Human rights in Russia
Encyclopedia
The rights and liberties of the citizens of the Russian Federation are granted by Chapter 2 of the Constitution adopted in 1993.
Russia is the signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and has also ratified a number of other international human rights instruments
, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(fully) and the European Convention of Human Rights (with reservations
). These international law instruments take precedence over national legislation according to Chapter 1, Article 15 of the Constitution.
As a member of the Council of Europe
Russia has international obligations related to the issue of human rights. In the introduction to the 2004 report on the situation in Russia, the Commissioner for Human Rights
of the Council of Europe
, noted the "sweeping changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union" and reported that "the fledgling Russian democracy is still, of course, far from perfect, but its existence and its successes cannot be denied."
In recent years Vladimir Lukin
, current Ombudsman
of the Russian Federation, has invariably characterized the human rights
situation in Russia as unsatisfactory. However, according to Lukin, this is not discouraging, because building a lawful state and civil society in such a complex country as Russia is a hard and long process.
Freedom House
considered Russia partially free with scores of 5 on both political rights and civil liberties
(1 being most free, 7 least free) in 2002-2004 and not free with 6 on political rights and 5 on civil liberties in 2005-2008 according to the Freedom in the World reports. In 2006 The Economist
published a democracy rating, putting Russia at 102nd place among 167 countries and defining it as a "hybrid regime with a trend towards curtailment of media and other civil liberties."
The European Court of Human Rights
has become overwhelmed with cases from Russia. As of June 1, 2007, 22.5% of its pending cases were directed against the Russian Federation. In 2006 there were 151 admissible applications against Russia (out of 1634 for all the countries), while in 2005 - 110 (of 1036), in 2004 - 64 (of 830), in 2003 - 15 (of 753), in 2002 - 12 (of 578).
According to international human rights organizations as well as domestic press, violations of human rights in Russia include widespread and systematic torture
of persons in custody by police, dedovshchina
in Russian Army, neglect and cruelty in Russian orphanages, violations of children's rights
. According to Amnesty International
there is discrimination
, racism, and murders of members of ethnic minorities. Since 1992 at least 50 journalists have been killed across the country.
The situation in the Russian republic of Chechnya
, ravaged by war, has been especially worrying. During the Second Chechen War
, started in September 1999, there were summary execution
s and "disappearances" of civilians in Chechnya. According to the ombudsman of the Chechen Republic, Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, as of March 2007 the most complex and painful problem is finding over 2700 abducted and forcefully held citizens; analysis of the complaints of citizens of Chechnya shows that social problems ever more often come to the foreground; two years ago complaints mostly concerned violations of the right to life.
The Federal Law of January 10, 2006 changed the orders affecting registration and operation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia. The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society
was closed.
There are cases of attacks on demonstrators organized by local authorities. High concern was caused by murders of opposition lawmakers and journalists Anna Politkovskaya
, Yuri Schekochikhin, Galina Starovoitova
, Sergei Yushenkov
, lawyer Stanislav Markelov
, and journalist Anastasia Baburova
, as well as imprisonments of human rights defenders, scientists, and journalists like Mikhail Trepashkin
, Igor Sutyagin
, and Valentin Danilov
.
. According to Constitution of Russia, top judges are [appointed] by the Federation Council, following nomination by the President of Russia. Anna Politkovskaya
described in her book Putin's Russia
stories of judges who did not follow "orders from the above" and were assaulted or removed from their positions. In an open letter written in 2005, former judge Olga Kudeshkina criticized the chairman of the Moscow city court O. Egorova for "recommending judges to make right decisions" which allegedly caused more than 80 judges in Moscow to retire in the period from 2002 to 2005.
In the 1990s, Russia's prison system was widely reported by media and human rights groups as troubled. There were large case backlogs and trial delays, resulting in lengthy pre-trial detention. Prison conditions were viewed as well below international standards. Tuberculosis
was a serious, pervasive problem. Human rights groups estimated that about 11,000 inmates and prison detainees die annually, most because of overcrowding, disease, and lack of medical care. A media report dated 2006 points to a campaign of prison reform that has resulted in apparent improvements in conditions. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
has been working to reform Russia's prisons since 1997, in concert with reform efforts by the national government.
The rule of law has made rather limited inroads in the criminal justice since the Soviet time, especially in the deep provinces. The courts generally follow the non-acquittals policy; in 2004 acquittal
s constituted only 0.7 percent of all judgments. Judges are dependent on administrators, bidding prosecutorial offices in turn. The work of public prosecutors varies from poor to dismal. Lawyers are mostly court appointed and low paid. There was a rapid deterioration of the situation characterized by abuse of the criminal process, harassment and persecution of defense bar members in politically sensitive cases in recent years. The principles of adversariness and equality of the parties to criminal proceedings are not observed.
In 1996, President Boris Yeltsin
pronounced a moratorium
on the death penalty in Russia
. However, the Russian government still violates many promises it made upon entering the Council of Europe
. Citizens who appeal to European Court of Human Rights
are often prosecuted by Russian authorities, according to the allegations of Politkovskaya
forbids arbitrary detention, torture
and ill-treatment. Chapter 2, Article 21 of the constitution states, "No one may be subjected to torture, violence or any other harsh or humiliating treatment or punishment." However Russian police are regularly observed practicing torture - including beatings, electric shocks, rape, asphyxiation - in interrogating arrested suspects. In 2000, human rights Ombudsman Oleg Mironov estimated that 50% of prisoners with whom he spoke claimed to have been tortured. Amnesty International
reported that Russian military forces in Chechnya
engage in torture.
In the most extreme cases, hundreds of innocent people from the street were arbitrary arrested, beaten, tortured, and raped by special police forces. Such incidents took place not only in Chechnya, but also in Russian towns of Blagoveshensk, Bezetsk, Nefteyugansk, and others. On 2007 Radio Svoboda ("Radio Freedom", part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) reported that an unofficial movement "Russia the Beaten" was created in Moscow by human rights activists and journalists who "suffered from beatings in numerous Russian cities".
