Posts Tagged ‘moscow times’
Russia’s Failure to Protect Freedom of Religion
Has Russia truly changed its ways on human rights? Certainly its new law restricting public protests fuels grave and widespread concerns. Moreover, in at least one key area, religious freedom, Russia has not changed in many respects. This assessment should provoke serious discussion as the United States faces decisions about its relationship with its former Cold War foe.
Russia is poised to enter the World Trade Organization later this month. To reap trade benefits from its entry, the United States would have to exempt Russia from the trade restrictions of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which includes Russia due to its past restrictions on the right to emigrate during the Soviet period.
What should the United States do? It should continue to hold Russia accountable.
Over the past decade, the Kremlin has exploited legitimate security concerns about violent religious extremism by restricting the rights of nonviolent religious minority members. Its major tool is an extremism law. Enacted in 2002, the law imposes sanctions on religious extremism, which it defines as promoting the “exclusivity, superiority, or inferiority of citizens” based on religion. The law now applies to peaceful actors and actions. In addition, individuals who defend or sympathize openly with those charged also may face charges.
Once a higher court upholds a prior ruling that religious material is “extremist,” the material is banned, with convicted individuals facing penalties ranging from a fine to five years in prison. As of June, the government has banned 1,254 items, according to the Sova Center, a Russian nongovernmental organization.
Russian citizens who preach that their particular faith is superior to others are potentially liable to prosecution. As written, this dangerously broad law can easily entrap peaceful members of religious groups, including those among the country’s Muslims, who number from 16 million to 20 million, simply for alleging the truth or superiority of their beliefs.
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Senators Bungled Anti-Magnitsky Road Show
Last week, a delegation of Russian senators traveled to Washington to make a last-ditch attempt to derail the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act. By the time they were finished, the trip had turned into a fiasco, highlighting the need for the law they so vehemently oppose.
The Magnitsky act seeks in part to ban entry to the United States and freeze the U.S. assets of the people responsible for the illegal arrest, torture and murder of my former law partner, Sergei Magnitsky. It also seeks to do the same to any Russian government official who abuses his position to attack anti-corruption activists, journalists and people who defend fundamental human freedoms.
The Kremlin is categorically opposed to the Magnitsky act and argues that punishment of corrupt Russian officials must be left to the Russian government. It is adamant in asserting that its criminal justice system works and should be trusted by other nations. To demonstrate why there is no need for the Magnitsky act, the senators said the purpose of the trip to Washington was to present findings of a new and independent Federation Council investigation of the Magnitsky affair.
The timing of the announcement was not coincidental. The Magnitsky act is sailing through hearing after hearing on Capital Hill. There is huge inertia to pass it before the summer recess. Just about the only thing that could derail the act is if the Russians carried out a legitimate investigation and started prosecuting their own corrupt officials.
But the composition of the Russian delegation was disquieting. It was headed by Vitaly Malkin, whose net worth is estimated to be more than $10 million and who was previously named by the Canadian government in court proceedings as “a member of a group engaging in organized or transnational crime.” Malkin has been banned from entering Canada. A politician accused of skimming $48 million off a debt-reduction deal with Angola and who enjoys immunity from prosecution in Russia was probably not the best choice to head a delegation determined to prove that the Russian government is capable of punishing its own corrupt officials.
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OSCE Calls for Sanctions Against Suspects in Magnitsky Case
Lawmakers with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have called for sanctions against Russians implicated in the jail death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, even as one of the key suspects witnessed the vote in person.
“The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly calls on national parliaments to take action to impose visa sanctions and freezes on persons responsible for the false arrest, torture, denial of medical care and death of Sergei Magnitsky,” says the resolution approved Sunday.
Magnitsky was jailed in late 2008 after accusing tax and police officials of embezzling a $230 million tax refund owed to Hermitage Capital. He died in jail in November 2009 shortly after being badly beaten by prison guards, according to an independent Kremlin human rights council investigation.
Last month, Hermitage Capital released a video accusing Interior Ministry investigators Pavel Karpov and Artyom Kuznetsov, who arrested Magnitsky, of having ties to an organized crime syndicate supposedly led by Dmitry Klyuyev, former owner of the Universal Savings Bank.
Klyuyev and an associate attended the session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s annual meeting, held in Monaco on Sunday.
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Magnitsky showdown nears
The Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate backed on Tuesday the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which, if passed by Congress and the U.S. president, will impose sanctions on some 60 Russian officials.
The bill will deny entry to the United States and freeze the accounts of those allegedly responsible for the persecution and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was allegedly killed in jail in 2009 after exposing a graft scheme for a tax refund of $230 million set up by a group of Russian law enforcers, tax officers and judges.
Supported unanimously by the Senate’s panel, the bill has fairly good chances of being adopted. “The White House has never indicated an inclination to veto this legislation,” the office of the bill’s sponsor, Senator Ben Cardin, told The Moscow News.
