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U.S. puts Russian officials on visa blacklist
The U.S. State Department has quietly put Russian officials connected to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky on a visa blacklist as Moscow threatens to curtail cooperation on Iran, North Korea, Libya and the transit of supplies for Afghanistan if the Senate passes a measure imposing even tougher sanctions for human rights abuses.
The Russian government has grown ever more infuriated by a series of international reprimands over the case of the 37-year-old lawyer who died a painful death in pretrial detention, and it has complained that other countries are interfering in its domestic affairs.
The European Parliament, Canada and the Netherlands are moving toward their own visa bans for a list of 60 Russians involved in the case. The United States, however, is the first to have an active blacklist for the Russians, although senior U.S. officials say it has fewer than 60 names.
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Russia blames doctors, not police, in death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky
Russian authorities, under persistent international pressure to charge police officials in the pretrial detention death of a 37-year-old lawyer, on Monday blamed prison doctors instead.
Human rights activists, colleagues of Sergei Magnitsky and even U.S. senators have urged Russia to call Interior Ministry officials to account for arresting, prosecuting and then denying medical treatment to Magnitsky, who died in custody in November 2009.
But on Monday, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee, told the Interfax news agency that doctors would be prosecuted because of “flaws” in treatment that caused Magnitsky’s death.
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Medvedev meets the press
Dmitry Medvedev, the blogging, tweeting, iPad-carrying president, gave his first full-scale news conference Wednesday, bringing 800 journalists to his favored tech-savvy business school, where the eternal Russia of the almighty czars was as powerful a presence as the high-speed Internet access.
Though Medvedev talks frequently of his vision for a modern Russia, with strong democratic institutions and a high-tech economy, he was given question after question suggesting little happens in this country unless the ruler in the Kremlin decrees it, just as it has always been.
Yearly car inspections are a senseless formality — how will you change this? (He’s drawing up a new law.) Local officials show you perfect villages — do you understand how people really live? (Yes, from blogging and reading the Internet.) Our veterans are suffering — can’t you guarantee each of them an apartment? (He issued a decree on that in 2008.) And what are you going to do about the parking problem in Moscow? (He has talked to the mayor.)
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European Parliament members: Russia must permit free assembly, elections
Two members of the European Parliament, visiting Moscow to meet with human rights organizations, called on Russia on Monday to permit citizens to assemble freely without harassment and to guarantee free and fair elections for parliament later this year and for president next year.
“If the elections are not free,” said Kristiina Ojuland, a member of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, “it’s clear the next Parliament would have no legitimacy.”
Ojuland and Heidi Hautula, head of the parliament’s human rights committee, praised Russia for promising an independent investigation into the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned former billionaire, but said those officials responsible for the death in pretrial detention of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky must be tried and punished.
“We will see very soon if something is accomplished,” Hautula said, “or if it’s just another nice gesture by the president without too many consequences.”
Perhaps hundreds of other similar cases have not reached public attention, Ojuland said. payday loan hairy woman https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php https://zp-pdl.com займы онлайн на карту срочно
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In Russia, seeing only repression
In Moscow Russia has set off on an ever more authoritarian path as it heads toward a presidential election next year, sending ominous signals to the already weakened opposition and confronting the United States and Europe with vexing new political challenges.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who positions himself as Prime Minister Vladmir Putin’s liberal alter ego, repeatedly assures the West that just the opposite is true. At the Davos World Economic Forum this week, he said Russia was fighting corruption, developing rule of law – if slowly – and becoming increasingly democratic. “Russian citizens believe they live in a democratic state,” he said.
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