(RFE/RL – rferl.org – April 23, 2013) KIROV, Russia — A court in Russia’s Kirov Oblast has rejected a request from anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny for a further delay in his trial. Navalny had asked for more time for his lawyers to examine the 28 volumes of documents associated with his case. Navalny is accused of being involved in the […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – April 19, 2013) The mother and widow of whistle-blowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky were in Washington on April 17, just days after the White House issued a blacklist of more than a dozen Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s prosecution and death in jail in 2009. RFE/RL’s Richard Solash spoke to Magnitsky’s mother, Natalia, at a reception […]
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(Moscow TImes – themoscowtimes.com – Michael Bohm – April 19, 2013) Michael Bohm is opinion page editor of The Moscow Times. You would have thought that the Kremlin would have shown a little more appreciation for the fact that U.S. President Barack Obama approved only 18 minor figures for the open portion of the Magnitsky list. After all, the original […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 17, 2013) Heads of leading Russian NGOs disagree with accusations levelled by the authorities at the human rights association Golos facing a heavy fine. “We think it is absurd to say that the organization that led the fight for fair elections in Russia is acting in the interests of foreign states and is a foreign agent,” […]
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(RIA Novosti -WASHINGTON, April 17, 2013) US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday praised cooperation between the United States and Russia on a range of issues and said he is “hopeful” that the two countries can bolster bilateral ties despite disagreements over adoptions and human rights. “Even though there have been some bumps in the road, I am […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – April 18, 2013) U.S. Representative James McGovern was one of the leading sponsors of legislation that mandated sanctions against Russians implicated in the prosecution and death of whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, spoke to RFE/RL’s Richard Solash on the sidelines of a Washington reception held on April 17 honoring the Magnitsky family. RFE/RL: […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – April 18, 2013 – Robert Coalson) The whole process took less than an hour. At 10:26 a.m. on March 18, Lyudmila Popkova was handed a piece of paper ordering her to appear before Moscow Judge Tatyana Neverova. At 11 a.m. the same day. Hustled off to court by investigators, Popkova spent 15 minutes in front of […]
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(Interfax -MOSCOW. April 16, 2013) The closed part of the list of U.S. citizens prohibited to visit Russia is longer than the open part, a source at the Russian Foreign Ministry told Interfax on Tuesday. “Concerning the Russian list, its closed part carries more names than the open one,” he said. The source said he did not know how many […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Julia Reed in Moscow – April 17, 2013) “A case against Navalny is a case against all of us,” insist the friends and supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is due to go on trial for corruption in the regional city of Kirov on April 17. Unfortunately, many other Russians appear not to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – April 16, 2013) The Kremlin said the United States has sent Russia a “positive signal” by dispatching a high-profile delegation to Moscow headed by U.S. National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, who delivered a letter Monday with “concrete measures” on missile defense, nuclear arms reduction and trade. The meeting occurred amid ongoing strains […]
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(RIA Novosti – Carl Schreck – WASHINGTON, April 15, 2013) The United States and Russia struck a conciliatory chord Monday following tit-for-tat blacklists of alleged human rights violators, but the contentious US legislation that sparked the diplomatic dust-up appears set to become a permanent fixture in ties between Washington and Moscow. “There is no sunset clause on the Magnitsky […]
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(Interfax – April 15, 2013) Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the information about the foreign funding of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Russia recently disclosed by President Vladimir Putin is reliable. “There is not the slightest reason to doubt the reliability of the said figures,” Peskov said on a Sunday night current events show on Russia 1 channel. […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – April 12, 2013) The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private foundation based in Washington, D.C., that provides grants and other support to organizations around the world that promote democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. The NED’s senior director for Europe, Rodger Potocki, recently visited RFE/RL’s broadcast center in Prague and spoke with […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 14, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-battle-of-lists.html) The publication of the Magnitsky List and the Russian response have prompted widespread speculation not only about the secret and supposedly much larger and possibly expandable lists attached to each but about the meaning of this exchange for the future of Russian-American relations. In an article entitled […]
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(RIA Novosti -ST. PETERSBURG, April 12, 2013) Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko lashed out at European politicians at an international conference in St. Petersburg on Friday, claiming Russophobia in the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe (PACE) was obstructing Russian-European cooperation and suggesting the EU’s stance on visa requirements and human rights was hypocritical. “Not so long ago, our partners […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 10, Issue 68 – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – Pavel Felgenhauer – April 11, 2013) Since last March, Russian and international human rights organizations – including such prominent ones as Memorial, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Transparency International and others – have been harassed by Russian law enforcement and tax authorities, had their premises searched all […]