The only way the bill can be withdrawn is if Russia starts a murder investigation into the death of Magnitsky and the crime he exposed, U.S. lawmakers say.
“If Russia was to prosecute those responsible for Sergei Magnitsky’s death, there would no longer be a need to include those individuals on the public list,” Cardin’s office said.
However, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office started a criminal case against Magnitsky himself last August, charging him with embezzlement of the same $230 million in tax refunds.
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Kremlin’s Omerta Blocks Justice for Magnitsky
After the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved the Magnitsky Act on Tuesday, the bill is one step closer to becoming law.
Unlike the House version of the act, which targets only suspected and convicted Russian criminals, the Senate’s version effectively de-emphasizes Russia by applying visa restrictions and asset freezes to suspected and convicted criminals all over the world.
It was almost as if the Senate was trying to say to President Putin: “Nothing personal, Vladimir. We are against all criminals, not just Russian ones.”
But this seeming nod to Russia was lost on Putin. During the Group of 20 summit last week, he said once again that if the bill becomes law, Russia would apply symmetrical measures against Americans. Essentially, he was saying Russia would “retaliate,” to pull an old Cold War term out of the closet.
But presumably Russian authorities would ban convicted and suspected U.S. criminals from entering Russia anyway, regardless of the Magnitsky Act. Let’s hope that Russia’s “retaliation” doesn’t mean it will pick Americans at random — innocent businessmen, journalists or academics who are working in Russia or who want to work there — just to show Washington that it can make its own “symmetrical” blacklist if push comes to shove.
Amid all the bluster and feigned indignation around the Magnitsky Act, Putin is conveniently ignoring the fact that there has been a “Magnitsky list” of sorts used by both the United States and Russia for decades. Washington has always denied visas to convicted and suspected criminals.
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Let Down by U.S. Decline
Russia’s pro-democracy activists, human rights campaigners and corruption fighters are disappointed in U.S. President Barack Obama. On the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit last week, Obama met with his Russian counterpart for the first time since Vladimir Putin began his third time as president. They discussed repression in Syria but Obama failed to say anything publicly about fraudulent elections in Russia and increasing repression against those who exercise their constitutional right to protest. Moreover, the White House opposes the Magnitsky bill in U.S. Congress, which would impose international sanctions on Russian government officials implicated in corruption, murder and other serious crimes.
The lack of an authoritative global voice in support of democracy and rule of law in Russia is certainly bad for Russians, but it is bad for Americans, too.
The United States is a nation in decline not only because its economy is weak, unemployment is high and standards of living are falling. The underlying failure is, above all, moral. Amoral behavior began abroad with an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, illegal torture of foreign nationals — for which no one has been held accountable — and extrajudicial killings by unmanned drones.
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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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Why Russia’s Mafia State Is So Inefficient
In “The Godfather,” author Mario Puzo describes criminal boss Don Corleone’s organization as a highly centralized money-making machine. The Godfather is the CEO of an underground business empire, a kind of shadowy Henry Ford who collects all the money and makes all the decisions.
In reality, large criminal enterprises are divided into semi-autonomous crews who have their own territory or specialty and are grouped around a middle-level boss. There are constant rivalries and struggles for influence in which thugs make alliances and seek support from higher-level mafiosi.
As business entities, criminal enterprises are hugely inefficient. The global drug trade, estimated at $300 billion annually, has produced no lasting fortunes. Everything is squandered or lost. Efficiency is achieved by establishing and following rules, but criminals are lawless by nature. The notion that mafia thugs live by a special “thieves’ law” is a legend. For example, Godfather Vyacheslav Ivankov, murdered in Moscow in 2009, was himself the worst offender against the law’s most-sacred precepts.
Over the past 12 years, Russia has become a full-fledged mafia state. One day, historians will chart its exact structure, but it seems clear that it consists of several large families headed by President Vladimir Putin’s close associates and loyal oligarchs. Alongside them, countless crews of siloviki, bureaucrats, gangsters and affiliated businessmen work on their own, their networks varying from local to nationwide.
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Russia Tries to Turn Tables on Human Right
In an attempt to deflect criticism against crackdowns on political protests at home, senior Russian officials on Monday shot back at Western critics, lambasting racism and xenophobia in Europe.
Foreign Ministry and State Duma officials joined researchers and members of nongovernmental organizations in urging representatives of the European Union present at a round-table discussion not to use Russia’s human rights record as a political tool.
“The West doesn’t tolerate criticism of its own human rights violations,” said Vasily Nebenzya, head of the Foreign Ministry’s department for humanitarian cooperation and human rights.
“Human rights have become a weapon,” he said, adding that Russia would treat its critics “with mistrust when they try to teach us [to observe] human rights … as long as our concern [about human rights violations in Europe] is ignored.”
The speeches presented few figures and were very heavy with emotion and personal opinion.
Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s permanent representative to the European Union, suggested that the EU was guilty of hypocrisy for having not yet joined the 1953 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which Russia partially ratified in 1998.
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