Posts Tagged ‘david kramer’

10
December 2013

Browder Expects Broader Magnitsky List Sanctions for Russian Officials in U.S., Europe

Moscow Times

The United States may publish the extended version of the “Magnitsky list” as early as next month, while Europe is expected to pass a similar measure, Hermitage Capital investment fund president and bill supporter William Browder said.

The Magnitsky Act, enacted by the U.S. Congress in December 2012 and named after late Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, imposed personal sanctions on Russian officials responsible for human rights violations and obstructing the rule of law.

“The law is only one year old now,” an assistant to U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who helped draft the bill, said in an interview for the Voice of America. “We are at the very beginning of its implementation process and anticipate its expansion both here in the U.S. and Europe.”

Executive Director of U.S.-based human rights NGO Freedom House David Kramer said his organization is currently working with lawmakers in several countries to “try to advance the adoption of a similar law as early as next year.”

Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers say they are unaware of U.S. plans to expand the “Magnitsky list” or European intentions to pass similar legislation, Interfax reported.

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05
August 2013

Letter Calls on President Obama to Cancel Meeting with Putin in Moscow

Freedom House

In light of recent disturbing developments for human rights in Russia, we urge President Barack Obama to cancel his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in September in Moscow and to revise U.S. policy toward Russia to reflect the aggressive, systematic assault on political and civil liberties taking place in Russia.

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC

August 2, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

In the past several weeks, the already alarming deterioration of Russia’s respect for political and civil rights has accelerated. Ordinary citizens who participated in peaceful protests against the government are being tried in court on trumped-up charges, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was convicted posthumously in an absurd tax evasion case after having died from abuse in prison, and anti-corruption blogger and leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny was convicted of embezzlement in a politically-motivated trial.

Over the past year, Russia’s Kremlin-friendly Duma has hastily adopted laws that make Russians, particularly those engaged in civil society and journalism, vulnerable to arrest and imprisonment. Russia’s security services and law enforcement are pursuing a government agenda to harass and intimidate anyone perceived as a critic. Hundreds of non-profit organizations have been raided and investigated. Activists and opposition figures are targets of surveillance and harassment, even outside of Russia.

In light of these disturbing developments, we urge you to cancel your summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in September in Moscow and to revise U.S. policy toward Russia to reflect the aggressive, systematic assault on political and civil liberties taking place in Russia. This request is independent of our concern about Russia’s handling of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who was granted temporary asylum today in Moscow. Even if Snowden were to be returned to the U.S. before your planned visit to Russia, which looks highly unlikely, we would still urge you not to travel to Moscow in September for the reasons stated.

While we recognize that certain levels of engagement with the Putin government are important and unavoidable, we also feel that U.S. policy should reflect Russia’s backsliding on human rights and recognize that it has an impact on the broader U.S.-Russia relationship. Such a policy is also important in dealing with other repressive governments elsewhere.

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18
July 2013

Conviction of Navalny: The Latest Human Rights Outrage Under Putin Regime

Freedom House

Freedom House strongly condemns the conviction of Russian corruption fighter and opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, in a trial and prosecution clearly staged to derail his political career. Navalny, 37, who became famous for investigations of government corruption on his blog, vocal criticism of the Russian government, and unconventional grassroots organizing activities, was sentenced today to five years in prison on charges of theft.

After a local investigation into the alleged theft in 2009 of 16 million rubles (about $482,000) from a Kirov-based timber company was closed for lack of evidence, the case was suspiciously reopened on the federal level by the Investigative Committee of Russia only weeks later. The case explicitly targeted Navalny in an obvious attempt to crush his presidential ambition and neutralize him as an opposition leader. Since Navalny rose to prominence in 2004, he has been known for his innovative public awareness raising initiatives and strident criticism of the ruling United Russia party and President Vladimir Putin, denouncing the former as “the party of crooks and thieves.” Weeks after the trial began, Navalny announced he was running for the powerful seat of the mayor of Moscow and clinched official registration as a candidate just a day before the verdict was handed down. During the proceedings, judge Sergey Blinov rejected Navalny’s request to have any defense witnesses testify; in contrast, over thirty witnesses of prosecution were allowed to speak in court.

“This whole case reeks of political vindictiveness for Navalny’s corruption revelations and political challenge to Putin and United Russia,” said David J. Kramer, president of Freedom House. “That the verdict was announced right after Navalny was allowed to register as an official candidate for the mayoral seat speaks volumes about the shameless scheming of Russian authorities to silence the loudest and most resourceful voice of the Russian opposition.”

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18
June 2013

Once More on Russia

The American Interest

I’m sure some readers are growing weary of the back-and-forth on Russia over the past few months, but I hope they will indulge me in one more response to Thomas Graham’s reply to me and other critics of his original piece. Replies from several of us generated his latest, “A Response to the Critics.” Several of his most recent points warrant further consideration.