Torture and humiliation are also widespread in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
. The term dedovshchina
refers to systematic abuse of new conscripts by more long-serving soldiers. Many young men are killed or commit suicide every year because of it. It is reported that some young male conscripts are forced to work as prostitutes for "outside clients". Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia
works to protect rights of young soldiers.
The current phenomenon of dedovschina is closely linked to the division of Soviet and now Russian junior soldiers into four 'classes,' each reflecting a group called up every six months for a total two-year service period. This system stemmed from the adoption of two-year service in 1967. The reduction in the term of service to one year and the increasing number of contract servicemen in the Armed Forces may change the character of dedovschina somewhat.
and Russian oligarchs
) and the fragmentation of law enforcement agencies in Russia coincided with a sharp rise in violence against business figures, administrative and state officials, and other public figures. The second President of Russia Vladimir Putin
inherited these problems when he took office, and during his election campaign in 2000, the new president won popular support by stressing the need to restore law and order and to bring the rule of law to Russia as the only way of restoring confidence in the country's economy.
According to data by Demoscope Weekly, the Russian homicide rate showed a rise from the level of 15 murders per 100,000 people in 1991, to 32.5 in 1994. Then it fell to 22.5 in 1998, followed by a rise to a maximum rate of 30.5 in 2002, and then a fall to 20 murders per 100,000 people in 2006. Despite positive tendency to reduce, Russia's index of murders per capita remains one of the highest in the world with the fifth highest of 62 nations.
With a prison population rate of 611 per 100,000 population, Russia was second only to the United States (2006 data). Furthermore, criminology studies show that for the first five years since 2000 compared with the average for 1992 to 1999, the rate of robberies is up by 38.2% and the rate of drug-related crime
s is higher by 71.7%.
There were several cases when the FSB
accused scientists of alleged revealing state secrets to foreign nationals, while the defendants and their colleagues claimed that the information or technology was based on already published and declassified sources. Even though the cases often garnered public reaction, the cases themselves were in most cases held in closed chambers, with no press coverage or public oversight.
The scientists in question are:
Ecologist and journalist Alexander Nikitin
, who worked with the Bellona Foundation
, was likewise accused of espionage. He published material exposing hazards posed by the Russian Navy's nuclear fleet. He was acquitted in 1999 after spending several years in prison (his case was sent for re-investigation 13 times while he remained in prison). Other cases of prosecution are the cases of investigative journalist and ecologist Grigory Pasko
, sentenced to three years' imprisonment and later released under a general amnesty, Vladimir Petrenko who described dangers posed by military chemical warfare stockpiles and was held in pretrial confinement for seven months, and Nikolay Shchur, chairman of the Snezhinskiy Ecological Fund who was held in pretrial confinement for six months.
captain who assisted Soviet dissidents and was sentenced to eight years of prison in the Soviet era, was sentenced in 1995 to three years of prison for alleged possession of a pistol and magazines. After one year he was released and left the country.
Vil Mirzayanov was prosecuted for a 1992 article in which he has claimed that Russia was working on chemical weapons of mass destruction
, but won the case and later emigrated to the United States
Vladimir Kazantsev
who disclosed illegal purchases of eavesdropping devices from foreign firms was arrested in August 1995, and released at the end of the year, however the case was not closed. Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin
was sentenced in May 2004 to four years of prison.
Journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov on January 9, 2006 was sentenced for alleged defamation of the President in his article "Putin as phallic symbol of Russia" to fine of 20,000 roubles (about 695 USD).
Political dissidents from the former Soviet republics, such as authoritarian Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan
, are often arrested by the FSB
and extradited to these countries for prosecution, despite the protests from international human rights organizations. The special security services of Tajikistan
, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan
and Azerbaidjan also kidnap people in Russian territory, with the implicit approval of the FSB
.
Many people were also held in detention to prevent them from demonstrating during the G8 Summit in 2006.
. These include the case of the former heads of the oil company Yukos
, Mikhail Khodorkovsky
, and Platon Lebedev
whom Amnesty International
declared prisoners of conscience
http://rianovosti.com/russia/20110524/164210044.html, and the case of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky
, whose efforts to expose a conspiracy of criminals and corrupt law-enforcement officials earned him sustained abuse in prison which led to his death. An analogous case was the death in custody of the businesswoman Vera Trifonova, who was in jail for alleged fraud.
Cases such as these have contributed to suspicion in other countries about the Russian justice system, which has manifested itself in the refusal to grant Russian extradition requests for businessmen fleeing abroad. Notable instances of this are the cases of the tycoon Boris Berezovsky and former Yukos vice president Alexander Temerko
in the UK, the media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky
in Spain and Greece, Leonid Nevzlin
in Israelhttp://www.mosnews.com/world/2009/03/26/nevzlin/ and Ivan Kolesnikov in Cyprus.http://www.kommersant.com/p713715/r_500/YUKOS_extradition/undefined A case that will test the attitude of the French authorities to this issue is that of the shipping magnate Vitaly Arkhangelsky
. The Wikileaks
revelations indicated the low level of confidence other governments have in the Russian government on such issues. Cases involving major companies may gain coverage in the world media, but there are many further cases equally worthy of attention: a typical case involves the expropriation of assets, with criminals and corrupt law-enforcement officials collaborating to bring false charges against businesspeople, who are told that they must hand over assets to avoid criminal proceedings against them. A prominent campaigner against such abuses is Yana Yakovleva, herself a victim who set up the group Business Solidarity in the aftermath of her ordeal..
: Sergei Yushenkov
, Yuri Shchekochikhin
, Alexander Litvinenko
, Galina Starovoitova
, Anna Politkovskaya
, Paul Klebnikov
.
are a cause for international concern. It has been reported that Russian military forces have abducted, tortured, and killed numerous civilians in Chechnya, but Chechen separatists have also committed abuses, such as abducting people for ransom. Human rights groups are critical of cases of people disappearing in the custody of Russian officials. Systematic illegal arrests and torture conducted by the armed forces under the command of Ramzan Kadyrov
and Federal Ministry of Interior have also been reported. There are reports about repressions, information blockade, and atmosphere of fear and despair in Chechnya.
