Newsletter May 2012
Medvedev’s human rights record is ‘modest’
Following outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev’s final meeting with his Human Rights Council on April 28th, his advisors admitted that their work with him ‘bore little fruit’. Council head Mikhail Fedotov stated that although the Council’s experts had worked on several reforms that Medvedev had initiated, eventually their advice had been ‘ignored’, their input had been ‘nullified’ or they ‘were simply pushed aside’.
In response to these criticisms, Medvedev accused the Council of focusing too heavily on high-profile cases such as those of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Sergei Magnitsky, and ignoring lesser-known cases. In the past year, several members of the Council have resigned, including journalists Svetlana Sorokina and Irina Yasina, who stated that ‘three years of working on the Council…convinced us that respect for rights and freedoms of Russian citizens is not a priority for the president’.
The Council has repeatedly called for Khodorkovsky’s release, and advised Medvedev that a request from a prisoner for a pardon was not necessary to grant clemency. However, Medvedev has continuously ignored their advice. The Council’s future mandate will be dependent upon incoming President Vladimir Putin, who takes office on May 7th.
In his own words
In April, one of Khodorkovsky’s prison chronicles was translated and published in the International Herald Tribune. The dispatch, which originally appeared in New Times magazine in March, describes some of the people that Khodorkovsky comes into contact with while behind bars. Also published this month, was his second public lecture to Novaya Gazeta, in which he discussed how social liberalism is influencing economic politics in Russia, explaining how liberal and rightist views have merged to create modern-day Russian public opinion. He concluded that Russian ‘liberalism is improving and developing’ but that the model of liberalism that brought prosperity to Western nations in previous years must be adapted to fit Russia’s place in the emerging global context.
Support from around the world
The United Kingdom has joined the growing list of countries acting to ban entry of those accused of serious human rights abuses, including torture or murder, following the controversy over the death of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for British investment fund Hermitage Capital.
The changes to immigration policy were announced with the launch of the Foreign Office’s Human Rights Report on April 30th, and will allow ministers to refuse entry where credible evidence exists of past or continuing human rights abuses. The change has been driven by Foreign Office ministers and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who met with Khodorkovsky’s mother and son earlier this year. The report has sparked an inquiry by the Foreign Affairs Committee, which over coming months will assess the Foreign Office’s work in relation to human rights. In March, backbench Members of Parliament had called for the United Kingdom to introduce legislation to ban 60 Russians with links to Magnitsky’s death from being granted visas. The Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom had sent a letter to the Speaker of the House in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the debate on this issue from proceeding.
Similar initiatives for visa bans and asset freezes are being considered in Canada, the Netherlands, France, Germany and the European Parliament.
The proposed Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which targets Russian officials involved in human rights abuses, was to be brought for a vote at the April 26th Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting, but has been delayed until May at the earliest, after President Putin visits the United States on May 18th to attend the G8 summit. Senator John Kerry, the Committee’s Chair, has said he still ‘supports quick passage of the bill and its linkage to the repeal of Jackson-Vanik’, but that he ‘needed more time to iron out differences over the details of the legislation’. A similar bill was introduced to the House of Representatives and is being supported by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
Meanwhile, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy urged Medvedev to prioritise bringing a ‘credible’ close to the investigation of Magnitsky’s death, before the end of Medvedev’s presidential term on May 7th. In a letter to Medvedev, Van Rompuy stated it would be ‘of symbolic relevance and send a very important signal for the future of Russia’.
The German chapter of the Russian NGO Memorial announced a donation to the Podmoskovny lyceum and boarding school, which was founded by Khodorkovsky in 1994 to provide an education and upbringing for orphans and children from socially disadvantaged families. Memorial Germany’s gesture of solidarity seeks to support the school’s principles of childhood development and to contribute to the school’s continuity.
Click here to access the full version of May 2012 Newsletter.