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(RIA Novosti, MOSCOW, April 12, 2013) Russian election watchdog Golos (Vote, or Voice) has been given notice to vacate its office in Moscow with no explanation, the non-governmental organization’s deputy director Grigory Melkonyants told RIA Novosti on Friday. “Our rental contract is still valid, but the new lessor has informed us they are breaking the contract ahead of its […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 12, 2013) The Kremlin was bracing for the release late Friday of a U.S. blacklist of more than 100 Russians that could include Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. At the same time, the authorities were preparing to release their own blacklist with an equal number of U.S. citizens. Washington […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 11, 2013) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has branded the U.S. Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act as a manifestation of “the Russophobia that is traditionally present” in U.S. Congress. One of the architects of the Magnitsky act was Hermitage Capital investment fund chief executive William Browder, who “illegally hoarded a large fortune in the […]
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(RIA Novosti – Alexey Eremenko – MOSCOW, April 11, 2013) The list of suspects in the controversial investigation into last year’s riots at an anti-Kremlin rally in Moscow is much longer than previously announced, an opposition website said on Thursday. The Investigative Committee currently has 86 suspects in addition to the 26 people already arrested, charged or convicted over […]
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(RIA Novosti – Carl Schreck – WASHINGTON, April 8, 2013) Russian officials who are slapped with Magnitsky Act sanctions this week may have seen their dim prospects for recourse in US courts brighten thanks to US President Barack Obama. In what the White House called a “routine delegation” of responsibilities, Obama on Friday formally tasked the US Treasury and […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW. April 8, 2013) Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the elder human rights activist in Russia and the head of the Moscow Helsinki group, believes the figures given in reports on foreign funding received by NGOs in Russia are overestimated. “This is being done to show that these organizations allegedly have money to burn. Everyone influences public opinion in the way […]
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(Interfax, MOSCOW. April 4, 2013) None of the leading NGOs will register as a foreign agent following prosecutors’ inspections, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the head of the Russia’s oldest human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group, told Interfax on Thursday. “I know for sure than no one will register. No matter how much they try,” Alekseyeva said. Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – April 3, 2013) Unfair court judgments, poor prison conditions and abuse of authority by law enforcement officials were among the main complaints received by Kremlin human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin last year, which he said in an annual report was the “most difficult” for him since taking his post in 2004. Last […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 2, 2013) Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin has called on non-governmental organizations (NGO) to assess their ongoing inspections by law enforcement and tax agencies. “We have asked human rights organizations that have been subjected to inspections to send us documents and tell us how the inspections were conducted, how the law was abided by, and […]
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(Interfax – April 1, 2013) A former member of the government of Russia’s Kalmykia republic has confirmed during the Sergei Magnitsky tax evasion trial that the registration of the Dalnyaya Step and Saturn Investments companies in Kalmykia as investment firms involved document forgery. Magnitsky, who was an external auditor for British investment fund Hermitage Capital and died in a Moscow […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – April 2, 2013) Russian law enforcement authorities have widened their search for opposition figures involved in the violent May 6 protest rally last year, with a series of raids in at least four regional cities, activists said. The raids were part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the violence that broke out […]
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(RIA Novosti – March 29, 2013) The majority of Russians (63%) believe that human rights violations are common in Russia while nearly one third of the population (27%) believes the opposite, according to a poll published by the Public Poll Foundation. The survey found that over the past two years, 72% of respondents had not been in a situation where […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Joy Neumeyer – April 1, 2013) In 1934, Ivan Nosov appeared in a photo in Pravda, gazing rapt as his friend Joseph Stalin addressed the 17th Party Congress. In 1937, Stalin scribbled “za” (“I approve”) on a list condemning Nosov to death. Nosov is one of 44,500 names that appear in “Stalin’s Shooting Lists,” a […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova – April 1, 2013) The NGO raids in Russia are the big story right now – and yet this story is one that threatens to overshadow some of the important work being done by one particular NGO. I’m talking about “Stalin’s Shooting Lists,” an updated and corrected disk recently reissued by Memorial scans […]
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(Interfax – March 28, 2013) Russia’s rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin presented a report on the observation of human rights in Russia in 2012 to President Vladimir Putin, the Interfax news agency reported on 28 March. He highlighted that not enough attention was paid to rights issues in some regions and expressed concern about pressure on regional ombudsmen. Lukin said that […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW. March 28, 2013) Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council is expecting Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to explain the purposes of numerous inspections of non-governmental organizations (NGO) at the upcoming session of the council in April. “We have asked the Prosecutor General to participate in the council meeting so that representatives of the Prosecutor’s General Office can report […]