According to Memorial
reports, there is a system of "conveyor of violence" in Chechen Republic, as well as in neighbouring Ingushetiya. People are suspected in crimes connected with activity of separatists squads, is unlawfully detained by members of security agencies, and then disappears. After a while part of detainees is found in centers of preliminary detention, while some allegedly disappear forever, and then he is tortured to confess to a crime or/and to slander somebody else. Psychological pressure is also in use. Known Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya
compared this system with Gulag
and claimed the number of several hundred cases.
A number of journalists were killed in Chechnya or supposedly for reporting on the conflict. List of names includes less and more famous: Cynthia Elbaum
, Vladimir Zhitarenko
, Nina Yefimova
, Jochen Piest
, Farkhad Kerimov, Natalya Alyakina, Shamkhan Kagirov, Viktor Pimenov
, Nadezhda Chaikova
, Supian Ependiyev
, Ramzan Mezhidov
and Shamil Gigayev, Vladimir Yatsina, Aleksandr Yefremov, Roddy Scott
, Paul Klebnikov
, Magomedzagid Varisov, Natalya Estemirova
and Anna Politkovskaya
.
As reported by the Commissioner for Human Rights
of the Council of Europe
Thomas Hammarberg in 2009, "prior military conflicts, recurrent terrorist attacks (including suicide bombings), as well as wide-spread corruption and a climate of impunity have all plagued the region."
According to the Human Rights Centre Memorial, the total number of alleged abductions in Chechnya was 42 during the entire year 2008, whereas already in the first four months of 2009 there were 58 such cases. Of these 58 persons, 45 had been released, 2 found dead, 4 were missing and 7 had been found in police detention units. In the course of 2008, 164 criminal complaints concerning acts by the security forces were made, 111 of which were granted. In the first half of 2009, 52 such complaints were made, 18 of which were granted.
On 16 April 2009 the counter-terrorism operation (CTO) regime in Chechnya was lifted by the federal authorities. After that, the Chechen authorities bear primary responsibility for the fight against terrorism in the Republic. However, the lifting of the CTO regime has not been accompanied by a diminishment of activity of illegal armed groups in Chechnya.
There are reports on practices of collective punishment of relatives of alleged terrorists or insurgents: punitive house-burning has continued to be among the tactics against families of alleged insurgents. Chechen authorities confirmed such incidents and pointed out that "such practices were difficult to prevent as they stemmed from prevalent customs of revenge", however, educational efforts are undertaken to prevent such incidents, with the active involvement of village elders and Muslim clerics, and compensation had been paid to many of the victims of punitive house burnings.
On March 25, 2010 airport of Grozny became opened for international flights.
, Mironov resigned from both the Party and the Duma
after the vote, citing the law's stipulation that the Ombudsman be nonpartisan. Because of his party affiliation, and because Mironov had no evident expertise in the field of human rights, his appointment was widely criticized at the time by human rights activists. International human rights groups operate freely in Russia, although the government has hindered the movements and access to information of some individuals investigating the war in Chechnya.
passed a bill by 370-18 requiring local branches of foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to re-register as Russian organizations subject to Russian jurisdiction, and thus stricter financial and legal restrictions. The bill gives Russian officials oversight of local finances and activities. The bill has been highly criticized by Human Rights Watch
, Memorial organization
, and the INDEM Foundation for its possible effects on international monitoring of the status of human rights in Russia. In October 2006 the activities of many foreign non-governmental organizations were suspended using this law; officials said that "the suspensions resulted simply from the failure of private groups to meet the law's requirements, not from a political decision on the part of the state. The groups would be allowed to resume work once their registrations are completed." Another crackdown followed in 2007.
Russia is a multi-ethnic country with a large majority of Orthodox Christians (61%), high proportion of Muslims (12%), 1% of Jews, about 1% of Catholics, and so on. According to Alvaro Gil-Robles
, relations between the representatives of the different religious communities are generally harmonious.
Gil-Robles emphasized the amount of state support provided by both federal and regional authorities for the different religious communities, and stressed the example of the Republic of Tatarstan as "veritable cultural and religious melting pot". Along with that, Catholics are not always heeded as well as other religions by federal and local authorities.
Vladimir Lukin noted in 2005, that citizens of Russia rarely experience violation of freedom of conscience (guaranteed by the article 28 of the Constitution). So, the Commissioner's Office annually accepts from 200 to 250 complaints dealing with the violation of this right, usually from groups of worshipers, who represent various confessions: Orthodox (but not belonging to the Moscow patriarchy
), Old-believers, Muslim, Protestant and others.
The different problem arises with concern of citizens' right to association (article 30 of the Constitution). As Vladimir Lukin noted, although quantity of the registered religious organizations constantly grows (22144 in 2005), an increasing number of religious organization fail to achieve legal recognition: e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses
, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
, and others.
The influx of missionaries over the past several years has led to pressure by groups in Russia, specifically nationalists and the Russian Orthodox Church
, to limit the activities of these "nontraditional" religious groups. In response, the Duma passed a new, restrictive, and potentially discriminatory law in October 1997. The law is very complex, with many ambiguous and contradictory provisions. The law's most controversial provisions separates religious "groups" and "organizations" and introduces a 15-year rule, which allows groups that have existed for 15 years or longer to obtain accredited status. According to Russian priest and dissident
Gleb Yakunin
, new religion law "heavily favors the Russian Orthodox Church at the expense of all other religions, including Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism.", and it is "a step backward in Russia's process of democratization".
The claim to guarantee "the exclusion of any legal, administrative and fiscal discrimination against so-called non-traditional confessions" was adopted by PACE
in June 2005.
Anna Politkovskaya
described cases of prosecution and even murders of Muslims by Russia's law enforcement bodies at the North Caucasus. However, there are plenty of Muslims in higher government, Duma, and business.
