Posts Tagged ‘kathy lally’
Congress advances bill to pressure Russia on human rights
A bill that would impose sanctions on Russians who commit human rights violations moved ahead in the U.S. Congress on Thursday despite resistance from the Obama administration and angry denunciations from Kremlin officials.
The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, named in memory of a corruption-fighting Russian who worked for an American law firm and died in police custody, was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two more committees must weigh in before a vote of the entire House, and the Senate has yet to act on its version.
Magnitsky, a tax adviser for the Hermitage Capital investment company, was 37 when he died here in pretrial detention in 2009. After discovering that stolen Hermitage documents were being used to plunder $230 million from the Russian treasury through a fraudulent tax return, Magnitsky accused tax and police officials of the crime. They charged him instead, and nearly a year later he died in custody, his body marked by signs of beating.
Since then the affair has become deeply entangled in ever complicated U.S.-Russian relations. Human rights advocates have lobbied hard for the bill, which requires publicly naming those Russians connected to the case, denying them visas and freezing their assets. The State Department would have to deliver yearly reports on enforcement.
The Obama administration has been deeply critical of Russia’s refusal to hold anyone accountable for Magnitsky’s ill treatment and death, but it has argued that a secret visa blacklist it drew up last summer is more effective and avoids publicly challenging Moscow.
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Russia warns of retaliation for U.S. Magnitsky bill
Russia is prepared to retaliate if the U.S. Congress passes the Magnitsky bill, which would freeze assets of and deny U.S. visas to Russian officials linked to human rights abuses, President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign adviser said Tuesday.
“We would very much like to avoid it,” Yuri Ushakov said. “But if this new anti-Russian law is adopted, then of course that demands measures in response.”
Ushakov’s comments came in an otherwise upbeat briefing on a meeting between Putin and President Obama set for June in Mexico. The Obama administration has been resisting the legislation, introduced by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), viewing it as too provocative, even as the State Department has acted on its own to refuse entry to Russian officials associated with the Magnitsky case.
But in a recent interview, Cardin said he was sure the bill would pass, adding that he thinks the administration is preparing to accept the legislation if it is paired with another bill granting Russia normal trade-relation status. That is required under the terms of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, one of the central achievements of Obama’s “reset” of relations with Moscow.
The administration has apparently realized that it cannot stop the Magnitsky bill and will have to deal with the anger of the Russian leadership. If Ushakov’s remarks were designed to encourage a presidential veto of the bill, they are unlikely to succeed, given the difficulty the White House would face in killing a human rights measure. It could come out of committee as early as next month, according to a congressional official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
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Spinning the Realities of the Reset
The Washington Post’s editorial page is entitled to endorse Barack Obama for president—as it did in October 2008—but all too often the paper’s reporters appear to endorse the administration as well, through slanted reporting that fails to question administration policy and perspectives and in fact serves to defend them. Kathy Lally’s May 17 article “Anti-American rhetoric subsides in Russia” is the latest example of the Post’s weak and simplistic work.
Lally implies that Moscow’s rhetoric and policy toward Washington are softening after Vladimir Putin’s reelection as president—something administration officials doubtless hope is true, given the emphasis they have put on the “reset”—and then proceeds to make her case on the basis of a superficial reading of Putin’s May 7 instructions to the Russian Foreign Ministry, buttressed by quotes from two liberal Moscow intellectuals and a woman in the audience at a U.S. embassy-sponsored jazz concert.
Putin’s decree does call for “stable and predictable cooperation” aimed at “a truly strategic level” of cooperation—but then proceeds to explain that this should be on the basis of “non-interference in internal affairs” “respect for mutual interests,” and remaining “committed to Russia’s position” on missile defense. If Lally had read the decree carefully rather than selectively, it should have been apparent to someone with her experience in Russia that it does not signal any improvement in Russian policy—on the contrary, it pays lip service to cooperation while emphasizing Moscow’s grievances diplomatically but clearly. The contrast is especially apparent if one also reads the section on Europe, which is largely unqualified in its positive tone and also appears much earlier in the document in a not-too-subtle statement about Russian priorities. Putin’s decision to skip the G-8 summit at Camp David, and to attend the Beijing summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in early June, makes a similar point.
