Posts Tagged ‘reset’
Letter Calls on President Obama to Cancel Meeting with Putin in Moscow
In light of recent disturbing developments for human rights in Russia, we urge President Barack Obama to cancel his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in September in Moscow and to revise U.S. policy toward Russia to reflect the aggressive, systematic assault on political and civil liberties taking place in Russia.
The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC
August 2, 2013
Dear Mr. President:
In the past several weeks, the already alarming deterioration of Russia’s respect for political and civil rights has accelerated. Ordinary citizens who participated in peaceful protests against the government are being tried in court on trumped-up charges, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was convicted posthumously in an absurd tax evasion case after having died from abuse in prison, and anti-corruption blogger and leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny was convicted of embezzlement in a politically-motivated trial.
Over the past year, Russia’s Kremlin-friendly Duma has hastily adopted laws that make Russians, particularly those engaged in civil society and journalism, vulnerable to arrest and imprisonment. Russia’s security services and law enforcement are pursuing a government agenda to harass and intimidate anyone perceived as a critic. Hundreds of non-profit organizations have been raided and investigated. Activists and opposition figures are targets of surveillance and harassment, even outside of Russia.
In light of these disturbing developments, we urge you to cancel your summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in September in Moscow and to revise U.S. policy toward Russia to reflect the aggressive, systematic assault on political and civil liberties taking place in Russia. This request is independent of our concern about Russia’s handling of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who was granted temporary asylum today in Moscow. Even if Snowden were to be returned to the U.S. before your planned visit to Russia, which looks highly unlikely, we would still urge you not to travel to Moscow in September for the reasons stated.
While we recognize that certain levels of engagement with the Putin government are important and unavoidable, we also feel that U.S. policy should reflect Russia’s backsliding on human rights and recognize that it has an impact on the broader U.S.-Russia relationship. Such a policy is also important in dealing with other repressive governments elsewhere.
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WICKER: Russia’s adoption freeze: Is a humanitarian solution within reach?
When the Russian government decided late last year to forbid international adoptions with the United States, the heartbreak was swift and palpable. The Kremlin’s political opportunism had reared its ugly head — denying orphans the chance at a better future and leaving adoptive families incomplete.
Approximately 300 U.S. families, including several in my home state of Mississippi, were in the process of adopting children from Russia when the ban took effect in January. These families had traveled across the world to meet and bond with the children they hoped to welcome into their lives. As the extensive paperwork and formalities progressed, the emotional ties grew stronger.
Today, these “pipeline” families are working tirelessly to challenge Russia’s broken promises and bring attention to the hundreds of orphans still waiting for Mom and Dad. Their pleas have yet to stir a response from Russian officials, who refuse to allow the pending cases to move forward. But growing international support has inspired new hope that a humanitarian solution should prevail.
The resounding consensus by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is encouraging. Earlier this month, the parliamentary assembly of the 57-country organization overwhelmingly passed a measure I introduced to uphold the sanctity of the adoption process between nations.
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US lawmakers fed up with Russia, Putin
U.S. lawmakers say they’re increasingly frustrated with Vladimir Putin and are demanding that President Obama crack down on Russia following a slew of recent spats with the United States.
The country over the past two weeks has sentenced Putin’s biggest critic to five years in prison and posthumously convicted a dead whistle-blower championed by Congress. To top it off, the Kremlin is now considering asylum for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, a move lawmakers warn would bring U.S.-Russian relations to a post-Cold War low.
“Enough is enough,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared Friday upon introducing a resolution calling on the September G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg to be moved to some other country if Russia doesn’t turn over Snowden. “It’s time to send a crystal clear message to President Putin about Russia’s deplorable behavior, and this resolution will do just that.”
Schumer’s co-sponsor on the resolution, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), made international headlines earlier this week when he told The Hill that Obama should consider pulling out of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi if Snowden gets asylum.
“I would just send the Russians the most unequivocal signal I could send them,” Graham said when asked about the possibility of a boycott. “It might help, because what they’re doing is outrageous.”
The feeling is bicameral.
“I’m absolutely frustrated with Russia,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). “Every day the human rights situation continues to get worse.”
McGovern is the House author of legislation targeting alleged Russian human-rights offenders that was named after Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-corruption whistle-blower who died in police custody. McGovern urged the administration to add higher-ups in the Putin government to the list of people banned from traveling to the United States or holding assets in the country.
“We gave the administration a very effective tool – they need to use it,” McGovern told The Hill. “Now isn’t the time to be quiet, now is the time to speak up about what’s going on over there.”
“We haven’t been pushing them that hard, and they’ve been no help to us on Syria. It is important that we push back, and if we don’t, who will? Nobody.”
