Posts Tagged ‘duma’
Russian Bloggers Expose Corruption, One Top Official at a Time
Can a businessman who is connected with organized crime, banned on these grounds from entering a country where his business is located, and has foreign citizenship be a senator? In Russia, the answer is yes. At least, this is the result of an investigation made by the country’s No. 1 blogger, Alexei Navalny. On March 14, he published documents that prove that Senator Vitaly Malkin not only runs business in Canada (which is against the law in Russia), but he has been denied a visa to that country because Canadian authorities suspect him of links with money laundering networks. Moreover, Malkin has (or had) a double Israeli citizenship, which is prohibited for members of either house of the Russian Parliament. Besides, Malkin was a member of a delegation of Russian parliamentarians last year who toured Washington, D.C., attempting to prevent passing of the Magnitsky Act. The blogger demanded that Malkin’s appointment be invalidated. The senator’s spokesperson denied the accusations but failed to comment on the documents.
In recent months, similar reports of corruption in the highest ranks of the government have become almost a daily routine. Last week, the Chairperson of Duma Anti-Corruption Committee Irina Yarovaya was accused by Navalny of living in an undeclared $2,900,000 flat in downtown Moscow. The week before, the blogger found that the Governor of Pskov Andrey Turchak owned a luxury house worth 1,270,000 Euro in Nice, France. And it’s not just Navalny; other bloggers are also discovering transgressions of members of Parliament, governors and other top officials. Most investigations deal with undeclared property or illegally acquired academic titles.
Bloggers even coined a humorous term for this activity — pekhting — after a veteran MP, Chairman of Duma Ethics Committee and Putin loyalist Vladimir Pekhtin. Earlier this year Navalny published documents indicating that the deputy owns two expensive apartments in Miami. After initially denying the accusations, Pekhtin eventually had to resign from the Parliament. His act sent shockwaves through the ranks of bureaucrats who had become used to impunity in exchange for loyalty.
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Russian lawmakers back adoption ban in row with U.S.
Russia’s lower house of parliament approved a law banning Americans from adopting Russian children on Friday, in retaliation for U.S. human rights legislation which Vladimir Putin says is poisoning relations.
The State Duma overwhelmingly backed a bill which also outlaws U.S.-funded “non-profit organizations that engage in political activity”, extending what critics say is a clampdown on Putin’s opponents since he returned to the presidency in May.
The law responds to U.S. legislation known as the Magnitsky Act, passed by the U.S. Congress to impose visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials accused of involvement in the death in custody of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
Washington’s ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, said the Russian bill unfairly “linked the fate of orphaned children to unrelated political issues”.
Putin hinted at a news conference on Thursday that he would sign it into law once the Senate votes on it next week, describing it as an emotional but appropriate response to an unfriendly move by the United States.
“It is a myth that all children who land in American families are happy and surrounded by love,” Olga Batalina, a deputy with Putin’s ruling United Russia party, said in defense of the new measures.
In a pointed echo of the Magnitsky Act, the Russian legislation has become known as the Dima Yakovlev law, after a Russian-born toddler who died after his American adoptive father left him in locked in a sweltering car.
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What’s behind Russia’s bill banning US adoptions?
The bill had originally been a smaller, tit-for-tat response to US legislation, but the Russian Duma has expanded it into a much broader anti-American measure that even Putin may not approve.
A Russian bill that had seemed initially like a tit-for-tat response to US legislation now looks to be exploding into broad legislation that bars almost any US citizen from engaging in non-business activity in Russia – including the adoption of Russian children.
Russia’s State Duma on Wednesday passed a bill, in key second reading, that would ban all adoptions of Russian children by US citizens, order the closure of any politically-active nongovernmental organization with US funding, and block US passport-holders from working in any nonprofit group that authorities deem connected with politics. The bill passed the 450-seat Duma overwhelmingly, with just 15 deputies opposed.
The now radically-amended Dima Yakovlev bill, named after one of 19 Russian children who have died because of alleged negligence of his American adoptive parents in the past two decades, goes far beyond the originally-stated intent to respond to the US Senate’s Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Obama last week.
The initial bill, which passed first reading last Friday, would have levied economic and visa sanctions against US officials allegedly involved in human rights abuses against Russians. Among the categories of Americans to be hit in the original bill were adoptive parents who abused their Russian-born children and officials involved in the extradition and prosecution of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a New York court last year.
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Mr. Putin tightens the screws
IN THE DAYS of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party was a Godfather-like presence that demanded a monopoly on power and did not tolerate competition. One job of the secret police, the KGB, was to snuff out any dissent or hints of civil society. But prompted by the revolutionary opening of Mikhail Gorbachev, nongovernmental groups sprang to life in the late 1980s. They were at the forefront of the democratic movement that saw the Soviet Union to its grave, and they have proliferated in Russia ever since, defending human rights, fighting for environmental protection, providing charity, monitoring elections, challenging corruption, and broadly filling in the gap between state and society.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, once an officer in the KGB, grew highly suspicious of nongovernmental organizations after the protests known as the Orange Revolution swept Ukraine in late 2004. The demonstrators were seen by the Kremlin as tools of foreign sponsors seeking regime change. A Russian law imposed cumbersome new requirements on foreign groups in the country in 2006.
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Supporting human rights in Russia should be a core strategic interest for US
On Tuesday, July 10, the Russian Duma will vote on ratification of the agreement for Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Policymakers in both countries view Russia’s entry as a foregone conclusion. The question before Congress therefore is how best to pressure Russia to respect human rights following its repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment.
Passed in 1974, Jackson-Vanik tied favorable trade to the freedom to emigrate from the Soviet Union. It provided a foundation for Cold War human rights advocacy. The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, approved unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 26, was meant to fill the void left by lifting Jackson-Vanik.
Named after a Russian anti-corruption lawyer tortured and killed in prison in 2009 after he uncovered a $230 million embezzlement scheme, it would sanction Russia’s worst human rights violators by denying them U.S. visas and freezing their assets in U.S. banks.
However, at the last minute, in order to assuage the Kremlin, the Committee chose not to single out Russia and passed a watered-down version of the bill, applying it to human rights abusers worldwide. Lost is the original purpose of the Act—to show ordinary Russians that the United States wants to see a better Russia—one that does not abuse its citizens and one that can be a strong partner to the United States, an ally with whom we share values.
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Russia Tries to Turn Tables on Human Right
In an attempt to deflect criticism against crackdowns on political protests at home, senior Russian officials on Monday shot back at Western critics, lambasting racism and xenophobia in Europe.
Foreign Ministry and State Duma officials joined researchers and members of nongovernmental organizations in urging representatives of the European Union present at a round-table discussion not to use Russia’s human rights record as a political tool.
“The West doesn’t tolerate criticism of its own human rights violations,” said Vasily Nebenzya, head of the Foreign Ministry’s department for humanitarian cooperation and human rights.
“Human rights have become a weapon,” he said, adding that Russia would treat its critics “with mistrust when they try to teach us [to observe] human rights … as long as our concern [about human rights violations in Europe] is ignored.”
The speeches presented few figures and were very heavy with emotion and personal opinion.
Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s permanent representative to the European Union, suggested that the EU was guilty of hypocrisy for having not yet joined the 1953 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which Russia partially ratified in 1998.
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