
One year before the pivotal presidential election in March 2012, Russia confronts an immense and growing corruption problem at all levels of government and society that severely threatens chances for reform, according to a special report released today by Freedom House and the Latvian policy institute Providus.
The report, The Perpetual Battle: Corruption in the Former Soviet Union and New EU Member States, describes the extent to which Russia’s entire institutional apparatus—including the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, security services, and news media—now conspires to fuel state-led corruption. In addition, the study finds that despite the passage of two decades since the collapse of the Soviet system, most of the non-Baltic former Soviet Union remains mired in institutionalized graft.
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In Russia, seeing only repression
In Moscow Russia has set off on an ever more authoritarian path as it heads toward a presidential election next year, sending ominous signals to the already weakened opposition and confronting the United States and Europe with vexing new political challenges.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who positions himself as Prime Minister Vladmir Putin’s liberal alter ego, repeatedly assures the West that just the opposite is true. At the Davos World Economic Forum this week, he said Russia was fighting corruption, developing rule of law – if slowly – and becoming increasingly democratic. “Russian citizens believe they live in a democratic state,” he said.
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