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Obama May Cancel Moscow Trip as Tensions Build Over Leaker
President Obama may cancel a scheduled trip to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin in September as the standoff over the fate of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor seeking asylum there, takes its toll on already strained relations between the United States and Russia, officials said Thursday.
Canceling the meeting in Moscow would be seen as a direct slap at Mr. Putin, who is known to value such high-level visits as a validation of Russian prestige. While the White House may be using the meeting as leverage to win cooperation as it seeks the return to the United States of Mr. Snowden, who is now staying at a Moscow airport, the reconsideration also reflects a broader concern that the two countries are far apart on issues like Syria, Iran, arms control and missile defense.
The conviction on Thursday of Aleksei A. Navalny, a prominent leader of the opposition to Mr. Putin, on embezzlement charges further underscored the deepening divide between the two countries as the White House pronounced itself “deeply disappointed” at what it called a trend of “suppressing dissent and civil society in Russia.” The verdict and five-year sentence came a week after the posthumous conviction of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer investigating official corruption who was arrested and died in custody.
“We call on the Russian government to cease its campaign of pressure against individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption, and to ensure that the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of all of its citizens, including the freedoms of speech and assembly, are protected and respected,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.
The talk of human rights rang hollow to the Kremlin given the Snowden case. Mr. Putin has suggested that Washington is being hypocritical in complaining about Russian actions while seeking to prosecute a leaker who exposed American surveillance programs. But Mr. Putin has also made clear that he does not want the showdown to harm ties.
“Bilateral relations, in my opinion, are far more important than squabbles about the activities of the secret services,” he told Russian reporters who asked Wednesday about the scheduled Moscow meeting.
The White House announced the coming meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin when the two leaders met in Northern Ireland last month. It was added as an extra stop on a trip to St. Petersburg for the annual gathering of the Group of 20 nations. But while Mr. Obama is still committed to going to St. Petersburg, officials said he is now rethinking the Moscow stop, not just because of the impasse over Mr. Snowden but because of a growing sense that the two sides cannot agree on other issues enough to justify the meeting.
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So much for the reset
The news that Russia has no plans to hand over former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden casts an important light on the “reset” policy that has defined US–Russian relations for almost five years.
The Snowden case should be relatively straightforward. He has violated the laws of the US. His passport has been cancelled, and he cannot legally leave the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. The US has asked for his return. In the last five years, the US has returned 1,700 Russian citizens to Russia at the request of the government. Of these, 500 were criminal deportations.
Despite this, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Snowden had the right to “fly in any direction” from the transit zone. This type of response was exactly what the reset policy was supposed to prevent. The policy was based on the notion that President Bush had mishandled Russia and responsiveness to Russian concerns would produce positive results. The policy, however, had a serious flaw. It failed to account for the nature of the Russian system and the psychology of the Russian leaders.
In making policy toward Russia, the US has concentrated on what are called “deliverables” — treaties, agreements, working groups. In the interest of obtaining these deliverables, the US deliberately downplayed Russian violations of human rights. When Putin was elected president of Russia for the third time in elections marked by massive falsification, Obama congratulated him. At the 2009 Moscow Summit, Obama praised the “extraordinary work” that Putin had done in Russia. He described Putin as “sincere, just and deeply interested in the interests of the Russian people.” This was done despite credible reports that while running Russia, Putin had amassed a personal fortune of nearly $40 billion and was the richest man in Europe.
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Don’t ’Reset’ With Putin, Crack Down on Him
As Secretary of State John Kerry visits Moscow today to try to shore up fraying relations, the show trial of the dissident Alexey Navalny also should be on the agenda.
The anti-corruption campaigner led demonstrations against Russian President Vladimir Putin after last year’s elections; he now faces a judge who has convicted 130 people and acquitted none in the past two years.
These days, friction between Putin and the West is the norm, and with good reason. Russia-U.S. relations don’t need another “reset.” Instead, the U.S. must carry out an honest recalculation of what it can expect to obtain from Putin — and at what price.
Conventional wisdom holds that Russian cooperation on a range of issues is so valuable — and U.S. leverage over Putin so minimal — that antagonizing officials in Moscow over human rights isn’t worthwhile. The U.S. should rethink that assumption, not merely because Putin’s approach to democracy and human rights is even worse than expected, but also because he has failed to deliver on critical national-security issues, such as Iran, North Korea and Syria.
On Iran, Russia voted for United Nations sanctions in 2010, but has since cozied up to the Tehran regime.
