Posts Tagged ‘senate’
U.S. Senate Asked to Blacklist Yukos Foes
A group of humans rights activists, politicians and artists on Monday urged the U.S. Senate to blacklist 305 Russian officials linked to the jailing of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The list includes Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin, but not Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his deputy Igor Sechin, whom Khodorkovsky has repeatedly named as his main enemies.
Rights champion Lev Ponomaryov, a co-signee, told The Moscow Times that Putin and Sechin were not included to make the proposal easier for U.S. senators to approve.
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U.S. Asked to Blacklist 305 Yukos Attackers by Russian Activists
Russian human-rights activists and opposition politicians have called on the U.S. Senate to blacklist 305 officials in Russia involved in the prosecution of Yukos Oil Co. and its owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
In a letter sent to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, the activists asked them to include the officials in legislation targeting human rights abusers in Russia, according to a copy of the petition posted on Khodorkovsky’s website.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration in July implemented a visa ban on a number of Russian officials after a similar request to punish human rights abusers. Russia warned it would retaliate, threatening to undermine the “reset” in relations between the two countries.
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No way in
Kommersant has a letter written by Russian opposition members, human rights activists and cultural figures in the US Senate which contains a request to impose the same restrictions on officials involved in the Yukos case as those which are being imposed on authorities associated with the Sergey Magnitsky case. The list compiled by the opposition includes 305 people: Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, head of the Investigation Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin, Moscow City Court Chairwoman Olga Yegorova, investigators, state prosecutors and judges associated with all parties in the Yukos case. The authors of the letter are hoping that the people whose names have been blacklisted will be banned entry to the United States and their foreign bank accounts, if they exist, will be frozen.
In particular, the letter addressed to the US Senate was signed by co-chairmen of the People’s Freedom Party Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov, human rights activists Lyudmila Alekseeva and Lev Ponomarev, film director Eldar Ryazanov, People’s Artists of Russia Lia Akhedzhakova and Natalia Fateeva.
“With this letter we are showing support for the pending Sergey Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011,” reads the letter. “However, Magnitsky’s case is not the only of its kind in our country.”
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Justice sought over Russian lawyer’s death; Browder urges UK ban on culprits
Express on Sunday
Financier Bill Browder is determined to see justice done for his murdered Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. A year and a half after Magnitsky’s torture and death in a Russian jail, Browder’s ceaseless campaigning has prompted Washington to ban up to 60 Russian officials implicated in the crime from entering the US.
Now Browder, an American-born British citizen, wants the UK to implement a similar visa ban on the officials. He said yesterday: “It’s time for my country to do the same thing.”
Next month, he will ramp up the pressure on the Government to take action ahead of Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Russia.
But his mission will not stop there: he wants to stop similar tragedies happening again in Russia. “Sergei’s death is a chance to change Russia in some fundamental way,” he said.
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Bill Browder: the man making Moscow squirm over the death of Sergei Magnitsky
Bill Browder is a man on a mission. “I want to change Russia and change human rights advocacy in Russia in a profound way,” the hedge fund millionaire says with almost messianic zeal, in his sparsely furnished offices in London’s Golden Square.
It is, safe to say, an unusual ambition for a successful financier with $1bn of assets under management. But Browder has had an unusual time of late.
Two years ago, the founder of Hermitage Capital Management discovered a new calling. The catalyst was the tragic death of a colleague, Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old tax lawyer and married father of two, at the hands of the Russian state. Until then, Browder’s activism had been limited to boardroom battles against corruption in Russia, where he had been the largest foreign portfolio investor with a track record for boosting shareholder returns by cleaning up companies.
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Russia says U.S. visa move won’t affect cooperation
U.S. visa restrictions on Russian officials linked to the death of investment fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will not affect cooperation on Iran and Afghanistan, a senior Russian official said on Tuesday.
“Speaking about the information in the U.S. media about an asymmetrical response, a cutback in cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, then there is nothing more far from reality than such speculations,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.
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Congress Needs Human Rights Assurances To Support Russia MFN Vote
There is a growing sense in Washington that members of Congress will need assurances on human rights if they are to agree to grant Russia permanent most-favored nation (MFN) status, which is necessary if U.S. companies are to fully benefit from Russia acceding to the World Trade Organization.
In a July 7 statement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) argued that extending permanent MFN and ushering Russia into the WTO is “simply not an option” until Russia is pressed to improve its human rights record. A congressional aide said this sentiment is shared by other members of Congress.
According to an informed source, the White House opposes directly linking improvements in Russia’s human rights situation to Russia’s WTO accession, but since January has nonetheless been advancing the idea that Congress should consider separate human rights legislation this year.
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Russia blames doctors, not police, in death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky
Russian authorities, under persistent international pressure to charge police officials in the pretrial detention death of a 37-year-old lawyer, on Monday blamed prison doctors instead.
Human rights activists, colleagues of Sergei Magnitsky and even U.S. senators have urged Russia to call Interior Ministry officials to account for arresting, prosecuting and then denying medical treatment to Magnitsky, who died in custody in November 2009.
But on Monday, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee, told the Interfax news agency that doctors would be prosecuted because of “flaws” in treatment that caused Magnitsky’s death.
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Our Answer to Magnitsky
“Our answer to Chamberlain.”
This Soviet slogan originated in the late 1920s as a government protest against British Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain, who was outspoken in his criticism of the Soviet policy toward China. But instead of addressing the arguments raised by Chamberlain, the Kremlin responded with the only weapon they had: a massive propaganda campaign that included military threats aimed at Britain. The expression later took on the broader meaning of basically “Go fly a kite!” when the Kremlin had nothing else to say in response to criticism from the West.
“Our answer to Chamberlain” is the best way to describe the bill introduced by the Foreign Ministry and United Russia (and supported by the other three parties in the State Duma) that would blacklist foreign bureaucrats and public officials who have allegedly violated the rights of Russian citizens located abroad. Foreigners who end up on the list would be barred from entering Russia and prevented from conducting business deals, and whatever assets they hold in Russian banks would be frozen.
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