Reporters Without Borders
put Russia at 147th place in the World Press Freedom Index (from a list of 168 countries). According to the Committee to Protect Journalists
, 47 journalists have been killed in Russia for their professional activity, since 1992 (as of January 15, 2008). Thirty were killed during President Boris Yeltsin
's reign, and the rest were killed under the former president Vladimir Putin
. According to the Glasnost Defence Foundation, there were 8 cases of suspicious deaths of journalists in 2007, as well as 75 assaults on journalists, and 11 attacks on editorial offices. In 2006, the figures were 9 deaths, 69 assaults, and 12 attacks on offices. In 2005, the list of all cases included 7 deaths, 63 assaults, 12 attacks on editorial offices, 23 incidents of censorship, 42 criminal prosecutions, 11 illegal layoffs, 47 cases of detention by militsiya
, 382 lawsuits, 233 cases of obstruction, 23 closings of editorial offices, 10 evictions, 28 confiscations of printed production, 23 cases of stopping broadcasting, 38 refusals to distribute or print production, 25 acts of intimidation, and 344 other violations of Russian journalist's rights.
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya
, famous for her criticisms of Russia's actions in Chechnya
, and the pro-Kremlin Chechya government, was assassinated in Moscow. Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky
believes that the murders of writers Yuri Shchekochikhin
(author of Slaves of KGB), Anna Politkovskaya
, and Aleksander Litvinenko show that the FSB
has returned to the practice of political assassinations, practised in the past by the Thirteenth KGB
Department.
Opposition journalist Yevgenia Albats
in interview with Eduard Steiner has claimed: "Today the directors of the television channels and the newspapers are invited every Thursday into the Kremlin office of the deputy head of administration, Vladislav Surkov
to learn what news should be presented, and where. Journalists are bought with enormous salaries."
which constitute the Russian Federation, there are 21 national republics (meant to be home to a specific ethnic minority), 5 autonomous okrugs (usually with substantial or predominant ethnic minority) and an autonomous oblast
. However, as Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe
Gil-Robles
noted in 2004 report, whether or not the region in "national", all the citizens have equal rights and no one is privileged or discriminated on account of their ethnic affiliation.
As Gil-Robles noted, although co-operation and good relations are still generally the rule in most of regions, tensions do arise, whose origins vary. Their sources include problems related to peoples that suffered Stalinists repressions, social and economic problems provoking tensions between different communities, and the situation in Chechnya and the associated terrorist attacks with resulting hostility towards people from the Caucasus and Central Asia, which takes the form of discrimination and overt racism towards the groups in question.
Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe in May 2007 issued concern that Russia still hasn't adopted comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, and the existing anti-discrimination provisions are seldom used in spite of reported cases of discrimination.
As Gil-Robles has noted in 2004, minorities are generally represented on local and regional authorities, and participate actively in public affairs. Gil-Robles emphasized the degree of co-operation and understanding between the various nationalities living in the same area, as well as the role of regional and local authorities in ethnic dialogue and development. Along with that, Committee of Ministers in 2007 noted certain setbacks in minority participation in public life, including the abrogation of federal provisions for quotas for indigenous people in regional legislatures.
Although the Constitution of the Russian Federation recognises Russian as the official language, the individual republics may declare one or more official languages. Most of subjects have at least two – Russian and the language of the "eponymous" nationality. As Ministers noted in 2007, there is a lively minority language scene in most subjects of the federation, with more than 1,350 newspapers and magazines, 300 TV channels and 250 radio stations in over 50 minority languages. Moreover, new legislation allows usage of minority languages in federal radio and TV broadcasting.
In 2007, there were 6,260 schools which provided teaching in altogether 38 minority languages, and over 75 minority languages were taught as a discipline in 10,404 schools. Ministers of Council of Europe has noted efforts to improve the supply of minority language textbooks and teachers, as well as greater availability of minority language teaching. However, as Ministers has noted, there remain shortcomings in the access to education of persons belonging to certain minorities.
There are more than 2,000 national minorities' public associations and 560 national cultural autonomies, however the Committee of Ministers has noted that in many regions amount of state support for the preservation and development of minority cultures is still inadequate. Alvaro Gil-Robles noted in 2004, that there's a significant difference between "eponymous" ethnic groups and nationalities without their own national territory, as resources of the last are relatively limited.
Russia is also home of a particular category of minority peoples, i.e. small indigenous peoples of the North and Far East, who maintain very traditional lifestyles, often in a hazardous climatic environment, while adapting to the modern world. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian Federation passed legislation to protect rights of small northern indigenous peoples. Gil-Robles has noted agreements between indigenous representatives and oil companies, which are to compensate potential damages on peoples habitats due to oil exploration. As Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe noted in 2007, despite some initiatives for development, the social and economic situation of numerically small indigenous peoples was affected by recent legislative amendments at the federal level, removing some positive measures as regards their access to land and other natural resources.
Alvaro Gil-Robles noted in 2004, that like many European countries, Russian Federation is also host to many foreigners, who when concentrated in a particular area make up so-called new minorities, who experience troubles e.g. with medical treatment due to absence of registration. Those who are registered encounter other integration problems because of language barriers.
Committee of Ministers has noted in 2007 that despite efforts to improve access to residency registration and citizenship for national minorities, still those measures haven't regularised the situation of all the persons concerned.
).
As of 2007, almost 8 million migrants are officially registered in Russia, while some 5-7 million migrants do not have legal status.
Most of foreigners arriving in Russia are seeking jobs. In many cases they have no preliminary contracts or other agreements with a local employer. A typical problem is the illegal status of many foreigners (i.e., they are not registered and have no identity papers), what deprives them of any social assistance (as of 2004) and often leads to their exploitation by the employer. Despite that, foreigner workers still benefit, what with seeming reluctance of regional authorities to solve the problem forms a sort of modus vivendi. As Gil-Robles noted, it's easy to imagine that illegal status of many foreigners creates grounds for corruption. Illegal immigrants, even if they have spent several years in Russia may be arrested at any moment and placed in detention centres for illegal immigrants for further expulsion. As of 2004, living conditions in detention centers are very bad, and expulsion process lacks of funding, what may extend detention of immigrants for months or even years. Along with that, Gil-Robles detected a firm political commitment to find a satisfactory solution among authorities he spoke with.
