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Russian Women Get a Fresh Warning About Their Rights

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It has been more than six months since the Russian playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and the theater director Zhenya Berkovich were arrested and jailed for their work on “Finist, the Bright Falcon”, an acclaimed play sympathetic to women recruited by ISIS.

The charge? “Justifying terrorism”.

The plaintiffs have appealed being held in pretrial detention three times; each time, the court has denied it. The prosecution, on the other hand, has asked the court three times to postpone the trial “to interview important witnesses”; each time, the court has granted the request.

Being a feminist is not against the law in Russia. But if Ms.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Some 70 US lawmakers wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, urging the Biden administration to press Russia for the release of imprisoned dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza.

That correspondence probably won’t prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to free his longtime critic, but it just might help cast a spotlight on the plight of Kara-Murza, which deserves far more international attention than it has generally received.

Much public notice justifiably has been paid in recent months to other individuals who have been unjustly imprisoned by Putin’s ruthless regime. The outrageous detention last month of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has prompted vocal demands for his release from his employer and from the US State Department and generated international headlines.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ucrania y el renacimiento de los derechos humanos

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A medida que la democracia ha retrocedido en varias partes del mundo, el concepto de “derechos humanos” y el lenguaje, las instituciones y el marco legal a los que ha dado origen en los últimos 75 años, se han convertido cada vez más en objeto de críticas.

Por supuesto, las realidades sobre el terreno siempre han sido distintas de las nobles aspiraciones consagradas en el imperfecto mosaico de nuestro sistema global de derechos humanos, desde las primeras iniciativas de la Liga de las Naciones hasta la Carta de las Naciones Unidas de 1945 y los tratados subsiguientes adoptados por los países miembros de la ONU.…  Seguir leyendo »

Oleg Orlov, board member of Memorial rights group, poses at an exhibition about political repressions in the group's office in Moscow on Nov. 15. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the verge of liquidating his country’s most important civic organization. Since its founding more than three decades ago, the Memorial Society has pursued a dual mission: to document and increase public awareness of mass repressions during the Soviet era and to promote human rights in today’s Russia.

If Memorial is destroyed, none of the few remaining Russian nongovernmental organizations that dare to assert their independence from the Kremlin will be safe. Shutting down Memorial will jeopardize not just the work performed by its courageous staff and the unique archive of historical documents they have amassed, but also the future of civil society itself in the Russian Federation.…  Seguir leyendo »

Human rights activist Yuri Orlov speaks at the American Jewish Committee's annual meeting on May 14, 1987, at New York's Grand Hyatt Hotel. Orlov, a Soviet dissident, spoke of the meaning of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union. (Marty Lederhandler/AP)

EuropaReflexionesTestimonios,

The death of renowned Russian physicist and human rights advocate Yuri Orlov last week prompted tributes from governments across the world. The one notable exception, unsurprisingly, was Orlov’s own, in Russia, whose record on human rights is almost indistinguishable from that of the regime he defied in the Soviet era. Knowing Orlov as I did, I think he would consider this silence a more fitting recognition than any hypocritical statement the Kremlin could have made.

Born in 1924, Orlov witnessed firsthand what the 20th century had in store for our country — from Stalin’s forced collectivization, which Orlov saw as a child, to World War II, where he distinguished himself in combat against the Nazis.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Last week, the Council of Europe, Europe’s oldest intergovernmental body and its main watchdog on human rights, handed the Kremlin a huge victory — and a stinging rebuke. At its session in Strasbourg, the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly voted 118 to 62 to reinstate the full rights of the Russian delegation that were suspended after President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Delegates from Russia looked triumphant as they took their seats in the chamber of the Palace of Europe.

