ALDE Organizing high-level seminar on Russia
EURO MEDIA LTD: ALDE Organizing high-level seminar on Russia . Processed and transmitted by Thomson Reuters ONE. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. On Wednesday, 05 June, the ALDE Group in the EP is organizing a high-level seminar entitled “Russian Political Prisoners”, which seeks to increase attention to the political prisoners in Russia and find solutions on how to help those people.
“The EU can’t overlook its own values and principles while building relations with Russia. There are major problems and these need to be urgently attended to. Russia needs to start fulfilling its international obligations in the Council of Europe and the OSCE” – said MEP Ojuland ahead of the event.
“Instead of long awaited liberation of the political prisoner number one – Mikhail Khodorkovsky, we observe the persecutions of activists and citizens for practicing their constitutional rights. At the moment the “Bolotnaya” and “Pussy Riot” cases have our increased attention, but unfortunately there are many others in Russia who face the same repression” – continued Ojuland.
“Impunity of the gross human rights violators stays as a central problem in cases of living and fallen victims of Putin’s regime as it has happened in Magnitsky’s case”. Among the distinguished participants is the president of the ALDE Group in the EP, former PM of Belgium Guy Verhofstadt; the political leader of the People’s Democratic Union (PDU), former PM of Russia Mikhail Kasyanov; nominee to Nobel Peace Prize, chair of Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alekseeva; the president of the Institute of Modern Russia Pavel Khodorkovsky; the leader of Sergey Magnitsky Global campaign Bill Browder.
Media Contact Details Mr. Karl Koort Tel: +32 2 28 47583 , email at Copyright Thomson Reuters This press release is distributed by Thomson Reuters. The issuer is responisble for the content. [HUG#1706896] unshaven girl займ на карту срочно без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займ онлайн
EU Shouldn’t Reward Russia’s Repression With Visa Deal
In its usual bureaucratic way, the European Union is sleepwalking into a huge blunder in its relations with Russia.
The EU’s regular summit with Russian leaders opened in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg this week. The EU — and Germany, in particular — wants to sign a new visa-facilitation agreement with Russia, the EU’s third-largest trade partner after the U.S. and China, taking an important step toward eventual visa-free travel in Europe.
The EU’s representatives in Yekaterinburg will be negotiating this visa deal on behalf of the Schengen area, a borderless zone in Europe that includes most, but not all, EU nations, plus a few from outside, such as Switzerland and Norway. This will make visas cheaper and easier for many Russians to acquire.
Ominously, though, it also means the EU may be about to free up travel for the roughly 15,000 Russian bureaucrats who hold biometric “service passports.” These people represent the beating heart of President Vladimir Putin’s state and include officials from the Kremlin, government ministries and the feared security forces, which Russians call “the organs.”
Giving these people visa-free travel would reward them and Putin for their increasingly repressive policies. It would be a mistake.
Emerging Dictatorship
Russia is no longer an emerging democracy but an emerging dictatorship since Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and redefined Russian authoritarianism. The protest movement that arose in response to abuse in the election, which returned Putin to power, has been crushed through arrests, trials, political imprisonment and the potential sentencing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny to a decade behind bars. The space for free speech has been squeezed by a terrifyingly vague new treason law and punitive fines for any protests that the authorities deem illegal.
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More bad news from the Middle East
It has been apparent for some time that when Secretary of State John Kerry (in his current spot or while in the Senate) gets pumped up about something (e.g. Bashar al-Assad is a reformer, get Turkey into the Middle East “peace process,” develop a special relationship with the Chinese government) it is probably a very bad idea, and when he is adamantly opposed to something (e.g. the Magnitsky human rights legislation, more sanctions on Iran, restoring defense spending), it is in all likelihood essential to do. He is, not unlike Jimmy Carter, the perfect embodiment of rotten judgment.
So when he commences to fawn over the newly named Palestinian Authority prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, you know he’s a bad replacement for Salam Fayyad.
Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies concurs. He tells me, “Hamdallah is an obscure academic with no experience in governing. His appointment marks a consolidation of power for Mahmoud Abbas. He is expected to be a ‘yes man’ — the opposite of Salam Fayyad, who openly disagreed with the Palestinian president on core issues, including transparency and institution building.” What is really going on here is the consolidation of corrupt Fatah’s authority. (Fayyad was never a Fatah member, which in large part accounted for his independence and the antipathy he generated.) Schanzer observes, “Unfortunately, Abbas is not only getting a weak prime minister. He is also weakening the institution of the position. This means less checks and balances in the Palestinian political system. Abbas, who is already four years past the end of his legal presidential term, has taken the institution of the presidency back to the future.”
It is noteworthy that the most significant accomplishment regarding the PA in the past few years was the ejection of Yasser Arafat and the division of authority between the president and prime minister. Now, as Schanzer notes, Abbas’s “ironclad grip on Palestinian politics rivals that of Yasser Arafat in his prime.”
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Cyber theft: A hard war to wage
Washington is angry. Really angry. It is just not sure what to do about it. US officials have accused Chinese hackers of stealing corporate trade secrets since the mid-2000s but during the past few months the outrage has reached a political tipping point. cyber security has been thrust to the top of the agenda in US-China relations.
The Obama administration, members of Congress and the think-tanks that advise them have cast around for ways to punish hackers from China and elsewhere. Washington is considering a series of unilateral trade and other sanctions against Chinese entities and individuals.
“We will start sending a message to countries, especially China, that there is a consequence to your economic espionage,” says Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House intelligence committee who is preparing a bill to penalise hackers. “We should have a dial we can turn up and a dial we can turn down. That means adding some teeth.” When Barack Obama welcomes Xi Jinping for their first presidential meeting on Friday, he will press his Chinese counterpart on the issue of cyber theft.
Yet while political pressure is building for Washington to find ways to do something about the theft of trade secrets, it faces two big problems. First, it is not clear if any of the suggested remedies are workable. Moreover, given that China denies the US allegations, American attempts at retaliation risk escalating into a broader trade war between the world’s biggest economies.
John Veroneau, a former deputy US trade representative, worries that the mounting tensions over cyber theft could cause deep damage to the global trading system. “The great recession did not cause a surge in protectionism despite many predictions,” he says. “But cyber theft is changing things.”
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Former Bush Advisor: Keep Calm and Submit to Putin
It’s hard to imagine how someone could be more discredited regarding Russia than by being intimately associated with both the George W. Bush and Richard M. Nixon administrations. That’s the case with Russia pundit Paul J. Saunders: he worked for Bush as a key Russia advisor and now works for the Center for the National Interest, known as the Nixon Center until 2011.
Recall Bush infamously looked in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, glimpsed his soul, and declared him trustworthy. And hosted a Russian war criminal in the Oval Office, before Putin invaded Georgia and annexed two huge chunks of territory. The Center for the National Interest is actually run by a Russian, Dimitri Simes, another discredited figure who has urged the same disgraceful policy of appeasement towards Russia that has been embraced by the disastrously failed “reset” policy of Barack Obama.
In the May 23 Washington Post, Saunders published an editorial fully supportive of the Obama reset. The column is one of the more dishonest and outrageous pieces of writing about Russia I’ve come across in my career of monitoring Russian affairs.
Saunders argues that the United States should not oppose dictatorship in Russia until Russian troops begin “massing on the country’s Western border” and “opposition activists are being executed by the hundreds.” Yes, really.
He denies that dissidents are being sent to psychiatric wards, Siberia, or being subjected to show trials like those that occurred in Soviet times, and therefore urges Americans to do as Obama says and to thank their lucky stars, because things are just fine in Russia as far as Americans are allowed to be concerned.
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Human Rights in Russia
The Greens / European Free Alliance
The Human Rights Committee of the European Parliament held a hearing on Russia today with members of the band “Pussy Riot”, William Browder and others. Chair of the Committee, Green MEP Barbara Lochbihler and the vice chair of the Parliamentary Committee on EU-Russia Cooperation, Green MEP Werner Schulz welcomed the speakers and were deeply concerned by their contributions. Commenting after the hearing, they said:
“The hearing revealed the alarming deterioration of the human rights situation in Russia after the retaking of office by Vladimir Putin. Two representatives of Pussy Riot pointed to the increasing number of political prisoners, while the well-respected Russian judge Karinna Moskalenko described the perversion of justice in an increasingly politicaly motivated judicial process. William Browder underlined this with the example death of his assistant and Russian advocate Sergej Magnitsky, the circumstances of which are still not clear.