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Public scoff’s over president’s online bid to probe vote fraud
President Dmitry Medvedev used his Facebook page Sunday to disclose that he had ordered an investigation into reports of election fraud, a statement his audience greeted with derision.
The posting quickly went viral, and drew more than 8,000 mostly offended and even offensive comments in a little over six hours, revealing the depth of the disillusionment with Mr. Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and their government. Tens of thousands of Russians spoke up in demonstrations across the country Saturday, protesting the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections, and they apparently had no intention of returning to their former silence.
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Seeking guilty in Russian whistleblower’s death
If the legal system here worked, a 75-page report titled “The Torture and Murder of Sergei Magnitsky and the Coverup by the Russian Government” would be submitted to a court of law. Instead, it is being delivered Monday to the court of international opinion.
The report, full of links to official documents and the result of a thousand man-hours of work, comes not from officers of the law but an American-born businessman who is convinced that Russian officials are getting away with murder.
William F. Browder, who runs an investment firm based in London, has taken on the role of virtual prosecutor in the death of Sergei L. Magnitsky, who died at the age of 37 in police custody because of his work as a tax adviser to Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management when it operated in Russia.
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Laws to rein in Russia’s pretrial detention system are ignored
Over the last 18 months, President Dmitry Medvedev has signed two laws meant to rein in Russia’s notorious pretrial detention system, an institution often used to extract bribes and enforce widespread corruption. He has been trying to make the country more governable and conducive to business.
Medvedev sought to discourage police, prosecutors and judges from throwing businesspeople into jail on false charges, often in return for bribes from competitors bent on destroying a rival.
But the system quickly proved itself more powerful than the president. The laws were ignored. Yet another of Medvedev’s promised reforms would go unkept, and Russians would remain fearful of their courts and police.
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Why Some Russians Need the West’s Help
“The West will help us.”
Ostap Bender’s famous phrase from Ilf and Petrov’s “The 12 Chairs” may have been on Konstantin Fetisov’s mind when he met with Michael Posner — U.S. assistant secretary of state for the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor — in the Moscow region a week ago.
Fetisov is a leader of the movement opposing the construction of the Kremlin-supported $8 billion Moscow-St. Petersburg highway that will travel through the Khimki forest. He was beaten badly by unidentified assailants last November, leaving him with impaired speech and memory loss.
During his meeting with Fetisov, Posner said the United States needs to “redouble” its efforts to press Russia on protecting human rights.
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U.S. reset with Russia at new stage as officials meet with human rights activists
Michael Posner got up at 4 a.m. in Moscow, bound for this Volga River city where he began filling a yellow spiral notebook with stories of newspapers silenced, human rights advocates threatened and political parties repressed as the United States prepares for a new chapter in its relations with Russia.
Call it reset 2.0.
Posner, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, describes the task as moving decisively to another level in an area where the United States has not made visible progress.
On a trip to Russia that began Monday and ended Saturday, Posner visited Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan, asking activists and opposition politicians what the United States could or should be doing to better support their efforts. He listened, took notes, asked questions and answered even more.
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Lawyer’s Mother Takes on Russian Officials
Nearly two years after her son died in custody, a slight, 59-year-old retired teacher is confronting the powerful officials who put him in prison and oversaw the system that has been blamed for his death.
Natalya Magnitskaya has avoided public attention since her only child, Sergei L. Magnitsky, died in pre-trial detention. Working for an American law firm in Moscow, he had uncovered a $230 million tax fraud and accused police of the crime. The very officers he testified against soon arrested him and charged him with the fraud.
Now, despairing that those who caused his death will ever be prosecuted, Natalya Magnitskaya has filed an official complaint with Russia’s Investigative Committee, asking for a murder investigation of Russia’s chief prosecutor, deputy interior minister and other police, security and prison officials.
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