Posts Tagged ‘senator’
Cardin says US must Address Human Rights Violations in Rusia
“If we want to have normal trade relations with Russia – if they want to have normal trade relations with the U.S. — we have a right to expect that they will abide by basic human rights”
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Co-Chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, today strengthened his call for consequences for those in Russia who have trampled on fundamental freedoms and human rights. At a hearing of the European Affairs Subcommittee, Senator Cardin laid out his case for the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which he and 25 other senators have sponsored. Not limited to just Russia, the Magnitsky bill would invoke a travel ban against serious violators of human rights, freeze any of their assets held in the U.S. and publish their names — a powerful deterrent for those craving respectability and legitimacy in the West.
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US senators seek visa bans for two senior Magnitsky officials
Two senators have urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to consider banning entry into the US for two senior Russian police officials who are believed to be complicit in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Earlier, the State Department put dozens of Russian officials blamed for Magnitsky’s death on a no-visa list after Russian authorities refused to take action against them.
Generals Tatiana Gerasimova and Nikolai Shelepanov, senior figures in the Russian Interior Ministry’s criminal investigation arm, are planning a visit to Washington to discuss intellectual property rights.
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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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RF reserves right to react to US sanctions over Magnitsky case
Russia reserves the right to adequately react if the United States uses sanctions against Russian officials over the Magnitsky case, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday.
“We reacted to the fact that what happened and happens on the possible decision on using sanctions by the American Administration,” the diplomat said.
“If this is done in practice, we reserve the right to adequately react to this move,” he added.
“That kind of lists has nothing in common with partnership and the declared policy to developing strategic relations with different countries,” he stressed.
“In any democratic state competent juridical structures decide if any person or a group of persons are guilty or not of any unlawful deeds,” Lukashevich said.
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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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Russia Responsible for U.S. Embassy Bombing
Eli Lake has a pretty big scoop today on Russian espionage in Georgia: A bomb targeting the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi has been linked, by Georgian intelligence, to a series of bombings around the country over the last 12 months that all lead back to Russia’s GRU.
A bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy in Tblisi, Georgia, in September was traced to a plot run by a Russian military intelligence officer, according to an investigation by the Georgian Interior Ministry.
Shota Utiashvili, the most senior official in charge of intelligence analysis for the ministry, said in an interview with The Washington Times that the recent spate of bombings and attempted bombings – including what he said was a blast targeting the U.S. Embassy – was the work of Russian GRU officer Maj. Yevgeny Borisov….
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Swapping Jackson-Vanik for Magnitsky
Relations between Cold War-era foes Moscow and Washington have long been distrustful, hypocritical, peppered with mutual insinuations and patched together with the most tenuous of threads. But now, on the eve of State Duma and presidential elections, an inevitable crisis in relations is nearing that threatens to tear them apart at the seams.
Last week, a group of 15 U.S. senators formally introduced a bill targeting Russians for human rights violations and corruption, including 60 officials connected to the jail death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The bill would ban them from entering the United States and freeze any U.S.-based assets.
Chances are high that the bill will be passed. The sanctions against corrupt officials and criminals-cum-politicians could serve as a replacement for the Jackson-Vanik amendment that has long been in need of repeal. When U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with Russian opposition leaders during his visit to Moscow in March, he told us that support was growing on Capitol Hill for new sanctions against Russian crooks and thieves that could replace the old Cold War-era law.
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President Dmitry Medvedev Craves a New Economic Order Both at Home and Abroad
While an international legal forum is hardly the perfect setting for delving deep into the intricacies of economic governance, in Russia’s highly convoluted regulatory environment the exception is quite often the rule. As in many international discussion forums hosted by Russia lately, economic issues loom large at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum that kicked off on Friday. “We now need to start discussing new advanced standards in banking, finances and accounting, and common corporate governance standards,” Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev told participants in a keynote address on Friday.
The three-day legal forum, organized to discuss the role of law in the innovative and safe development of global peace, was attended by nearly 500 legal experts and politicians that included Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Cecilia Malstrom, EU Home Affairs commissioner and Hans van Loon, secretary general of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Akira Kawamura, the president of the International Bar Association and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder also attended the forum, which was organized at the behest of the Russian president.
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