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MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax) – Prosecutors inspecting non-profit organizations are performing unusual duties, which are virtually repressive, a member of Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council and board member of Memorial international society, Sergei Krivenko, said. “We tried to draw an analogy with the current unprecedented inspections in Memorial – nothing like that has happened in the past 25 years. The […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Jonathan Earle and Yekaterina Kravtsova – March 29, 2013) The Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia’s oldest human rights organization, on Thursday became the latest NGO inspected in a massive government campaign that has hit hundreds of non-state groups in 25 regions and is unprecedented in post-Soviet Russia, a rights leader said. Prosecutors and Justice Ministry officials […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Natalya Krainova – March 28, 2013) Prosecutors on Wednesday continued performing unannounced inspections of nongovernmental organizations, checking the Moscow offices of three prominent groups and summoning two human rights leaders for questioning. Officials have inspected about 2,000 NGOs nationwide in the past month, Pavel Chikov, head of the Agora human rights group, said by telephone. […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – March 26, 2013) Amnesty International has joined a growing list of organizations raided by Russian officials in recent weeks amid what activists describe as a ruthless Kremlin crackdown on dissent. Prosecutors and tax police on March 25 searched the venerable rights watchdog’s Moscow headquarters, along with three other prominent advocacy groups — the […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Stanislav Kuvaldin, special to RBTH – March 27, 2013) Law enforcement organs are conducting mass checks of Russian NGOs. According to information from human rights activists, more than 40 organizations in 16 regions of Russia have already been inspected. The Justice Ministry and the Public Prosecutor’s Office have announced their intention to check […]
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MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) Russian state officials continued a wave of raids on prominent rights organizations on Wednesday that activists describe as a renewed pressure campaign against non-governmental organizations in the country. On Wednesday, officials from the Prosecutor General’s Office and tax control service targeted several more NGOs, including the Moscow offices of Human Rights Watch, Transparency International […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, March 27, 2103 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/03/window-on-eurasia-last-year-23000.html) More than 23,000 citizens of the Russian Federation, a large percentage of them non-Russians from the North Caucasus, sought political asylum in Europe in 2012, a number that ranks Russia just behind Afghanistan and Syria and ahead of Iraq, Somalia and China, according to Eurostat, the European […]
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MOSCOW. March 25 (Interfax) – The head of Amnesty International’s Russian office Sergei Nikitin announced after police visited the office that he could be summoned to the prosecutor’s office soon. Prosecutors, Justice Ministry and tax officials started an audit on several nongovernmental organizations on Monday, among them Amnesty International, Public Verdict and the Movement for Human Rights. “They spent five […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, March 25, 2013) The Justice Ministry has explained that mass checks at NGOs are being carried out to uncover the organizations that fall under the definition of “foreign agents”. “If breaches of the laws of the Russian Federation are uncovered, including the provisions of the Federal Law “On the introduction of changes to legislative acts as regards […]
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(Interfax – March 24, 2013) Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Russia’s oldest human rights activist and the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, is concerned that the recent inspection of NGOs conducted by the law enforcement agencies may lead to the closure of many prominent NGOs in Russia. “I don’t know what they are looking for. They are probably looking for evidence of […]
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(Interfax – March 21, 2013) Over the past three years, the Russians have become less concerned about inflation, unemployment and economic crisis in the country and significantly more concerned about growing corruption, social inequality and uncontrolled immigration, Russian Interfax news agency reported on 21 March, citing an opinion poll carried out by the Levada Centre in February. According to the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – March 22, 2013) A man professing to be a former government operative has said that police officials, including the former interior minister, were involved in organizing clashes at an opposition rally last year, allegations that members of the Kremlin human rights council say could be trustworthy. The online television channel Politvestnik posted […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, March 21, 2013) Members of the Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC) have appealed to Prosecutor-General Yuriy Chayka with regard to complaints from NGOs from a number of regions in the country about mass checks by the oversight body. “The last few days have seen an unending flood of reports from the heads of NGOs in Krasnodar, Perm […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Sergei Markedonov, special to RBTH – March 18, 2013) Sergey Markedonov is a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. The 60th anniversary of the death of Joseph Stalin (March 5, 1953) has galvanized the debate about his role in both Russian and world history. The desire […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Alexandra Guzeva, RBTH – March 16, 2013) The first children’s book about Stalin, “Breaking Stalin’s Nose,” has been released, almost sixty years to the day since the dictator’s death. Are Russians ready to discuss this period of their country’s past with their children? Russian émigré author Eugene Yelchin’s “Breaking Stalin’s Nose” has appeared […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Richard Solash – March 13, 2013) WASHINGTON — A tussle is brewing in Washington over who will be included on a U.S. list of sanctioned Russian officials to be published next month. Officials with the State Department are reportedly advocating steps that would shorten the politically sensitive “Magnitsky list,” while members of Congress and NGOs who […]
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(Interfax – March 14, 2013) Russia’s opposition, human rights campaigners and civil activists have decided to establish a new public movement, which will be named the Civil Federation. Leading human rights organizations, the For Human Rights movement and the Moscow Helsinki Group, activists of the Moscow Civil Forum and the White Ribbon pro-opposition group will form the core of the […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Richard Solash – March 11, 2013) WASHINGTON — The battle over the Sergei Magnitsky case is moving to Europe. After being lobbied by activists for nearly three years, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in late 2012 to sanction Russian officials implicated in the prosecution and death of Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing Moscow lawyer who died in pretrial […]
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