Posts Tagged ‘ellen bork’
As Congress Goes Global on Human Rights, Will the Administration Follow?
Congress often plays an important corrective role when the Executive Branch puts pragmatism before principle on human rights. Last week, bipartisan pairs of senators did so again by introducing a new bill and pushing the Obama administration on implementing an existing one.
On January 15th, Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the Global Human Rights Accountability Act (S. 1933), which would enact visa and banking bans on the most serious human rights violators around the world. China’s Communist Party would be a prime target of this new bill. Chinese officials responsible for the persecution of the Falun Gong, Uighurs, and Tibetans, and for the Tiananmen massacre of June 4, 1989, for starters, have turned up in the United States, sometimes even on visits to the U.S. Capitol.
The Cardin-McCain bill was inspired by the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (Public Law 112-208), a Russia-specific law enacted in December 2012, and named after a lawyer who died of abuse in jail after he exposed a massive tax fraud. In December 2013, the Obama administration decided, without explanation, that it would not, for the time being, add names to a list compiled last April of individuals responsible for “gross” human rights abuses against Russians and who are now barred from traveling to the United States or using American financial institutions. That list included 18 mostly low- and mid-level officials associated with Mr. Magnitsky’s persecution and death. Two others are Chechens thought to be linked to political assassinations. Reportedly, a classified list included Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
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Sweden’s Shame, Putin’s Gain
Russian President Vladimir Putin sometimes converses in Swedish with his chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, Ivanov told the Moscow Times in an odd revelation published on October 2.
But President Putin may have had reason to brush up on his Swedish. On September 23, Stockholm refused to clearly guarantee Kremlin critic Bill Browder protection from a Russian arrest warrant while briefing Sweden’s parliament on the case of Sergei Magnitsky. As a result, Browder canceled his trip to Stockholm.
Magnitsky was a tax lawyer who died from abuse in a Russian jail cell nearly four years ago. Russian authorities had detained him in retaliation for exposing a massive tax fraud against the Russian public. In addition to jailing Magnitsky in appalling conditions that led to his death, the Russian government also posthumously convicted him, and Browder in absentia, of tax evasion, and is pursuing other cases against Browder as well.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the European debt crisis.]
In a letter to Browder’s attorneys, Martin Valfridsson, an official in Sweden’s Justice Ministry, said Stockholm could not act on a request from Russia that had not been made.
Left to stand, Sweden’s at best ambiguous position on Browder reflects a disturbing deference to Moscow on a legal matter that even Interpol has refused to respect, labeling it “predominantly political.”
Furthermore, Stockholm’s action is a back door way to thwart progress toward adoption of legislation that would put Sweden, its banks and desirable real estate off limits to Russians connected to Magnitsky’s death or other abuses of power. And it is damaging to the Russian democratic opposition which has enthusiastically endorsed the Magnitsky sanctions effort as “pro-Russian.”
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Letter Calls on President Obama to Cancel Meeting with Putin in Moscow
In light of recent disturbing developments for human rights in Russia, we urge President Barack Obama to cancel his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in September in Moscow and to revise U.S. policy toward Russia to reflect the aggressive, systematic assault on political and civil liberties taking place in Russia.
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC
August 2, 2013
Dear Mr. President:
In the past several weeks, the already alarming deterioration of Russia’s respect for political and civil rights has accelerated. Ordinary citizens who participated in peaceful protests against the government are being tried in court on trumped-up charges, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was convicted posthumously in an absurd tax evasion case after having died from abuse in prison, and anti-corruption blogger and leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny was convicted of embezzlement in a politically-motivated trial.
Over the past year, Russia’s Kremlin-friendly Duma has hastily adopted laws that make Russians, particularly those engaged in civil society and journalism, vulnerable to arrest and imprisonment. Russia’s security services and law enforcement are pursuing a government agenda to harass and intimidate anyone perceived as a critic. Hundreds of non-profit organizations have been raided and investigated. Activists and opposition figures are targets of surveillance and harassment, even outside of Russia.
In light of these disturbing developments, we urge you to cancel your summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in September in Moscow and to revise U.S. policy toward Russia to reflect the aggressive, systematic assault on political and civil liberties taking place in Russia. This request is independent of our concern about Russia’s handling of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who was granted temporary asylum today in Moscow. Even if Snowden were to be returned to the U.S. before your planned visit to Russia, which looks highly unlikely, we would still urge you not to travel to Moscow in September for the reasons stated.
While we recognize that certain levels of engagement with the Putin government are important and unavoidable, we also feel that U.S. policy should reflect Russia’s backsliding on human rights and recognize that it has an impact on the broader U.S.-Russia relationship. Such a policy is also important in dealing with other repressive governments elsewhere.
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FPI BULLETIN: MAGNITSKY IMPLEMENTATION A KEY TEST FOR OBAMA
By April 13, the President must submit to Congress a list of people to be sanctioned under the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, passed by Congress last December. The law is named for a Russian tax lawyer who died from abuse in jail for resisting official corruption, and it directs the denial of U.S. visas and freezing of assets against any individuals responsible for “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” in Russia. The law’s implementation will be a critical test of America’s longstanding commitment to human rights for the Russian people.
Congressional champions of the Magnitsky Act are concerned that the Obama Administration will not faithfully implement the law. At a conference earlier this month, Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) warned the Obama administration: “If there are some bureaucrats in my own government who, for whatever reason, choose not to implement the law in the spirit that it was written and it was passed, then I assure you that Congress will strengthen that law, amend that law with even tougher language. . . . This was not just a talking point that we passed.”
McGovern is right to be concerned. Beginning his second term, President Obama has recommitted his administration to the “reset” for Russia, a policy premised on the difference between interests and values. Discrete objectives are to be approached instrumentally and without regard to the quickening pace of anti-democratic regression under Vladimir Putin that provides ample basis for a list addressing a litany of abuses beyond the case of Mr. Magnitsky. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has reported that the administration is pursuing a cramped reading of the bill.
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Why is Obama Giving Up His Human Rights Leverage Against Russia?
At two separate events in Washington recently, Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, insisted that it should be a “total no brainer” for Congress to end the application of the Jackson-Vanik amendment—which denies normal, unconditional trade to non-market economies that restrict emigration—to Russia. The waning utility of Jackson-Vanik, McFaul claimed, was entirely exhausted by the completion of WTO negotiations. Now that the deal’s done, he said, “it’s really hard to understand in whose interest holding [onto this] does serve.”
But in predicating his argument on the grounds of free trade—citing, for example, imports and exports of “poultry and pork” between Russia and the United States—McFaul has shown a failure to grasp the essence of the legislation he’s discussing. By ignoring the Jackson-Vanik amendment’s historic significance for the promotion of human rights in the Soviet bloc and China, he is doing a disservice to Russia’s current democratic opposition figures.
Conceived by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Congressman Charles Vanik during the Cold War, the Jackson-Vanik bill tied trade status for communist countries to the freedom to emigrate, which Jackson saw not only as an important issue in its own right, but also as a wedge for improving respect for other human rights. That’s why it misses the point to simply note, as many have, that the Soviet Union no longer exists and today’s Russia doesn’t restrict emigration (indeed, quite to the contrary, Russia is suffering a massive brain drain). The main point about Jackson-Vanik—and the reason it is still relevant to U.S.-Russia relations—is that it has always been about maximizing America’s leverage on human rights and demonstrating a willingness to use it.
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