Posts Tagged ‘pushkov’
European rights body to debate Magnitsky report
The Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog, will on Wednesday (4 September) in Paris debate a damning resolution on the Magnitsky affair, with Russian delegates pledging to attack the text.
The resolution, drafted by Swiss centre-left MP Andrea Gross in June, accuses Russian authorities of orchestrating the death in pre-trial detention, of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian auditor, who exposed a mafia-related scam to embezzle the Russian taxman.
“There is no doubt that some of the causes of Mr Magnitsky’s death were created deliberately, by identifiable persons,” his report says.
It calls for the council’s 47 member states to impose “intelligent sanctions” on Russian officials implicated in his death.
It also urges Moscow to help Europol and financial sleuths from six EU states to investigate the money laundering trail linked to the scam.
Russian MPs on the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have indicated they will try to water down the text before it is officially adopted, however.
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Edward Snowden: Russia offers to consider asylum request
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says any appeal for asylum from whistleblower who fled US will be looked at ‘according to facts’.
Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, in the Kremlin’s latest move to woo critics of the west.
Snowden fled the United States before leaking the details of a top-secret US surveillance programme to the Guardian this month. He is currently believed to be in Hong Kong, but has reportedly changed hotels to keep his location secret.
Fearing US retaliation, Snowden said at the weekend that “my predisposition is to seek asylum in a country with shared values”, citing Iceland as an example. He defended his decision to flee to Hong Kong by citing its relative freedom compared with mainland China.
Snowden is not known to have made any asylum requests, including to Russia. Yet speaking to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said: “If such an appeal is given, it will be considered. We’ll act according to facts.”
Peskov’s comments were widely carried by the Russian media, which have largely ignored Snowden’s revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) was secretly empowered with wide-reaching authority to collect information from the US mobile provider Verizon and to snoop on emails and internet communications via a data-mining programme called Prism. Russia’s feared security services are widely believed to maintain similar powers.
Peskov’s comments on potential asylum opened the floodgates on support for Snowden. Robert Shlegel, an influential MP with the ruling United Russia party, said: “That would be a good idea.”
Alexey Pushkov, head of the Duma’s international affairs committee and a vocal US critic, said on Twitter: “By promising asylum to Snowden, Moscow has taken upon itself the protection of those persecuted for political reasons. There will be hysterics in the US. They only recognise this right for themselves.”
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Interpol snubs Russia on request to arrest human rights critic William Browder
Interpol has refused a request from Russia to put William Browder, a U.S.-born investment banker who has organized a worldwide campaign to punish Russia for human rights abuses, on its arrest list. Browder was a major proponent of the U.S. Magnitsky law, which imposes visa and financial sanctions on Russians deemed to have violated human rights.
The law was passed in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Browder’s Hermitage Capital Fund, who died in detention in Moscow after he uncovered a $230 million tax fraud, implicated Russian tax and police officers and was charged by them with the crime instead. Russia has accused Browder of involvement in fraud, as well.
In a statement posted on its Web site Friday evening, Interpol said the request to arrest Browder was politically motivated. On Saturday, Browder described the decision as a major humiliation for President Vladimir Putin.
“That an independent police organization would say the entire Magnitsky case is politically motivated is extremely significant,” he said in a telephone interview. Alexei Pushkov, head of parliament’s international affairs decision, criticized the decision in comments to the Interfax news agency.
“Declaring a case political without a thorough investigation is a political position rather than an investigative body’s position,” he said Saturday. hairy girl срочный займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php займ срочно без отказов и проверок
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Magnitsky Act sponsor is denied Russian visa
Despite having traveled to Russia before and intervention of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Congressman Chris Smith was denied a Russian visa.
U.S. Congressman Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey), chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs subcommittee on human rights, has been denied a Russian visa.
According to Smith, he had previously traveled to the Soviet Union and Russia, but in February 2013 he was denied a visa, despite intervention by U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. The congressman said that no reason has been given; however, Russian Ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak reportedly said that the decision had been made in Moscow, not at the Russian Embassy in Washington.
Smith believes the refusal was retaliation for the passing of the Magnitsky Act. Nevertheless, the congressman plans to reapply for a visa. He said he had previously been denied visas to China, Cuba and Belarus. He had planned to travel to Russia to discuss the Dima Yakovlev Law, which bans Americans from adopting Russian children and was passed partially in response to the Magnitsky Act. Smith said he shared the legitimate concerns of the Russian officials and had prepared a resolution highlighting the death of 19 Russian children adopted by American parents.