There's a special case of former Soviet citizens. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1991 Nationality Law recognised all former Soviet citizens permanently resident in the Russian Federation as Russian citizens. However, people born in Russia who weren't on the Russian territory when the law came into force, as well as some people born in the Soviet Union who lived in Russia but weren't formally domiciled there weren't granted Russian citizenship. When at December 31, 2003 former Soviet passports became invalid, those people overnight become foreigners, although many of them considered Russia their home. The majority were even deprived of retirement benefits and medical assistance. Their morale has also been seriously affected since they feel rejected.
Another special case are Meskhetian Turks. Victims of both Stalin deportation from South Georgia and 1989 pogroms in the Fergana valley
in Uzbekistan, some of them were eventually dispersed in Russia. While in most regions of Russia Meskhetian Turks were automatically granted Russian citizenship, in Krasnodar Krai
some 15,000 Meskhetian Turks were deprived of any legal status since 1991. Unfortunately, even measures taken by Alvaro Gil-Robles in 2004 didn't make Krasnodar authorities to change their position; Vladimir Lukin in the 2005 report called it "campaign initiated by local authorities against certain ethnic groups". The way out for a significant number of Meskhetian Turks in the Krasnodar Krai became resettlement in the United States. As Vladimir Lukin noted in 2005, there was similar problem with 5.5 thousand Yazidi
s who before the disintegration of the USSR moved to the Krasnodar Krai from Armenia
. Only one thousand of them were granted citizenship, the others could not be legalized.
In 2006 Russian Federation after initiative proposed by Vladimir Putin
adopted legislation which in order to "protect interests of native population of Russia" provided significant restrictions on presence of foreigners on Russian wholesale and retail markets.
There was a short campaign of frequently arbitrary and illegal detention and expulsion of ethnic Georgians
on charges of visa violations and a crackdown on Georgian-owned or Georgian-themed businesses and organizations in 2006, as a part of 2006 Georgian-Russian espionage controversy
.
Newsweek
reported that "[In 2005] some 300,000 people were fined for immigration violations in Moscow alone. [In 2006], according to Civil Assistance
, numbers are many times higher."
In his 2006 report, Vladimir Lukin has noted rise of nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments in Russia, as well as more frequent cases of violence and mass riots on the grounds of racial, nationalistic or religious intolerance.
Human rights activists point out that 44 people were murdered and close to 500 assaulted on racial grounds in 2006. According to official sources, there were 150 "extremist groups" with over 5000 members in Russia in 2006.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has noted in 2007, that high-level representatives of the federal administration have publicly endorsed the fight against racism and intolerance, and a number of programmes have been adopted to implement these objectives. This has been accompanied by an increase in the number of convictions aimed at inciting national, racial or religious hatred. However, there has been an alarming increase in the number of racially motivated violent assaults in the Russian Federation in four years, yet many law enforcement officials still often appear reluctant to acknowledge racial or nationalist motivation in these crimes. Hate speech has become more common in the media and in political discourse. The situation of persons originating in the Northern Caucasus is particularly disturbing.
Vladimir Lukin noted that inactivity of the law enforcement bodies may cause severe consequences, like September 2006 inter-ethnic riot in town Kondopoga
of the Republic of Karelia
. Lukin noted provocative role of the so-called Movement Against Illegal Immigration
. As the result of the Kondopoga events, all heads of the "enforcement bloc" of the republic were fired from their positions, several criminal cases were opened.
According to nationwide opinion poll carried by VCIOM
in 2006, 44% of respondents consider Russia "a common house of many nations" where all must have equal rights, 36% think that "Russians should have more rights since they constitute the majority of the population", 15% think "Russia must be the state of Russian people". However the question is also what exactly does the term "Russian" denote. For 39% of respondents Russians are all who grew and were brought up in Russia's traditions; for 23% Russians are those who works for the good of Russia; 15% respondents think that only Russians by blood may be called Russians; for 12% Russians are all for who Russian language is native, for 7% Russians are adepts of Russian Christian Orthodox
tradition.
According to statistics published by Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
, in 2007 in Russia foreign citizens and people without citizenship has committed 50,1 thousand crimes, while the number of crimes committed against this social group was 15985.
As reported by the Associated Press
, in 2010 SOVA-Center noted a significant drop of racially motivated violence in Russia in 2009, related to 2008: "71 people were killed and 333 wounded in racist attacks last [2009] year, down from 110 killed and 487 wounded in 2008". According to a SOVA-Center report, the drop was mostly "due to police efforts to break up the largest and most aggressive extremist groups in Moscow and the surrounding region". Most of the victims were "dark-skinned, non-Slavic migrant laborers from former Soviet republics in Central Asia ... and the Caucasus". As Associated Press journalist Peter Leonard commended, "The findings appear to vindicate government claims it is trying to combat racist violence".
Little has changed in the Moscow Serbsky Institute
where many prominent Soviet dissidents had been incarcerated after having been diagnosed with sluggishly progressing schizophrenia
. This Institute conducts more than 2,500 court-ordered evaluations per year. When war criminal Yuri Budanov
was tested there in 2002, the panel conducting the inquiry was led by Tamara Pechernikova, who had condemned the poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya
in the past. Budanov was found not guilty by reason of "temporary insanity". After public outrage, he was found sane by another panel that included Georgi Morozov, the former Serbsky director who had declared many dissidents insane in the 1970s and 1980s. Serbsky Institute also made an expertise of mass poisoning of hundreds of Chechen school children by an unknown chemical substance of strong and prolonged action, which rendered them completely incapable for many months. The panel found that the disease was caused simply by "psycho-emotional tension".