In responding to Andrew Wood’s posting of March 29, Graham writes: “The United States should not shy away from defending and promoting its values (although Wood and I might differ on the best way to do that).” Graham never explains how he would do this in the case of Russia beyond exchange programs and the like, and later in his piece, he drops his passing support for promoting our values. Instead, he reverts back to his emphasis on engaging the Putin regime in other ways. Indeed, he alleges that “[I]f our goal is to advance the cause of democracy in Russia, then we must take care that our actions do not in fact limit the space for its progress.” According to Graham, the United States bears some responsibility for Russia’s current plight through things like “triumphalism in Washington over the ‘color revolutions’” and the Magnitsky Act, both of which, Graham claims, fed into the Kremlin’s paranoia and “inclined the Kremlin to deal more harshly with the systemic opposition.” To be clear, the Magnitsky Act was passed by Congress in December 2012; Putin had already pursued many ways to crack down on civil society and the opposition in Russia before the Magnistky Act became law.

Graham goes on to argue the following:

The United States would like to see a change in essence. To that end, it should amplify the pressure for such change by, for example, drawing Russia deeper into the globalized economy, ensuring as free an international flow of information as possible, and pressing the frontiers of technological advance. We also urgently need to fix our own society to provide a model of success for emulation. But we should leave to Russians the management of the internal politics of this change. It is, after all, their country. And why shouldn’t those who believe in democracy have some confidence that in the end the Russians will make the right choices, without mentoring and interference from the West?

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16
April 2013

The Magnitsky Act Needs to Be Strengthened

Moscow Times

The list of 18 names released Friday by the U.S. Treasury Department connected to the Sergei Magnitsky Act elicits a number of reactions. For starters, the U.S. has finally taken concrete action to address the Russian government’s atrocious human rights situation. Credit for this, however, lies with the Congress, not the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, who was opposed to the legislation. But Obama had no choice but to sign it into law last December because the Magnitsky Act was linked to lifting of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which Obama very much wanted.

It is important for European states to follow the U.S. lead and pass similar legislation. After all, Russian officials travel more to Europe and keep more of their assets there than they do in the U.S. The Magnitsky Act is an important signal to Russian officials involved in human rights abuses to show that their days of impunity are over, at least outside of Russia. But it is also important for cleaning up Western institutions, so they are not complicit in laundering ill-gotten gains of corrupt Russian officials.

As for the list itself, it is too short. There should have been many more names of people who deserve to have their assets frozen and visas denied for their involvement in human rights abuses, in the Magnitsky case and others. That the legislation passed by Congress last year called for one list meant that the Treasury Department needed to have sufficient evidence to freeze a suspect’s assets to stand up to a court challenge; denying visas is much easier and not subject to challenge. Had there been two public lists — one for asset freezes and another for visa denials — the latter presumably would have been much longer. Congress should amend the legislation to create two lists, making it easier to target more human rights abusers with a visa ban even if their assets aren’t frozen.

Nonetheless, my disappointment with the small size of the initial Magnitsky list is offset by several important factors. First, there are additional names on a classified list, as permitted by the legislation. Although there is already one leak — Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, as reported in the New York Times — and bound to be more leaks in the future, we don’t know for sure how many Russians are on the classified list. But uncertainty isn’t necessarily bad. Russian officials involved in human rights abuses should wonder whether they are on the list. Russian officials might also think twice before committing future abuses, knowing that if they were to do so, they, too, could wind up on the list. This could serve as an important deterrent to future human rights abuses.

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13
February 2013

Resetting Russian reset, and the rest of Obama’s foreign policy

Washington Post

While the president and new Secretary of State John Kerry are resetting reset, they would be wise to take a look at Freedom House’s new report on Russia. It is a sober assessment of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and where U.S. policy should go from here.

Authors David Kramer and Susan Corke explain:

Over the past year, driven by a fear that the democratic spirit of the Arab awakening would creep toward Russia, Putin and his adherents have launched a series of initiatives designed to close down civil society and eliminate any and all potential threats to his grip on power. New legislation has been crafted to increase criminal penalties for opposition protesters, censor and control the internet, taint nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive overseas funding as “foreign agents,” prohibit U.S. funding of Russian NGOs involved in “political activities,” drastically expand the definition of treason, and recriminalize libel and slander. Arrests, arbitrary detentions, and home raids targeting opposition figures are occurring on a level not seen since Soviet times. One opposition figure was even kidnapped from Kyiv, where he was seeking asylum, and brought back to Russia to be prosecuted based on a coerced confession. A Putin critic living in Britain, Aleksandr Perepilichny, died under mysterious circumstances last November, recalling the poisoning death of Aleksandr Litvinenko in 2006. Also during 2012, the Russian government forced the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) out of the country; the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute soon followed. The legal and practical space for civil society and political opposition in Russia is closing quickly.
They remind us that “Putinism is rooted in corruption. The regime uses the pliant legal system as an instrument to suppress all forms of opposition and protect the corrupt division of economic resources among loyalists. The most senior officials and business magnates are given control over valuable sectors of the economy, especially extractive industries. Such short-sighted perversion of economic forces almost ensures the system’s decline, preventing competition.”

