Posts Tagged ‘vladimir kara-murza’
Why This Russian Criminal Case Matters to Canada
On Tuesday, the Canadian Parliament will hear testimony concerning the torture and tragic death in detention of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered the largest corporate tax fraud in Russian history, identified the senior Russian perpetrators, and paid for it with his life. His story is one of great moral courage and heroism, and his saga shines a spotlight on the pervasive culture of repression, corruption and impunity implicating senior government officials in Russia today.
Working as a tax attorney for Hermitage Capital Management in Moscow, an international investment fund founded by CEO William Browder — who will be the main witness at Parliamentary hearings today — Magnitsky blew the whistle on widespread Russian government corruption, involving officials from six senior Russian ministries.
The officials he testified against then arranged for his arrest and detention — and for the subsequent cover-up of their criminality — beginning a nightmare in which he was thrown into a prison cell without bail or trial, and systematically tortured for one year in an attempt to force him to retract his testimony.
Despite the intense physical and psychological pain Sergei Magnitsky endured at the hands of his captors, he refused to perjure himself, even as his health deteriorated. Denied medical care for the last six months of his detention, he died in excruciating circumstances at the age of 37, having developed a severe pancreatic condition while being held in the Butyrka prison, a notorious Czarist-era jail that also that also held Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Raoul Wallenberg.
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Kremlin Diplomacy, Soviet-Style: Putin’s Russia Revives “Look Who’s Talking” Routine
The foreign policy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia is increasingly reminiscent of Soviet days, not only in substance, but in style. As IMR senior policy advisor Vladimir Kara-Murza points out, the Kremlin is adopting the “look who’s talking” tactic frequently used by the USSR.
“In the U.S., not only presidents, but even Members of Congress are not elected from among the true representatives of the workers. . . . The people elected as Members of Congress and of state legislatures, as governors and judges, are those who have the support of the moneybags. . . . The vast majority of seats in the American Congress are always occupied by representatives of the propertied classes.”
—Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Foreign Minister, 1957–1985
“It would be a stretch to say that American citizens have the right to elect their president, and it cannot be said that an average American has the right to become president. . . . The entire 223 years of the history of organizing and holding democratic elections in the U.S . . . are full of examples of violations of voting rights of American citizens. . . . The electoral system and electoral laws of the United States of America . . . do not conform to the democratic principles that the U.S. has declared fundamental to its foreign and domestic policy.”
—Vladimir Churov, chairman of the Russian Central Electoral Commission since 2007
“During the presidential or congressional campaigns, candidates are judged according to criteria that would be deemed unseemly in other countries. . . . The ability to look good, smile, make the right gestures and wear a tie of an appropriate color are placed above all else. . . . It is in the interest of the ruling class to have candidates for high office with pretty faces, scenic oratorical gestures, artificial smiles and ties of all the colors of the rainbow.”
—Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Foreign Minister, 1957–1985
“The practice of television debates in America began with the famous television debate between Kennedy and Richard Nixon on September 26th, 1960. Henceforth the leader of the nation had to worry not only about the cogency and logical harmony of his speeches, but also about the color of his tie and the presence of a dazzling smile on his face.”
—Vladimir Churov, chairman of the Russian Central Electoral Commission since 2007
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The Kremlin’s blacklist
On July 12, as I stopped at the gate of the Russian Embassy compound in northwest Washington, the on-duty officer had some unexpected news. “I cannot let you in,” he said through an intercom. “You are forbidden to enter the embassy.” Being a Russian citizen and a credentialed Russian journalist, and having been to my country’s embassy on numerous occasions, I was naturally curious. Yevgeny Khorishko, the embassy’s press secretary, whom I called for an explanation, was brief: The directive to “strike” my name from the list of credentialed Russian journalists came from Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. No reason was given. In an interview later with Slon.ru, a Moscow news Web site, the press secretary explained that the decision reflected the fact that I am “no longer a journalist.”
The explanation would seem passable, except for one detail: The ambassador’s directive came before it was publicly announced that I had been dismissed as Washington bureau chief of RTVi, as Russian Television International is known, effective Sept. 1. How Kislyak could have known this in advance remains a mystery.
Around the same time, two trustworthy sources in Moscow informed me that my name has been placed on a “blacklist,” making me unemployable not only by RTVi but also by other, even privately owned, Russian media outlets. This was quickly verified, as one editor after another indicated that cooperation at this stage is impossible. From his own sources, opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov found out the name of the Kremlin official who has supposedly blacklisted me: Alexei Gromov, President Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff. As for the reason for the Berufsverbot, my interlocutors were unequivocal: It was my advocacy for the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, currently being considered by the U.S. Congress.
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Kremlin Retaliates for Magnitsky Bill—against Russians
When top Kremlin officials promised “retaliatory measures” in response to the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, a US congressional initiative that proposes to sanction corrupt Russian bureaucrats and human rights violators, it was clear they were not talking about banning US senators from keeping retirement savings in Russian banks. As many expected, retaliation was directed against Vladimir Putin’s critics inside Russia. Last month, police conducted early-morning raids and searches at the homes of leading opposition figures, including Boris Nemtsov, a vocal supporter of the Magnitsky Act. A new law on public rallies hastily passed by the Duma set fines for “violations” at 300,000 rubles ($9,000; ten times Russia’s average monthly salary). Another measure introduced by Vladimir Putin’s party—and personally backed by him—would force Russian NGOs that receive funding from abroad to register and publicly tag themselves as “foreign agents.”