. According to a 1998 Human Rights Watch
report, "Russian children are abandoned to the state at a rate of 113,000 a year for the past two years, up dramatically from 67,286 in 1992. Of a total of more than 600,000 children classified as being 'without parental care,' as many as one-third reside in institutions, while the rest are placed with a variety of guardians
. From the moment the state assumes their care, orphan
s in Russia – of whom 95 percent still have a living parent – are exposed to shocking levels of cruelty
and neglect
." Once officially labelled as retarded
, Russian orphans are "warehoused for life in psychoneurological institutions. In addition to receiving little to no education in such institutions, these orphans may be restrained in cloth sacks, tethered by a limb to furniture, denied stimulation, and sometimes left to lie half-naked in their own filth. Bedridden children aged five to seventeen are confined to understaffed lying-down rooms as in the baby houses, and in some cases are neglected to the point of death." Life and death of disabled children in the state institutions was described by writer Ruben Gallego
.
Despite these high numbers and poor quality of care, recent laws have made adoption of Russian children by foreigners considerably more difficult.
and Yugoslavia
has contributed to an increase in human trafficking, with the majority of victims being women forced into prostitution. Russia is a country of origin for persons, primarily women and children, trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Russia is also a destination and transit country for persons trafficked for sexual and labour exploitation from regional and neighbouring countries into Russia and beyond. Russia accounted for one-quarter of the 1,235 identified victims reported in 2003 trafficked to Germany. The Russian government has shown some commitment to combat trafficking but has been criticised for failing to develop effective measures in law enforcement and victim protection.
Russia is the signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
and has also ratified a number of other international human rights instruments
International human rights instruments
International human rights instruments are treaties and other international documents relevant to international human rights law and the protection of human rights in general...
, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and in force from March 23, 1976...
, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and in force from January 3, 1976...
(fully) and the European Convention of Human Rights (with reservations
Territorial scope of European Convention on Human Rights
This table illustrates the extent to which the substantive provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols are ratified for territories under the control of the members of the Council of Europe...
). These international law instruments take precedence over national legislation according to Chapter 1, Article 15 of the Constitution.
As a member of the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
Russia has international obligations related to the issue of human rights. In the introduction to the 2004 report on the situation in Russia, the Commissioner for Human Rights
Commissioner for Human Rights
The Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent institution within the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, mandated to promote the awareness of and respect for human rights in member states...
of the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
, noted the "sweeping changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union" and reported that "the fledgling Russian democracy is still, of course, far from perfect, but its existence and its successes cannot be denied."
In recent years Vladimir Lukin
Vladimir Lukin
Vladimir Petrovich Lukin is Russian liberal political activist currently serving as the Human Rights Commissioner of Russia...
, current Ombudsman
Ombudsman
An ombudsman is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests...
of the Russian Federation, has invariably characterized the human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
situation in Russia as unsatisfactory. However, according to Lukin, this is not discouraging, because building a lawful state and civil society in such a complex country as Russia is a hard and long process.
Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
considered Russia partially free with scores of 5 on both political rights and civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
(1 being most free, 7 least free) in 2002-2004 and not free with 6 on political rights and 5 on civil liberties in 2005-2008 according to the Freedom in the World reports. In 2006 The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
published a democracy rating, putting Russia at 102nd place among 167 countries and defining it as a "hybrid regime with a trend towards curtailment of media and other civil liberties."
The European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
has become overwhelmed with cases from Russia. As of June 1, 2007, 22.5% of its pending cases were directed against the Russian Federation. In 2006 there were 151 admissible applications against Russia (out of 1634 for all the countries), while in 2005 - 110 (of 1036), in 2004 - 64 (of 830), in 2003 - 15 (of 753), in 2002 - 12 (of 578).
According to international human rights organizations as well as domestic press, violations of human rights in Russia include widespread and systematic torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
of persons in custody by police, dedovshchina
Dedovshchina
Dedovshchina is the name given to the informal system of subjection of new junior conscripts, formerly to the Soviet Armed Forces and today to the Russian armed forces, Interior Ministry, and FSB border guards, as well as the military forces of certain former Soviet Republics, to brutalization...
in Russian Army, neglect and cruelty in Russian orphanages, violations of children's rights
Children's rights
Children's rights are the human rights of children with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to the young, including their right to association with both biological parents, human identity as well as the basic needs for food, universal state-paid education,...
. According to Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
there is discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
, racism, and murders of members of ethnic minorities. Since 1992 at least 50 journalists have been killed across the country.
The situation in the Russian republic of Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
, ravaged by war, has been especially worrying. During the Second Chechen War
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....
, started in September 1999, there were summary execution
Summary execution
A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
s and "disappearances" of civilians in Chechnya. According to the ombudsman of the Chechen Republic, Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, as of March 2007 the most complex and painful problem is finding over 2700 abducted and forcefully held citizens; analysis of the complaints of citizens of Chechnya shows that social problems ever more often come to the foreground; two years ago complaints mostly concerned violations of the right to life.
The Federal Law of January 10, 2006 changed the orders affecting registration and operation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia. The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society
Russian-Chechen Friendship Society
The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society was a Russian non-governmental organization monitoring the human rights situation in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus. The society produced daily press releases on serious human rights violations...
was closed.
There are cases of attacks on demonstrators organized by local authorities. High concern was caused by murders of opposition lawmakers and journalists Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
, Yuri Schekochikhin, Galina Starovoitova
Galina Starovoitova
Galina Vasilyevna Starovoitova was a Russian politician and ethnographer known for her work to protect ethnic minorities and promote democratic reforms in Russia.- Early life and academic career :...
, Sergei Yushenkov
Sergei Yushenkov
Sergei Yushenkov was a liberal Russian politician well known for his uncompromising struggle for democracy, rapid free market economic reforms, and higher human rights standards in Russia...
, lawyer Stanislav Markelov
Stanislav Markelov
Stanislav Yuryevich Markelov was a human rights lawyer and journalist who wrote investigative articles on Chechnya. Markelov had been the attorney for the family of Elza Kungaeva, a young Chechen woman killed by Russian colonel Yuri Budanov, who was released from prison in mid-January, 15 months...
, and journalist Anastasia Baburova
Anastasia Baburova
Anastasia Eduardivna Baburova was a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and a student of journalism at Moscow State University. She was born in Sevastopol, Ukraine.A member of Autonomous Action, she investigated activities of neo-Nazi groups...