The European Union may not continue with its strategy of diplomatic reservation and has to assume responsibility. Therefore we demand a clear change of paradigm in European politics. The EU must commit to clear messages and demands at government level and to an active support of Russian civil society.
The political developments and human rights in Russia are on the agenda for discusison at the next EU-Russia-Summit, which will take place at the beginning of June. The dialogue on human rights must not be pushed off to one side. The growing number of political prisoners and politically motivated trials and convictions must be condemned in the strongest terms.
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Russian bid to keep tabs on London based campaigner fails
Financier Bill Browder is at forefront of a campaign seeking justice for Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who exposed corruption before dying in a Moscow prison.
Interpol has rejected a request from Russia to monitor a financier leading the campaign over the death of a whistle-blowing lawyer – after deciding that Moscow’s demand was “predominantly political”.
The Russian authorities, who have already issued an arrest warrant for US-born hedge fund manager Bill Browder, had asked the international policing body to place him on a list requesting its 190 member countries to alert Moscow of his whereabouts. The move could have presaged an attempt by Russia to have London-based Mr Browder arrested and extradited to face fraud charges.
But Interpol this weekend refused the request and issued a public statement saying it had removed all information about him from its databases.
The decision is a significant victory for Mr Browder, who has been at the forefront of a campaign to seek justice for Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who exposed corruption before dying in a Moscow prison in 2009 after being beaten and then denied essential medical treatment. Mr Browder, whose Hermitage Capital Management employed Mr Magnitsky, has said he is the target of a politically motivated vendetta driven by Russian president Vladimir Putin in revenge for exposing the Magnitsky case.
In a statement, Hermitage Capital said: “The decision by Interpol to delete the Russian ‘all-points bulletin’ for William Browder is a clear sign that a deeply corrupt regime will not be allowed to freely persecute whistle-blowers who have exposed it.” займы онлайн на карту срочно займ на карту онлайн https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php www.zp-pdl.com buy over the counter medicines
Human Rights in Russia: Pussy Riot takes part in committee debate
The human rights situation in Russia is worsening, a member of the feminist punk-rock collective Pussy Riot told a Human Rights Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.
Subcommittee chair Barbara Lochbihler (Greens/EFA, DE) said “The new restrictive laws impeding the work of NGOs and human rights defenders, an increase in political prisoners and politically-motivated charges, as well as increasing harassment of LGBTI activists in Russia are particularly worrying. The EU must keep human rights at the core of EU-Russia relations and human rights violations need to be more clearly communicated when engaging with Russia”.
The Pussy Riot member argued that the human rights situation in Russia was deteriorating, and explained the case brought against her group. She also reported that Pussy Riot’s Maria Alekhina was still in prison, on hunger strike, and that her appeals were being denied even though she is the mother of a young child.
Contributors to a discussion on Russia’s laws on political prisoners included Karinna Moskalenko, of the International Protection Center, William Browder, of Hermitage Capital Management, and Veronika Szente Goldson, of Human Rights Watch.
In the chair: Barbara Lochbihler (Greens/EFA, DE) hairy women payday loan https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займ на карту
Interpol snubs Russia on request to arrest human rights critic William Browder
Interpol has refused a request from Russia to put William Browder, a U.S.-born investment banker who has organized a worldwide campaign to punish Russia for human rights abuses, on its arrest list. Browder was a major proponent of the U.S. Magnitsky law, which imposes visa and financial sanctions on Russians deemed to have violated human rights.
The law was passed in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Browder’s Hermitage Capital Fund, who died in detention in Moscow after he uncovered a $230 million tax fraud, implicated Russian tax and police officers and was charged by them with the crime instead. Russia has accused Browder of involvement in fraud, as well.
In a statement posted on its Web site Friday evening, Interpol said the request to arrest Browder was politically motivated. On Saturday, Browder described the decision as a major humiliation for President Vladimir Putin.
“That an independent police organization would say the entire Magnitsky case is politically motivated is extremely significant,” he said in a telephone interview. Alexei Pushkov, head of parliament’s international affairs decision, criticized the decision in comments to the Interfax news agency.
“Declaring a case political without a thorough investigation is a political position rather than an investigative body’s position,” he said Saturday. hairy girl срочный займ на карту https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php займ срочно без отказов и проверок
To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