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Putin Aide Says U.S. Holds Key to Improving Ties
Strained U.S.-Russian ties will not improve unless Washington stops openly criticizing Moscow’s human rights record and supporting President Vladimir Putin’s foes, the top foreign policy official in the Russian parliament said.
Relations between the Cold War-era rivals took a dive after Putin’s return to the Kremlin in May, undermining a 2009 initiative by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, a more liberal Putin protege, to “reset” ties.
Alexei Pushkov, head of the international affairs committee in parliament’s lower chamber and a Putin ally, said the ties were “negatively stable” now and the “reset” could be considered over without an initiative on the highest political level to save it.
“The priority is political realism. Ideology matters should be secondary. I tell you, issues over ideology and values can destroy anything,” Pushkov said in an interview.
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Magnitsky affair row grows as Russia threatens to reveal banned US officials
Russia has threatened to unveil a list of American officials who are banned for alleged human rights abuses in the latest in a tit-for-tat row between the two powers.
Moscow is furious that American legislators approved a new law which forbids any Russian officials known to be involved in corruption or criminality of travelling to the United States or holding assets there.
The law, which was passed on Thursday night, is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow based lawyer who was hired by the British investment fund Hermitage Capital to investigate a multimillion-pound scam and died in prison after he was arrested by the same Russian officials he had accused of being behind the scam.
Alexei Pushkov, one of Russia’s top foreign policy officials, said yesterday that Russia already had a list of US citizens implicated in human rights abuses of Russian citizens banned from entering Russia. Up to now, this list has been secret rather than official policy, in response to the American informal visa ban for those on the “Magnitsky list”. Now that the Magnitsky Act is official policy, however, Russia could well respond in kind.
The passage of an American banned list is a victory for Hermitage’s CEO, William Browder, who has lobbied extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe for such legislation.
“In a world where partisan politics can be so divisive, the moral outrage over what happened to Sergei Magnitsky has caused everybody in Washington to lay down their arms and do something truly historic to honour his sacrifice,” he told The Independent yesterday. “The obvious next step is to implement the same kind of ban across Europe and the UK.”
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Russian Riled By Parliament
Members of the European Parliament may struggle sometimes to get their voice heard inside the European Union, but they’re doing a good job of riling their Russian counterparts.
Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the state Duma, contrasted the “realistic pragmatic approach” from the European Commission to the relationship with Russia to that it has with “the ideological institutions like the European Parliament.”
“There are quite a few people in the European Parliament who think the more they take decisions that irritate Russia the best it is for Europe. I’m not of this opinion. There is some kind of ideological wave which is unfurling over Europe, and it’s a very negative wave,” Mr. Pushkov told a group of academics and journalists in Moscow.
On Tuesday, the parliament adopted a recommendation calling on EU governments to implement sanctions on a list of officials responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a subsequent judicial cover-up and for the ongoing harassment of his mother and wife. The parliament recommended banning those people from entry into the EU, freezing their assets in the EU, and called on Russia to launch an independent investigation into his death.
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Putin Snubs G-8 to Punish Obama for Criticism, Official Says
President Vladimir Putin is showing U.S. President Barack Obama his displeasure over the criticism of Russian elections and the lack of progress on a planned missile shield by skipping the Group of Eight summit for the first time as president, said Alexei Pushkov, a senior lawmaker.
The U.S. has “nothing to propose” to Putin at this week’s meeting, while “strong handshakes and smiles” are probably not a priority for him as Russia forms a new government, Pushkov, the head of the foreign-affairs committee in the lower house of parliament, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Russia’s relations with the U.S. are showing strains as Putin begins his third term as president. The two countries have locked horns over missile defense, the future of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Putin has accused foreign powers of financing the biggest anti-government protests in a decade to destabilize Russia, saying that U.S. criticism of a December parliamentary election emboldened the opposition.
“Why does the U.S. think it can be sure the Russian president will pay a visit?” Pushkov said. “The American side thinks it can call the parliamentary election illegitimate, send its ambassador to meet with the radical opposition that shouts ‘Russia without Putin,’ doubt the presidential election and criticize Russian authorities for half a year.”
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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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