, as well as imprisonments of human rights defenders, scientists, and journalists like Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...
, Igor Sutyagin
Igor Sutyagin
Igor V. Sutyagin is a Russian arms control and nuclear weapons specialist. In 1998 he became the head of the subdivision for Military-Technical and Military-Economic Policy at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he worked before he was...
, and Valentin Danilov
Valentin Danilov
Valentin Danilov is a Russian physicist, whose research deals with the effect of solar activity on space satellites. On November 2004 , he was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years for espionage...
.
Judicial system
The judiciary is a subject to manipulation by political authorities according to Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
. According to Constitution of Russia, top judges are [appointed] by the Federation Council, following nomination by the President of Russia. Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
described in her book Putin's Russia
Putin's Russia
Putin's Russia is a non-fiction book by the late Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya about life in modern Russia.Politkovskaya argues that Russia still has aspects of a police state or mafia state, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. In a review, Angus Macqueen wrote: Politkovskaya describes...
stories of judges who did not follow "orders from the above" and were assaulted or removed from their positions. In an open letter written in 2005, former judge Olga Kudeshkina criticized the chairman of the Moscow city court O. Egorova for "recommending judges to make right decisions" which allegedly caused more than 80 judges in Moscow to retire in the period from 2002 to 2005.
In the 1990s, Russia's prison system was widely reported by media and human rights groups as troubled. There were large case backlogs and trial delays, resulting in lengthy pre-trial detention. Prison conditions were viewed as well below international standards. Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
was a serious, pervasive problem. Human rights groups estimated that about 11,000 inmates and prison detainees die annually, most because of overcrowding, disease, and lack of medical care. A media report dated 2006 points to a campaign of prison reform that has resulted in apparent improvements in conditions. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation is an office-level agency in the federal administration of Switzerland, and a part of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs...
has been working to reform Russia's prisons since 1997, in concert with reform efforts by the national government.
The rule of law has made rather limited inroads in the criminal justice since the Soviet time, especially in the deep provinces. The courts generally follow the non-acquittals policy; in 2004 acquittal
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
s constituted only 0.7 percent of all judgments. Judges are dependent on administrators, bidding prosecutorial offices in turn. The work of public prosecutors varies from poor to dismal. Lawyers are mostly court appointed and low paid. There was a rapid deterioration of the situation characterized by abuse of the criminal process, harassment and persecution of defense bar members in politically sensitive cases in recent years. The principles of adversariness and equality of the parties to criminal proceedings are not observed.
In 1996, President Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
pronounced a moratorium
Moratorium (law)
A moratorium is a delay or suspension of an activity or a law. In a legal context, it may refer to the temporary suspension of a law to allow a legal challenge to be carried out....
on the death penalty in Russia
Capital punishment in Russia
Capital punishment in Russia is currently under question, albeit legally allowed . There exists both an implicit moratorium established by the President and an explicit one, established by the nation's highest court. Russia has not executed anyone since 1996, and the regulations of the Council of...
. However, the Russian government still violates many promises it made upon entering the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
. Citizens who appeal to European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is a supra-national court established by the European Convention on Human Rights and hears complaints that a contracting state has violated the human rights enshrined in the Convention and its protocols. Complaints can be brought by individuals or...
are often prosecuted by Russian authorities, according to the allegations of Politkovskaya
Torture and abuse
The Constitution of RussiaConstitution of Russia
The current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted by national referendum on 12 December 1993. Russia's constitution came into force on 25 December 1993, at the moment of its official publication...
forbids arbitrary detention, torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and ill-treatment. Chapter 2, Article 21 of the constitution states, "No one may be subjected to torture, violence or any other harsh or humiliating treatment or punishment." However Russian police are regularly observed practicing torture - including beatings, electric shocks, rape, asphyxiation - in interrogating arrested suspects. In 2000, human rights Ombudsman Oleg Mironov estimated that 50% of prisoners with whom he spoke claimed to have been tortured. Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
reported that Russian military forces in Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
engage in torture.
In the most extreme cases, hundreds of innocent people from the street were arbitrary arrested, beaten, tortured, and raped by special police forces. Such incidents took place not only in Chechnya, but also in Russian towns of Blagoveshensk, Bezetsk, Nefteyugansk, and others. On 2007 Radio Svoboda ("Radio Freedom", part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) reported that an unofficial movement "Russia the Beaten" was created in Moscow by human rights activists and journalists who "suffered from beatings in numerous Russian cities".
Torture and humiliation are also widespread in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are the military services of Russia, established after the break-up of the Soviet Union. On 7 May 1992 Boris Yeltsin signed a decree establishing the Russian Ministry of Defence and placing all Soviet Armed Forces troops on the territory of the RSFSR...
. The term dedovshchina
Dedovshchina
Dedovshchina is the name given to the informal system of subjection of new junior conscripts, formerly to the Soviet Armed Forces and today to the Russian armed forces, Interior Ministry, and FSB border guards, as well as the military forces of certain former Soviet Republics, to brutalization...
refers to systematic abuse of new conscripts by more long-serving soldiers. Many young men are killed or commit suicide every year because of it. It is reported that some young male conscripts are forced to work as prostitutes for "outside clients". Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia
Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia
The Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia works to expose human rights violations within the Russian military.The organization was founded in 1989. Before 1998, it was known as the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia....
works to protect rights of young soldiers.
The current phenomenon of dedovschina is closely linked to the division of Soviet and now Russian junior soldiers into four 'classes,' each reflecting a group called up every six months for a total two-year service period. This system stemmed from the adoption of two-year service in 1967. The reduction in the term of service to one year and the increasing number of contract servicemen in the Armed Forces may change the character of dedovschina somewhat.
Crime
In the 1990s, the growth of organized crime (see Russian mafiaRussian Mafia
The Russian Mafia is a name applied to organized crime syndicates in Russia and Ukraine. The mafia in various countries take the name of the country, as for example the Ukrainian mafia....
and Russian oligarchs
Russian oligarchs
Business oligarch is a near-synonym of the term "business magnate", borrowed by the English speaking and western media from Russian parlance to describe the huge, fast-acquired wealth of some businessmen of the former Soviet republics during privatization in Russia and other post-Soviet states in...