The delegation appeared intentionally designed to offend every European sentiment. Even the most despotic regime, if it tries, can find half-respectable people to represent it on the world stage; here, it seems, every effort was made to achieve the opposite.…  Seguir leyendo »

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In separate interviews over the past few days, two Russian officials — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin — have indicated that Vladimir Putin’s government may be preparing to pull Russia out of the Council of Europe. If enacted, “Ruxit” — as the council’s secretary general, Thorbjørn Jagland, termed it — will mean much more than denying Russian citizens the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights and access to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. It will also be a continuation of Putin’s attempts to reorient Russia away from the very concept of Europe that is the antithesis to the current regime in the Kremlin.…  Seguir leyendo »

Andrei Sakharov in Moscow in 1973. Credit Associated Press

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Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed the course of history.

Sakharov’s essay carried a mild title — “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” — but it was explosive. “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships,” he wrote.…  Seguir leyendo »

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There is a look I have learned to recognize over the last few months — the look of intense concentration that masks complete disorientation. It’s the look of having had the ground kicked right out from right under your feet. A month ago you were an adult living your own life — it was difficult, but it was familiar — and now you are taking 15 minutes to order food, because nothing makes sense anymore. I found myself in New York City recently with two such men, and we had wandered into a kosher-vegan joint with a menu so convoluted it reminded them once again how far they were from home.…  Seguir leyendo »

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El perdón del presidente ruso, Vladímir Putin, al expropietario de la empresa petrolera Yukos, Mijaíl Jodorkovski, y su declaración de una amnistía que ha liberado a los activistas de Greenpeace y a dos miembros del grupo de punk rock de protesta Pussy Riot son gestos de bienvenida. Pero no son más que eso, gestos de bienvenida.

Putin ha actuado movido probablemente, sobre todo, por el deseo de asegurar el éxito de los próximos Juegos Olímpicos de invierno en Sochi, amenazados por los últimos atentados terroristas en Volgogrado. También es probable que Putin pretendiera mostrar al mundo una cara más amable y agradable en un intento de consolidar la victoria en su tira y afloja con la Unión Europea sobre la cuestión de Ucrania.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

Strange things happened in a small courtroom in the Russian city of Kirov last week. Moscow mayoral candidate, and my colleague in the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny, was convicted July 18 on concocted embezzlement charges in the type of political show trial that Josef Stalin favored long before his spiritual successor President Vladimir Putin embraced them.

Then, the very next morning, the same prosecutor asked for Navalny's release pending his appeal. It was a move so unexpected that an incredulous Navalny asked the court to make sure the prosecutor had not been swapped for an identical twin overnight.

That something surprising happened in a Russian courtroom is itself surprising.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

One of the many disturbing aspects of the NSA spying revelations is how much joy they have brought to the world's chronic violators of human rights and political freedoms.

On Thursday in Moscow, where former NSA contractor Edward Snowden awaits his asylum papers, a Russian court removed a major critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin's list of worries, sentencing the charismatic opposition leader Alexei Navalny to five years in jail on theft charges. Amid intense anger at the verdict and fears that it would raise Navalny's profile, the court agreed on Friday to release him pending appeal.

The trial and the predictable verdict, as the European Union foreign affairs chief said, "raises serious questions as to the state of the rule of law in Russia."…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

Western leaders have been largely silent while President Vladimir Putin unleashes a campaign of police-state tactics against Russians who voice opposition to him. Yet by emphasizing human rights, the West can inspire those in Russia who seek more freedom, without putting at risk most other important goals with Russia.

Russia is not a totalitarian Soviet Union redux. But the measures Putin has employed since large demonstrations against his rule began appearing in late 2011 suggest a Soviet-like arrogance of power. On the defensive, Putin is shoring up his political base by mobilizing nationalists and xenophobes.

Independent groups such as Golos, which monitors elections, and Memorial, which promotes human rights and honest history, may soon close because they refuse to register as “foreign agents,” a term that in Russian connotes spies.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

Anything Russia can do, you can do, too. That is the message Washington is sending to repressive, power-hungry governments around the world. With each step that President Vladimir Putin takes to restrict the freedoms of the Russian people, like-minded leaders watch U.S. (and European) reactions and, seeing weak responses, are emboldened to abuse human rights in a similar manner.

