Posts Tagged ‘the guardian’
UK immigration rules tightened to keep out human rights abusers
Peter Beaumont and Toby Helm
Saturday 28 April 2012
Measure allows ministers to bar entry of non-EU citizens accused of serious charges such as torture or murder
The government is to announce tough immigration requirements that would ban non-EU citizens who have been accused of serious human rights abuses, including torture or murder, from visiting the UK.
The measures in the government’s Human Rights Report, to be launched by the Foreign Office on Monday, will allow ministers to refuse entry where credible evidence exists of past or continuing human rights abuses.
The new rules, however, would not constitute a blanket ban on visas for human rights-abusing foreign officials, with ministers still able to rule that individuals – including human rights-abusing heads of state – can visit the UK if it is regarded as part of a policy of engagement on human rights.
The change has been driven by Foreign Office ministers and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.
At present, the UK does not have a list of those who are banned from visiting, as each case is considered on its merits. Officials admit that there have been times where they have wanted to deny entry to individuals but have struggled because they are not allowed to simply on the basis of their human rights record. Currently, the individuals targeted by the new rules could only have been excluded if they were viewed as a threat to national security.
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People tire of democratic facade in Putin’s Russia
The Guardian – Prince Edward Island
For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have swarmed the streets in the tens of thousands across the country in protest of the Dec. 4th parliamentary elections, in which Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party maintained its majority of seats in disputed fashion.
Outraged by the extensive allegations and reportings of electoral manipulation, Russians have called for new, transparent elections and even for the resignation of the prime minister himself. Yet, there is more to this sudden public outburst than meets the eye. Rather, it is a manifestation of general dissatisfaction with the state of democracy and corruption in the Russian Federation.
Twenty years after the fall of communism, little in Russia has changed. Political power and financial wealth remain concentrated in the hands of an inner circle of elites who dominate all facets of society. To the frustration of the Russian people, the development of a multi-party democracy, which once seemed genuine in the 1990s, has given way to the resurgence of authoritarianism and elitism under Mr. Putin and current President Dmitri Medvedev.
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Sergei Magnitsky’s mother vows to continue fight for justice in Russia
Two years after the Russian whistleblower died in custody, Natalia Magnitskaya says many people were behind his death.
Natalia Magnitskaya speaks in whispers, her tired eyes looking down at fingers that twist and turn from anxiety. She barely slept last night, as with most nights in the two years since her son died within the walls of one of Russia’s most notorious prisons.
Sergei Magnitsky was 37 when he died in November 2009 of multiple ailments he developed after being arrested a year earlier. The charges against him, of fraud and tax evasion, were designed to pressure the young lawyer into backing off on an investigation into an alleged attempt by corrupt state officials to steal $230m (£143m) in fake tax refunds, his supporters say.
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Cameron meeting Putin is a ‘historical mistake’, says exiled Russian tycoon
Boris Berezovsky urges David Cameron to raise human rights abuses with Putin, especially those against businessmen.
Exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has warned David Cameron that his decision to meet Vladimir Putin is a “historical mistake” that will lead to more bloodshed inside the country.
Russian dissidents and exiles are urging the prime minister to raise Russia’s disastrous human rights record in his talks with the country’s leadership. Cameron is due to hold a day of talks in Russia on Monday, accompanied by two dozen British businessmen, as the two countries seek to revive a relationship all but frozen in the wake of the London killing of the Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko.
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David Cameron’s trip to the Kremlin must address the Sergei Magnitsky case
The Russian lawyer, employed by a British citizen, died in jail. The prime minister must join Washington in annnouncing a travel ban on those involved.
In diplomacy there is an unofficial statute of limitations on rows that poison state-to-state relations. November will see the fifth anniversary of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by Russian agents in London. David Cameron will certainly raise the case when he goes to Moscow for his first trip to the Kremlin but equally certainly will have to swallow the Russian dismissal of the crime. But he will find it less easy to swerve around the case of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer employed by a British citizen and his London-based investment company. Magnitsky exposed the biggest tax swindle in Russian history, and was put to death by Russian officials for his pains.
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David Cameron must stand up to Putin
European leaders could honour the memory of Russian reformer Yelena Bonner by helping activists confront this corrupt cabal.
The death on Saturday of Yelena Bonner, widow of Andrei Sakharov, will be lamented across Russia. Her trenchant criticisms of Vladimir Putin’s autocracy – she was the first signatory of the “Putin Must Go” manifesto last March – was echoing as recently as last Thursday at a conference of reformists in Moscow.
Whether her death will have any effect on the decline in democracy in her beloved Russia may be discovered this week.
Russia’s justice minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, is the puppet who will announce this week whether or not the Putin regime will allow any opposition parties to put up candidates in December’s parliamentary elections and the presidential poll next March.
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Russia’s chief whistleblower wants to jail the corrupt
Alexey Navalny leaps out of his chair and draws five black circles on a whiteboard. The circles represent players in Russia’s multibillion-dollar oil industry. With boundless energy and lightning speed, he draws lines and connects the dots, telling the story of what he calls classic Russian corruption.
In Russia, this is not done – at least not publicly. Navalny is speaking in a country that has seen its greatest government critics jailed, exiled and killed. But the 34-year-old lawyer, smart, self-confident and apparently fearless, has made a career of going after Russia’s untouchables. As Russia’s chief whistleblower – a one-man WikiLeaks – he has focused in the past three years on using the law to obtain information from the infamously secretive state-run corporations that fuel the country’s economy and line the pockets of its highest officials.
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