Posts Tagged ‘house’
Magnitsky Bill to Get Vote Thursday
U.S. lawmakers plan to vote on the “Magnitsky List” legislation this week, raising the specter of a harsh response from the Kremlin.
The bill, introduced by a group of influential U.S. senators that includes former Republican presidential candidate John McCain, would blacklist Russian officials linked to the 2009 jail death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and other officials implicated in human rights violations.
Russia has accused the United States of meddling in its internal affairs with the legislation.
“If the new anti-Russian Magnitsky bill is passed, it would require a response from us,” presidential aide Yury Ushakov said last week, adding that Moscow hoped it would not happen, RIA-Novosti reported.
The U.S. House’s Foreign Affairs Committee will put the bill up for a vote Thursday, according to a committee schedule published over the weekend.
Magnitsky was arrested shortly after he accused tax and police officials of embezzling $230 million. A independent inquiry by the Kremlin’s human rights council found that he died after being beaten by prison guards. One prison doctor has been charged with negligence, but no one has been convicted in the death.
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Pass The Magnitsky Bill
This week the House Foreign Affairs Committee will consider the so-called “Magnitsky Bill.” The Hill describes the bill this way:
The bill is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested on fraud charges and died in custody three years ago after accusing tax officials of a $230 million fraud. It would impose travel and financial sanctions on anyone “responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture or other human-rights violations committed against individuals seeking to promote human rights or to expose illegal activity carried out by officials of the government of the Russian Federation….
The bill’s purpose is to provide a way of keeping human rights pressure on Russia. Once Russia joins the World Trade Organization, the Jackson-Vanik amendment tying trade to emigration issues will be obsolete. The new bill is a replacement.
The arguments against the bill are weak at best. Here’s one, from the Discovery Institute’s Russia Blog:
Congress is overstepping its boundaries as the State Department and the U.S. embassies abroad have the full authority, which they often use, to deny entry visas to any individual with no explanation whatsoever….Besides, attaching Magnitsky’s name to such a bill is clear proof of selective justice – something that we frequently accuse Russia of – since, sadly enough, similar cases of deaths in prisons due to denial of proper medical service happen in many other countries, including the United States….
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House takes lead on Russian human-rights bill
The House Foreign Affairs Committee this week will become the first panel to vote on human-rights legislation that lawmakers of both parties say is a precondition to normalizing trade relations with Russia.
The panel is scheduled to mark up the so-called Magnitsky bill, sponsored by U.S. Congressional Human Rights Commission co-chairman Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), on Thursday. The bill has the support of committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and is expected to easily pass the House despite Russian threats of retaliation.
“If this new anti-Russian law is adopted, then of course that demands measures in response,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Yuri Ushakov said last week.
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If the US Congress cares about human rights, it will replace Jackson-Vanik with the Magnitsky Act
The US House Committee on Foreign Affairs hosted a hearing yesterday that addressed human rights and corruption in Russia, and the future of US-Russian relations. The hearing paid particular attention to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act (.pdf), currently under consideration by the US Congress, which seeks to impose travel bans and asset freezes against the individuals involved in the false imprisonment, torture and death of the whistleblower attorney Sergei Magnitsky. The act also carries a universal application against all individuals credibly suspected of human rights abuses.
The hearing highlighted one of the key issues facing contemporary US-Russian relations: how—or indeed, whether– the US can support human rights in Russia today. This question was embodied in the confluence of the debate over the Magnitsky Act and the proposed repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment.
The proceedings featured the testimony of Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital who has spearheaded the campaign to bring the perpetrators of Sergei Magnitsky’s false imprisonment and death to justice. Sergei Magnitsky was an attorney employed to represent Hermitage Capital, who uncovered an elaborate ruse by government officials whereby Hermitage companies were fraudulently re-registered and used to apply for a tax refund of $230 million. Magnitsky went public with his accusations, and was subsequently pressured into confessing to the theft of the $230 million, and imprisoned without trial in November 2008.
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