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28
January 2013

Russia Tries to Prosecute a Dead Whistle-Blower

New York Times

Russia took the unusual step of attempting to put a dead man on trial Monday, when it tried to open posthumous proceedings against Sergei L. Magnitsky, the whistle-blowing lawyer who died three years ago in a Moscow jail cell.

The effort to prosecute Mr. Magnitsky — which was postponed when Mr. Magnitsky’s legal team refused to participate — stoked tensions in a case that has already damaged Russia’s image abroad and strained relations with the United States.

Mr. Magnitsky was 37 when he died in a Russian jail, where he had been held for nearly a year. The authorities said he was detained on tax evasion charges and died of a heart attack. His advocates say that he was jailed for investigating hundreds of millions of dollars possibly taken by the authorities in a fraudulent tax case, and that he was beaten and denied medical care.

Last month, the United States Congress passed a law barring anyone linked to Mr. Magnitsky’s imprisonment or the initial fraud from entering the United States. In retaliation, Russia’s Parliament in December prohibited Americans from adopting Russian orphans.

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02
January 2013

Russian children: Pawns in Putin’s power play

Washington Post

In a display of callousness unusual even by Vladimir Putin’s standards, Russia eliminated the possibility of a better life for thousands of orphans last week when Putin signed into law a ban on adoptions by Americans. The law is named for Dima Yakovlev, a Russian child adopted by U.S. parents who died after being left in a truck in the heat in Herndon. That case, and 18 other cited instances of Russian adoptees who died in the care of American parents, are tragedies. But the vast majority of the nearly 60,000 adoptions by American couples over the past two decades have enabled Russian children, some with severe disabilities, to lead happy lives.

Many American commentators have described the Yakovlev act as a response to recent U.S. legislation cracking down on Russian human rights abusers. Such analysis is deeply flawed and, insofar as it is shared by U.S. policymakers, will contribute to a serious misreading of the motives and goals that drive Putin as he sets Russia’s course.

The Sergei Magnitsky Act is named after a 37-year-old lawyer who was beaten, deprived of medical attention and left to die in a Russian prison nearly a year after uncovering a massive fraud allegedly committed by officials. The people Magnitsky implicated arrested him in 2008; a year after his death, several of the same officials were promoted and awarded. Last week, Russian prosecutors dropped charges against the only person formally accused in the case, meaning that Russia is holding no one accountable for Magnitsky’s death. Instead, even though he is dead, Magnitsky is being retried in the original fraud case brought against him.

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19
December 2012

What the Magnitsky Act Means

The American Interest

Sergei Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer who was beaten, deprived of vital medical attention, and left to die in a Russian prison nearly a year after uncovering a massive fraud allegedly committed by Russian officials to the tune of $230 million. The very people whom Magnitsky implicated in the fraud arrested him in 2008; a year after his murder, several of these officials were promoted and awarded, adding insult to the fatal injury inflicted on Magnitsky.

Magnitsky’s client, Hermitage Capital head Bill Browder, launched a full-court press to seek justice for his lawyer in the West in the absence of any possibility for justice inside Russia. Browder recounted Magnitsky’s riveting story to members of the U.S. Congress and anyone else who would listen. Fortunately, two Congressmen, Senator Ben Cardin (D–MD) and Representative Jim McGovern (D–MA), did listen, and they followed up by leading the campaign to adopt the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which was approved by the House in a 365–43 vote November 16, and by the Senate with an equally bipartisan landslide (92-4) on December 6. The Act will deny visas to and freeze the assets of those in the Russian ruling elite implicated in Magnitsky’s murder and other human rights violations and corruption. Various polls in Russia show support for the legislation by a ratio of more than two-to-one among those familiar with it. In targeting sanctions against corrupt and abusive Russian officials as opposed to the whole country, the Act resonates with the many Russians who are fed up with these kinds of problems in their country. The next critical step is to get European countries to adopt similar measures, which would have an even greater impact on those Russians who like to travel and do business in Europe.

There will likely be international ramifications to the approval of the Magnitsky Act —especially if it gets applied to other abusive officials elsewhere around the world; Senator Cardin strongly supports such an extension of the law’s reach. The Act is also bound to influence the Russian-American relationship—if not today, then in the future. If not implemented aggressively, the legislation risks ending up as yet another piece in the “Let’s Pretend” game that the West has long been playing with Russia and other authoritarian states. (Indeed some hope for this outcome.) This would expose the deep crisis affecting the Western world and signal a victory for the forces of authoritarian corruption seeking to demoralize Western society. The U.S. Congress must see to it that the Obama Administration implements the legislation in a serious manner.

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