Not suffering from megalomania, I did not expect high-level retaliation against my own humble person. Perhaps, as my colleagues have suggested, as someone who was actively involved with the Magnitsky Act from the very beginning, I should have known better. As a (very) senior media executive told me this week, “It is one thing when you say or write something against them; it is completely different when you work against what they perceive as their own personal financial interests. You are no longer their opponent, you are now their enemy.”
Be as it may, I was extremely surprised to learn at what level it was decided to dismiss me from the (privately owned) television network where I have worked for the past eight years. Presumably, the order to blacklist my name from Russian media outlets came from similar quarters: several editors with whom I spoke, including those who previously invited to me to work with them, responded with polite refusals. (Only one vaguely mentioned “baggage” associated with my name.) Finally, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Sergei I. Kislyak, has banned me (a Russian citizen) from entering the embassy building and grounds, and has officially revoked my Russian media credentials.
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Magnitsky Human Rights Sanctions Advance in Senate, Russia’s Thugs on Notice
Although it has never been difficult to distinguish between genuine opponents of Vladimir Putin’s regime and the bogus “opposition” tasked with imitating political pluralism, some episodes have been especially indicative. One watershed was the 2008 Georgia war, when many supposed opposition leaders supported Putin’s actions and even urged him to be more aggressive (among the few Russian politicians who spoke out against the invasion was Mikhail Kasyanov).
Another litmus test—perhaps an even more important one—is the Magnitsky Act, a US Congressional initiative which seeks to impose a visa ban and asset freeze on Russian officials involved in violating human rights. The bipartisan measure, which this week passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a unanimous vote (after clearing the counterpart committee in the House—also unanimously—on June 7th), is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer who was arrested, tortured, and died in prison after uncovering a $230 million tax fraud scheme involving government officials. As well as those implicated in Magnitsky’s persecution and death, the bill covers officials responsible for any “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”, which include the “freedoms of religion, expression, association, and assembly and the rights to a fair trial and democratic elections.”
The Kremlin’s reaction has been predictable—though still astounding in its defense of murderers, swindlers, and thieves. But, for many observers, the behavior of the official “opposition” was even more eye-opening. Ivan Melnikov, the deputy speaker of the Duma and one of the leaders of the Communist Party, joined the Kremlin in defending abusers, accusing the United States of “creating an instrument…to harass Russian citizens who, for one reason or another, are not liked by the American authorities.” On the substance of the case, Melnikov asserted that “Magnitsky is not the end-all of this world”. (After all, what is the death of one man to a party that had killed millions—and not even apologized for it?) Another “opposition” heavyweight, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the ultranationalist LDPR party, went even further, accusing Russian citizens who support Western visa sanctions on Putin regime officials of “betraying the national interests of Russia.” Russia’s national interests have been defined in many ways, but the ability of crooks and murderers to vacation and keep their money abroad has, until now, never been one of them.
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Magnitsky Bill Clears First Hurdle in US Congress
On Thursday morning, by a unanimous voice vote, the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved a bill that offers a rare example of congressional bipartisanship. The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, cosponsored by leading Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress, deals with an issue that the current and previous administrations were too timid (or too calculating) to address seriously: human rights violations in Russia. The bill drew the Kremlin’s attention as no other US congressional initiative has in years—perhaps not since the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which linked US-Soviet trade to the freedom of emigration. Hours after his inauguration on May 7th, Russia’s reinstated president, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree tasking his diplomats with “preventing the introduction of unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the United States of America against Russian legal entities and individuals”—a thinly veiled reference to the Magnitsky Act.
Sergei Magnitsky was a Moscow lawyer who died in custody in 2009 after reportedly being tortured and denied access to medical care. A year earlier, he uncovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme—the largest known in Russian history—which involved the previously seized assets of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund he was representing. Magnitsky’s testimony implicated several law enforcement officials. The result was his own arrest. Almost three years after Magnitsky’s death, not one of the perpetrators has been punished: on the contrary, a number of interior ministry officials involved in his case have received awards and promotions. Indeed, the most prominent criminal investigation in Russia involving Magnitsky has been, astonishingly, the ongoing posthumous case against him.
The Magnitsky Act, which now advances to the House floor, proposes a targeted visa ban and asset freeze against individuals “responsible for the detention, abuse, or death of Sergei Magnitsky,” as well as for any “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” in Russia. It is in defense of these fine citizens that Putin has mobilized the full force of his diplomacy. Both Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Kremlin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, have called the bill “anti-Russian,” and threatened unspecified retaliation. Presumably, all those US officials with retirement savings in Russian banks have been put on notice.
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Two Russias React to US Visa Sanctions Bill
Western proponents of realpolitik and the Kremlin’s “fellow travelers” routinely caution world leaders against criticizing Moscow over its dismal human rights and democracy record, as such criticism, in their view, would only “irritate Russia” and sour relations. This argument is true—if one takes “Russia” to mean Vladimir Putin’s unelected clique of corrupt bureaucrats, former security operatives, and billionaire friends. For those who do not equate a great nation with a rogue regime and pay attention to the genuine voices of Russian society, such a view is a travesty. With regard to human rights, nowhere is the discrepancy between the two Russias more evident than in the attitudes toward S.1039, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2011, a US Senate bill that would impose visa sanctions and asset freezes on Russian officials responsible for violating human rights, including “the freedoms of religion, expression, association, and assembly and the rights to a fair trial and democratic elections.”
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