Putin’s crackdown on human rights is motivated by his desire to quell the protest movement that arose in December 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Russians took to the streets to demonstrate against unfair parliamentary elections. In March 2012, protesters were further incensed by the unfair elections that returned Putin to the presidency.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Late last week, Sergei Guriev, a respected economic adviser to the Russian prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, announced from Paris that he was not returning to Russia. The former rector of Moscow’s liberal New Economic School, where Barack Obama spoke in 2009, had come under investigation from the state prosecutor’s office after criticizing the ongoing incarceration of the former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

“I won’t go back even if there is a small chance of losing my freedom,” he told a reporter for this newspaper. “I have not done anything wrong and do not want to live in fear.”

Guriev’s self-exile is the latest in a series of recent departures from government by wealthy, educated and Westernized elites who had aligned themselves with the leadership’s more liberal Medvedev-led faction, which as become increasingly beleaguered since President Vladimir Putin’s controversial re-election in May 2012.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

Many peoples on our small green planet already live under more or less democratic conditions. This is a boon for mankind and a source of minor, and not so minor, differences in human mores and mentality.

For one thing, it is obvious that, in democratic countries, citizens display more tolerance toward each other and tend to show affirmative acceptance of others’ ideas and way of life.

In contrast, totalitarian and authoritarian rule tends to breed tension among particular groups within society — with ethnic, gender, educational and cultural differences serving as the base for social and ideological divides.

In Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s Russia, in Mao’s China, there were, aside from political opponents, various “chosen” categories that routinely came under fire — liberal thinkers, feminist activists, ecological alarmists, modernist painters and sculptors, postmodern writers, disabled and mentally ill persons, etc.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

On Monday, May 27, I was on vacation in Paris when I decided that my personal circumstances do not allow me to return to Russia in any foreseeable future.

At that point I was running a university in Moscow, the 20-year old New Economic School. I was proud of what my colleagues and I had accomplished. The school has become a model for other universities in Russia as well as other emerging markets.

Sadly, I could not come back to Russia and therefore had to resign from the school. The board called an extraordinary meeting on May 30 to accept my resignation and appoint an acting rector, and asked me not to talk about my decision to the media.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

I have been active in the human rights scene here since the dark days of the Soviet Union. As I look across today's Russia, I have every reason to believe that at the very top, the Kremlin has decided to destroy my country's civil society for daring to raise its head in protest against government repression and to demand fair elections and respect for the constitution.

From the end of the 80s to the middle of this century's first decade, a lively and active civil society formed in Russia. Today, it is an obstacle in the path of President Putin and his circle, who aim to form a harshly authoritarian, perhaps even totalitarian, regime.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

Overlooked amid the focus on the Boston bombings and the suspects’ links to Russia is the latest example of the systematic abuse of human rights under Vladi­mir Putin.

Alexei Navalny, 36, is on trial this week on charges of stealing $500,000 from a timber firm in 2009, a case that was previously closed for lack of evidence. He is the most recent victim of the Putin regime’s use of government agencies and courts to punish and marginalize opponents.

Russian officials have opened several spurious investigations into Navalny, designed to publicly discredit him. His family and friends are also being investigated, a guilt-by-association trick of the Soviet era.…  Seguir leyendo »

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When Russian tax and law enforcement authorities recently raided the Moscow offices of Human Rights Watch, they invited a television crew from one of the country’s key state-controlled broadcast networks, NTV, to film the proceedings. State news television cameras similarly tagged along when government inspectors staged raids of other NGOs, including Amnesty International and the human rights group Memorial.

While President Vladimir Putin has described these raids as “routine measures linked to the desire of the law enforcement agencies to bring the activities of organizations in line with the law,” the question must be asked: Why the need to film and then feature in prime time news broadcasts if these measures are simply “routine”?…  Seguir leyendo »