Posts Tagged ‘EU Observer’
Artists, dissidents look to EU after US human rights law
Artists, exiles and rights campaigners say the EU can help Russia by closing its door to regime officials with blood on their hands.
Vladimir Bukovsky knows what it is like to be inside a Russian jail. He spent 12 years in and out of them in the 1960s and 1970s for trying to expose the Soviet Union’s use of psychiatric institutions to torture dissidents.
The 69-year-old scientist now lives in the UK, but travels to Russia from time to time.
Speaking in London on Tuesday (20 November) after the staging of a play on Sergei Magnitsky – a Russian accountant who was killed in prison in 2009 for trying to expose high-level corruption – Bukovsky said today’s Kremlin reminds him of the old one.
“Russia is going around like a blind donkey … They used to write plays about psychological abuse and now we are here to talk about this play,” he noted.
He added: “Magnitsky was a political prisoner because corruption is at the heart of Russia’s political system and this is exactly what he went against.”
The play – One Hour and 18 Minutes, by Elena Gremina – tries to show the human side of what happened.
It uses home videos of Magnitsky – a portly, jovial 37-year-old – at family parties.
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MEPs demand EU sanctions over Magnitsky murder, again
MEPs on the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee have piled fresh political pressure on their governments to impose sanctions on Russian officials linked to the murder of whistleblower accountant Sergei Magnitsky.
In a resolution drafted by Estonian liberal MEP Kristiina Ojuland, MEPs on Thursday (20 September) by 62 votes against two called on EU governments to make a list of over 60 suspected officials and to impose an EU-wide visa ban and asset-freeze on the lot.
The asset freeze is to extend to the alleged culprits’ families.
The move would see the EU “take a coherent and pro-active stance on … serious human rights violations in Russia,” the resolution said.
Speaking after the vote, Ojuland said that imposing the sanctions would “put real pressure on Russian authorities to start taking criticism on human rights seriously” and that the measures would be “a necessary step against corruption and human rights violators.”
Magnitksy was allegedly tortured and beaten to death in Moscow’s Butryka jail in 2009.
He had been arrested 11 months earlier after exposing a multi-million-dollar tax fraud by high-level Kremlin officials and FSB intelligence officers.
The resolution is the third time the EU parliament has called for action in the case.
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Russia: EU action on Magnitsky would ‘poison’ relations
Russia’s EU ambassador has said ties would suffer if member states follow the US in putting sanctions on suspected Russian killers and fraudsters.
“It would poison relations, definitely,” Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver in an interview.
He added: “Well, I am sure that reason will prevail in the European Union. I have more confidence in the EU than I have in the US Congress.”
The Congress’ international committee in June approved the so-called Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act.
If it becomes law, the US will impose visa bans and asset freezes on 60-or-so Russian officials suspected of conspiracy to murder Sergei Magnitsky – an auditor who exposed tax fraud in the Kremlin and who was found beaten to death in prison in 2009.
Chizhov said that he is “not threatening anybody.”
But he noted that Russia might impose counter-sanctions on US officials if the Magnitsky bill gets through.
“The Russian Duma could launch a piece of legislation called the Guantanamo act or the Abu Ghraib act,” he said, referring to US human rights violations in Cuba and Iraq.
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EU should target Russia’s big spenders
Vladimir Putin has succeeded in returning to the Russian presidency despite several tumultuous months of anti-regime protests, but his rule is likely to be entering its final phase.
Many of those who view Putin’s regime as illegitimate do so because of electoral fraud and rampant corruption, and the protest movement has demanded a more European Russia: clean elections, an end to the Putinist monopoly on power and a halt to rampant graft.
There is, however, next to nothing the West can do to play politics inside Russia. In fact, bombastic comments from American officials have only helped Putin frame the movement as Western-funded to a nation deeply suspicious of foreign meddling.
But with Putin far weaker than in his previous presidential incarnation, the European Union can exercise real influence in Moscow, thanks to its role as Russia’s largest trading partner and hydrocarbon consumer, cultural magnet, and the destination of much of the proceeds of Russian corruption.
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British MPs paint scary picture of Putin’s Russia
British MPs have in a discussion on the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky described Putin’s Russia as a mafia state.
Coming two days after several EU leaders and top EU officials congratulated Vladimir Putin on winning elections despite the fact international monitors said they were rigged, the discussion painted a frightening picture of life in the European Union’s biggest neighbour.
Conservative deputy Dom Raab described what happened to Magnitsky in 2009 after he blew the whistle on senior tax officials who embezzled $230 million of state funds.
“He was dumped in a filthy, freezing and overcrowded cell for eight months and fed putrid meals such as porridge with insect larvae and rotten fish, if and when he was fed at all. In such squalid conditions, he suffered acutely painful bladder and pancreatic problems. Eventually, a year after his arrest, he was transferred to hospital for emergency surgery, but when he arrived he was not treated at all. Instead, he was handcuffed to a bed and beaten by riot police. Doctors found him an hour later, lying on the floor. He was dead.”
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Russian President: EU Parliament ‘means nothing’
President Dmitry Medvedev at his last-ever EU summit told MEPs to stay out of Russian affairs and dropped hints on a $10 billion donation for euro bail-outs.
One day earlier, the European Parliament by a thumping majority called for Russia to hold new parliamentary elections and for the EU to impose a visa ban on officials guilty of killing anti-tax-fraud lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
“I will not comment on their decisions. They mean nothing to me … The European Parliament should deal with internal issues because the EU has a lot of problems of its own,” Medvedev told press in Brussels on Thursday (15 December).
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MEPs: protests show Putin has lost respect
EU Observer
Prominent MEPs from Russia’s big neighbours have said the mass anti-Putin protests in Moscow are a wake-up call for EU foreign policy.
Looking ahead to the EU-Russia summit in Brussels on Thursday (15 December), Elmar Brok, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU party, said EU officials should urge the Kremlin to hold proper presidential elections in March.
“It should be made clear they have to look for real elections – to give a fair chance to opposition politicians, to let them run and to make sure they have the means to run, and to let the international community monitor the campaign.”
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Germany considering EU visa ban on Russian officials
The German government is considering the merits of an EU visa ban on Russian officials implicated in the murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Markus Loning, the German foreign ministry’s commissioner for human rights, told EUobserver on the margins of a conference on Russia in Helsinki on Thursday (10 November): “We’re discussing it. It is an option that my office is bringing to the table, into the debate. I can’t say I have completely convinced the rest of the government, but it is something I am putting on the table again and again.”
One option is to seek agreement by all 27 EU countries to blacklist the officials. Germany could also unilaterally red-flag the names in the passport-free Schengen system, forcing all 25 Schengen members to keep them out.
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First EU country imposes sanctions on Russian officials
The UK has become the first EU country to impose sanctions on Russian officials implicated in the murder of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, a British daily reports.
Opposition MP Chris Bryant told The Guardian on Saturday (1 October) that UK immigration minister, Damian Green, from the ruling Conservative party, has confirmed they were quietly put on a visa blacklist.
“From conversations with Damian Green, I took it that these people would not be welcomed. It seems now as if there is a secret ban on these people,” he said.
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