Posts Tagged ‘heritage foundation’
Russian “Grandma of Human Rights” Nominated for Nobel Prize
This week, Senator Benjamin Cardin (D–MD) nominated the “grandma” of the Russian human rights movement, Lyudmila Alekseeva, for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.
Cardin’s nomination of the veteran of the dissident movement affirms the United States’ support for human rights activists in Russia and gives this “peacemaker” the recognition she deserves.
Alekseeva was born in 1927 in the Crimea and studied history at the prestigious Moscow State University. During her time there, Alekseeva fell in with the dissident crowd. By the 1960s, she protested the Communist Party’s crackdown on dissident writers and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. She continued to work for human rights in the Soviet Union and in 1976 was one of the founding members of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
The group, named after its support of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which the Soviet Union signed, was founded in the apartment of dissident physicist and human rights leader Andrei Sakharov.
Only a year after she helped found the group, Alekseeva, like many other dissidents, was exiled from the USSR. She moved to the U.S. and kept up her work promoting human rights. She was frequently published and often appeared on Radio Liberty and Voice of America, U.S. government-funded stations that broadcasted to the Soviet Union.
Two years after the fall of communism, Alekseeva returned to Russia and in 1996 became chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights nongovernmental organization (NGO).
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The Magnitsky Act: The Moment of Truth
This Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will put the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act up for a vote. The bill seeks “to impose sanctions on persons responsible for the detention, abuse, or death of Sergei Magnitsky, and for other gross violations of human rights in the Russian Federation, and for other purposes.”
This past May, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak threatened to retaliate if the Magnitsky bill becomes law. Instead, the Kremlin should have acknowledged its failure to save a person’s life, conducted proper investigation, and thanked American lawmakers for trying to step in where Russian law enforcement failed so abysmally.
The death of Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian prison is a tragedy and demonstration of rampant corruption in the Russian state’s highest echelons. But it is also a symptom of graft and rampant crime blocking normal trade relations between the U.S. and 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.
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Kasparov: Why Vladimir Putin Is Immune To American Reset
Lecture to Heritage Foundation by Garry Kasparov
Thank you for inviting me to attend this important event here at the Heritage Foundation today. My thanks to Speaker Boehner[1] and all the other participants for their interest and their comments.
For a little introduction of myself, there’s one fact from my biography that is always omitted. Many here might not be aware that I myself am from the Deep South, right next to Georgia. I’m referring to the Deep South of the Soviet Union. That’s my hometown of Baku, Azerbaijan, where I was born in 1963, next to what is now the Republic of Georgia.
Of course, much has changed since then. There are no more Communists in the Republic of Georgia—much as there are no more Democrats in the state of Georgia—and Georgia is as good a place as any to begin my talk on the Putin regime’s immunity to America’s attempts at a “reset.” Georgia is currently under great pressure from the U.S. and others to allow Russia to join the World Trade Organization, despite two large pieces of Georgian sovereign territory being occupied by Russian forces.
Many in the media and even some governments refer to Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “disputed territories,” not occupied, ignoring the fact they were taken by military force. Often, this is the same media that refers to parts of Palestine as “occupied” by Israel. Despite heavy pressure from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Georgia has remained staunchly pro-democratic and pro-Western, and yet it appears that getting Russia into the WTO is of greater importance to this U.S. Administration than protecting the rights and territory of an ally.
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The Failure of the “Russia Reset”: Next Steps for the United States and Europe
Abstract: The policies of the United States and the European Union should encourage and support Russian civil society and Russia’s democratic modernizers. And, if Russia continues to abrogate its international commitments to basic freedoms and human rights, the U.S. and the EU must stand up for democratic values and make it clear that Russian aggression will not be tolerated. President Obama’s Russia “reset” policy achieves the opposite. Just as the U.S. reset has shaped European thinking, overly lenient signals from the EU to Russia will have a negative effect on U.S. interests, including support of democracy and promotion of economic freedom. The U.S. should collaborate with individual European allies as well as the European Union to set an agenda that better defends transatlantic interests from Russian aggression.
President Barack Obama’s Russia “reset” policy has encouraged European Union politicians who have long advocated a “softly, softly” approach toward Russia to push for a “fast-forward” in Brussels’ relationship with Moscow. Clearly alluding to President Obama’s Russia-policy pronouncement at the EU–Russia summit in June 2010, President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy stated: “With Russia we do not need a ‘reset.’ We want a ‘fast forward.’”[1]
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The Sergei Magnitsky Case: An Admission of Guilt
On July 5 the Russian Human Rights Council published its report on the now infamous—and mysterious—death of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. An attorney for the Moscow-based American law firm Firestone Duncan, he represented Hermitage Capital, which was at the time the largest Western hedge fund in Russia.
Magnitsky died while in custody awaiting trial for a fabricated tax evasion charge. He was jailed after he accused Russian officials of fraudulently obtaining $230 million in tax rebates from the Russian Treasury using a sophisticated swindle. These were the same officials who prosecuted Hermitage and barred its owner, Bill Browder, from returning to Russia for reasons the state refused to reveal.
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Reset Regret: Moral Leadership Needed to Fix U.S.–Russian Relations
The discussion about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law has careened through at least three phases in U.S. relations with Russia, each one resulting in sometimes jarring shifts in Washington’s approach to Moscow.
In order to reaffirm America’s interests, when dealing with Russia, the U.S. should concentrate on the values of freedom and justice. The Administration needs to stop its policy of “pleasing Moscow” and instead add pressure on Russia to start a “reset” of its own policies that currently disregard human rights, democracy, and good governance. The U.S. should deny visas to corrupt Russian businessmen, examine their banking practices and acquisitions, and target Russian police and prosecutors who fabricate evidence, and judges who rubber stamp convictions, which is what the bipartisan S. 1039 “Justice for Sergey Magnitsky” bill aims to do.
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