Moscow - Russia's new president Dmitry Medvedev must
'initiate a sea-change' to bring about freedom of rights in his
country, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
In a memorandum to the youngest-ever Kremlin leader, Amnesty
placed hope in the airtime Medvedev gave to personal freedoms and the
rule of law in his inauguration speech, but called him to account for
the state's tightening of controls over the civil sector and other
violations under his mentor Vladimir Putin's eight-year rule.
'A number of serious patterns of violations persist and in some
cases have worsened in recent years,' said the memorandum released as
a supplement to the human rights watchdog's annual global report.
The London-based not-for-profit group focused on police crackdowns
against opposition groups, mounting racial violence and rights
violations in the North Caucasus, where Russian special forces are
still fighting insurgences after two full-scale wars in the 1990s.
Western analysts have speculated on whether Medvedev, a former
corporate lawyer, could bring a thaw to Kremlin policy and allow the
stronger independence of Russia's courts.
The 42-year-old president, who succeed Putin in May, is seen as
more liberal, harkening from a different generation and without the
KGB background of his mentor Putin.
Nikola Davkvort, Amnesty's regional head, said of the report
Wednesday: 'This is our way of telling Medvedev, 'You have said
publically in your inauguration speech that you place the highest
value on human freedoms, here is what you can concretely do.'
In a rare upbraiding of the authorities Tuesday, Russia's
Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the head of a US-funded media
freedoms NGO who was charged with smuggling for carrying cash into
the country.
At a news conference Wednesday, Amnesty hailed the case in calling
for 'an urgent' review of a law passed to regulate NGOs in 2004 that
it said was 'overly burdensome and may have been applied to
arbitrarily interfere with the work of independent media
organizations.'
In speeches Putin called NGOs spies and the tools of Western
governments aimed at fomenting revolution. He moved to tighten the
Kremlin's hand over NGOs and the media in a move analysts said
stemmed from fear of the 2004 Orange Revolution in neighbouring
Ukraine.
'Such court cases are very positive and important because the
European Court (EC) decisions can't serve as a precedent in Russia
since so few decisions are translated,' said Friederike Behr, one of
the authors of the Russian report.
There are currently over 9,000 cases involving Russia pending at
the EC - far more than from any other country.
While Amnesty's global report Wednesday accused the United States
and the European Union of failing to uphold the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (UNHDR), Behr cited the importance of international
pressure such as from the EC to change Russian human rights norms.
When foreign leaders meet with civil society leaders on official
visits to Moscow, she said, 'it is already a form of protection by
showing respect for NGOs that are otherwise accused of being foreign
spies. It gives them authority - except maybe when it is the US
leaders, of course.'
But Amnesty regional director Davkort said the biggest barrier to
the organization's work is 'Russia's intolerance for any sort of
criticism.'
Russian Federation Council member Anatoly Kucherena, who heads a
Russian think-tank created to monitor democracy violations in the
West to counter groups like Amnesty, said Wednesday: 'There's no
sense in these reports.'
'The new head of state staunchly monitors how the judicial system
and other institutes of authority work. He sees and understands all,
why would he need any other kind of reference?' he was quoted by news
agency Interfax as saying.
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