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The president again turns a blind eye to Russia’s misdeeds
According to the State Department, the government of the Russian republic of Chechnya under Ramzan Kadyrov “has committed and continues to commit such serious human rights violations and abuses as extrajudicial killing, torture, disappearances and rape.” Mr. Kadyrov, State added in an August 2011 letter, “has been implicated personally” in “the killing of U.S. citizen Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had reported widely on human rights abuses in Chechnya.”
Yet when the Obama administration released on Friday a list of Russian officials who are to be subject to a visa ban and an asset freeze because of their complicity in human rights crimes, Mr. Kadyrov was not on it. The list of names — mandated by Congress in legislation that the administration strongly resisted — is a step toward holding the regime of Vladimir Putin accountable for its abuses, but it also is another example of President Obama’s questionable catering to the Kremlin.
Sixteen of the 18 names on the sanctions list are connected to Sergei Magnitsky, a whistleblowing Russian lawyer who died after being imprisoned and abused; it was his case that prompted Congress to pass the law last year. Under its provisions, the administration is required to identify Russian officials complicit in the persecution of Mr. Magnitsky, as well as in other human rights crimes, and publicly sanction them.
Some advocates of the law wondered why the list was so short; some 60 Russian officials have been connected to Mr. Magnitsky’s case alone, not to mention other notorious cases such as that of Ms. Politkovskaya, who was gunned down on Mr. Putin’s birthday in 2006. There are some good reasons: An asset freeze by the Treasury Department, which can be subject to legal challenge, has to meet a relatively high standard of evidence.
Administration officials concede, however, that some names were left off the list for political reasons. One is Mr. Kadyrov, who reportedly is included in a classified annex of officials who are to be denied visas but not be subject to an asset freeze. We were told that the administration did not want to target senior officeholders, out of concern that Russian reciprocation would ban members of Congress, Cabinet members or state governors (the equivalent of Mr. Kadyrov) from visiting Russia, further complicating U.S.-Russian relations at a time when Mr. Obama is still seeking to strike deals with Mr. Putin. As it is, the Kremlin issued a sanctions list over the weekend that included several officials of the George W. Bush administration.
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President Obama Should Uphold the Magnitsky Act’s Legislative Intent
The Foundry – Heritage Foundation
Next week, the Obama Administration faces an important foreign policy decision in U.S. relations with Russia—how to champion human rights and the rule of law. The State Department is trying to avoid a gust of chilling wind from Moscow.
However, the last thing the Administration should do is show weakness to Moscow or subvert the will of Congress as stipulated in the recent Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 signed by President Obama last December.
Under the Magnitsky Act, the State Department is supposed to submit a list of corrupt Russian officials who are gross violators of human rights. The U.S. will then ban these violators’ travel to the U.S. and freeze any assets they hold in American banks. The State Department has until April 13 to compile such a list for implementation.
The Magnitsky Act’s intent is to name and shame the corrupt officials responsible for whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky’s brutal death in 2009 and send a message that the U.S. takes human rights violations in Russia seriously.
However, one of the law’s co-sponsors doubts Obama’s resolve to implement the list. Representative Jim McGovern (D–MA) created his own list of officials as he fears for how the Magnitsky Act will be enforced and whether the Administration’s list will have enough teeth. McGovern’s list includes 280 names, including Yuri Chaika, the Prosecutor General of Russia who closed the investigation into Magintsky’s death; the head of the Russian Investigative Committee; and numerous secret policy and law enforcement officials involved in this and other cases.
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FPI BULLETIN: MAGNITSKY IMPLEMENTATION A KEY TEST FOR OBAMA
By April 13, the President must submit to Congress a list of people to be sanctioned under the Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, passed by Congress last December. The law is named for a Russian tax lawyer who died from abuse in jail for resisting official corruption, and it directs the denial of U.S. visas and freezing of assets against any individuals responsible for “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” in Russia. The law’s implementation will be a critical test of America’s longstanding commitment to human rights for the Russian people.
Congressional champions of the Magnitsky Act are concerned that the Obama Administration will not faithfully implement the law. At a conference earlier this month, Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) warned the Obama administration: “If there are some bureaucrats in my own government who, for whatever reason, choose not to implement the law in the spirit that it was written and it was passed, then I assure you that Congress will strengthen that law, amend that law with even tougher language. . . . This was not just a talking point that we passed.”
McGovern is right to be concerned. Beginning his second term, President Obama has recommitted his administration to the “reset” for Russia, a policy premised on the difference between interests and values. Discrete objectives are to be approached instrumentally and without regard to the quickening pace of anti-democratic regression under Vladimir Putin that provides ample basis for a list addressing a litany of abuses beyond the case of Mr. Magnitsky. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has reported that the administration is pursuing a cramped reading of the bill.
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