|
Russia
Reform Monitor
No. 1539, March 2, 2008
American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC
Russian human rights activists under siege;
Medvedev, predictably, sails to
victory
Editor: Jonas
Bernstein
|
February 26:
The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office has filed
criminal charges against veteran human rights campaigner Lev Ponomarev for
slandering Federal Prison Service chief Yury Kalinin,
Kommersant reports. The charges stem from an interview Ponomarev gave to
the Regnum news agency in November 2006 in which he called Kalinin the author of
a “sadistic system.” Kommersant notes that Kalinin already sued Ponomarev and
that a Moscow court in April 2007 ordered Ponomarev and Regnum to issue a
retraction.
The slander charges against Lev Ponomarev may stem from his recent visit to the
United States to highlight human rights abuses in Russia. He was cited on
February 12th
by Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, who wrote that there
are now about 50 “pytochnye kolonii,” or torture colonies, among the roughly 700
colonies that house the bulk of Russia’s convict population, and that these
facilities are fast approaching the Soviet Gulag “in terms of sheer cruelty.”
February 27:
Natalya Morar, a Moldovan journalist who works for the independent Russian
magazine New Times, has been denied entry into Russia on the grounds she
is a threat to national security.
The BBC reports that
Morar, who has lived in Moscow for six years and was first refused entry to
Russia last December, was on this occasion involved in a stand-off at a Moscow
airport but subsequently agreed to return to Moldova. Morar has written
extensively about high-level corruption, including a two-part series in May 2007
about a money-laundering operation allegedly involving Austria’s Raiffeisen
Zentralbank (RZB), Russia’s Diskont Bank, Kremlin-controlled oil companies and
the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Russia’s likely next president, Dmitry Medvedev, has appealed directly to voters
to back him in the March 2nd election,
Reuters
reports. “We have many problems that have not been resolved,” he said in an
address broadcast on state television. “The country must move forward. For that
we need political stability, for that we need every day to improve peoples’
lives, to develop the economy, reliably protect Russia’s sovereignty and defend
the rights of our citizens. We know how to make the country a success. We can do
that. And I am sure that is how it will be.”
February 29:
The Guardian
reports that the Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of the March 2nd
presidential election. While local officials have been told they need to secure
a voter turnout of 68 percent to 70 percent, with around 72 percent casting
votes for Dmitry Medvedev, independent analysts believe the real turnout will
only be between 25 percent and 50 percent. Citing “diplomats and other
independent sources,” the British newspaper reports that the Kremlin is planning
to “bridge the gap” using “widespread fraud,” with local election officials and
regional officials “preparing to stuff ballot boxes once the polls have closed
with unused ballots” and also to give Russia’s Central Election Commission
“inflated tallies.”
“Additionally, public sector workers including teachers, students, and doctors
have been told to vote on Sunday or risk losing their jobs or university
places,” the
Guardian writes. “Parents have even been warned at parents’ meetings
that if they fail to turn up their children might suffer at school.” On February
26th, Amnesty International
released a report detailing what it called “a clampdown on the freedoms of
assembly and expression in the run-up to parliamentary and presidential
elections in the Russian Federation.”
March 2:
Russians have gone to the polls to elect a new president.
According
to NEWSru.com, preliminary results show Dmitry Medvedev with 69.54 percent
of the vote, obviating the need for a runoff, and a voter turnout of 67.7
percent. |
|
Copyright
(c) 2008, American Foreign Policy Council.
All Rights Reserved. |
|