) and the fragmentation of law enforcement agencies in Russia coincided with a sharp rise in violence against business figures, administrative and state officials, and other public figures. The second President of Russia Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
inherited these problems when he took office, and during his election campaign in 2000, the new president won popular support by stressing the need to restore law and order and to bring the rule of law to Russia as the only way of restoring confidence in the country's economy.
According to data by Demoscope Weekly, the Russian homicide rate showed a rise from the level of 15 murders per 100,000 people in 1991, to 32.5 in 1994. Then it fell to 22.5 in 1998, followed by a rise to a maximum rate of 30.5 in 2002, and then a fall to 20 murders per 100,000 people in 2006. Despite positive tendency to reduce, Russia's index of murders per capita remains one of the highest in the world with the fifth highest of 62 nations.
With a prison population rate of 611 per 100,000 population, Russia was second only to the United States (2006 data). Furthermore, criminology studies show that for the first five years since 2000 compared with the average for 1992 to 1999, the rate of robberies is up by 38.2% and the rate of drug-related crime
Drug-Related Crime
In the United States, Illegal drugs are related to crime in multiple ways. Most directly, it is a crime to use, possess, manufacture, or distribute drugs classified as having a potential for abuse...
s is higher by 71.7%.
Espionage cases
During the Soviet period, scientists encountered substantial administrative barriers when working with foreign colleagues . After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which coincided with a decrease in government funding of science, many scientists broadened their contacts with foreign laboratories. A point to note is that administrative norms of secrecy in Russia are still more strict than those accepted in the West.There were several cases when the FSB
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
accused scientists of alleged revealing state secrets to foreign nationals, while the defendants and their colleagues claimed that the information or technology was based on already published and declassified sources. Even though the cases often garnered public reaction, the cases themselves were in most cases held in closed chambers, with no press coverage or public oversight.
The scientists in question are:
- Igor SutyaginIgor SutyaginIgor V. Sutyagin is a Russian arms control and nuclear weapons specialist. In 1998 he became the head of the subdivision for Military-Technical and Military-Economic Policy at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he worked before he was...
(sentenced to 15 years). - Physicist Valentin DanilovValentin DanilovValentin Danilov is a Russian physicist, whose research deals with the effect of solar activity on space satellites. On November 2004 , he was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years for espionage...
(sentenced to 14 years). - Physical chemist Oleg Korobeinichev (held under a written pledge not to leave city from 2006. In May 2007 the case against him was closed by FSB for "absence of body of crime". In July 2007 prosecutors publicly apologized to Korobeinichev for "the image of spy").
- Academician Oskar Kaibyshev (given a 6-year suspended sentence and a fine of $130,000).
Ecologist and journalist Alexander Nikitin
Alexander Nikitin
Aleksander Nikitin, a Russian former submarine officer and nuclear safety inspector turned environmentalist, started to co-operate with Norwegian environmental Bellona Foundation in 1994. He was arrested in February 1996 by Russian FSB and charged with treason through espionage for his...
, who worked with the Bellona Foundation
Bellona Foundation
The Bellona Foundation is a multi-disciplinary international environmental NGO based in Oslo, Norway. Founded in 1986 by Frederic Hauge and Rune Haaland as a direct action protest group, it has since blossomed into a recognized technology and solution-oriented environmental champion with offices on...
, was likewise accused of espionage. He published material exposing hazards posed by the Russian Navy's nuclear fleet. He was acquitted in 1999 after spending several years in prison (his case was sent for re-investigation 13 times while he remained in prison). Other cases of prosecution are the cases of investigative journalist and ecologist Grigory Pasko
Grigory Pasko
Grigory Mikhailovich Pasko is a Russian journalist and publisher of an environmental magazine.-Life:Pasko was born in the village Kreshchenovka of the Kherson Oblast, currently Ukraine, to a teacher's family...
, sentenced to three years' imprisonment and later released under a general amnesty, Vladimir Petrenko who described dangers posed by military chemical warfare stockpiles and was held in pretrial confinement for seven months, and Nikolay Shchur, chairman of the Snezhinskiy Ecological Fund who was held in pretrial confinement for six months.
Other cases
Viktor Orekhov, a former KGBKGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
captain who assisted Soviet dissidents and was sentenced to eight years of prison in the Soviet era, was sentenced in 1995 to three years of prison for alleged possession of a pistol and magazines. After one year he was released and left the country.
Vil Mirzayanov was prosecuted for a 1992 article in which he has claimed that Russia was working on chemical weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
, but won the case and later emigrated to the United States
Vladimir Kazantsev
Vladimir Kazantsev
Vladimir Dmitriyevich Kazantsev was a Soviet athlete who competed mainly in the 3000 metre steeple chase...
who disclosed illegal purchases of eavesdropping devices from foreign firms was arrested in August 1995, and released at the end of the year, however the case was not closed. Investigator Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Trepashkin
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin, is a Moscow attorney and former FSB colonel who was invited by MP Sergei Kovalev to assist in an independent inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 – the atrocities that followed Dagestan war and were one of the triggers for the Second Chechen...
was sentenced in May 2004 to four years of prison.
Journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov on January 9, 2006 was sentenced for alleged defamation of the President in his article "Putin as phallic symbol of Russia" to fine of 20,000 roubles (about 695 USD).
Political dissidents from the former Soviet republics, such as authoritarian Tajikistan
Tajikistan
Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....
and Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
, are often arrested by the FSB
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
and extradited to these countries for prosecution, despite the protests from international human rights organizations. The special security services of Tajikistan
Tajikistan
Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....
, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...
and Azerbaidjan also kidnap people in Russian territory, with the implicit approval of the FSB
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
.
Many people were also held in detention to prevent them from demonstrating during the G8 Summit in 2006.
Business-related human rights abuses
There has been a number of high-profile cases of human rights abuses connected to business in Russia. Among other abuses, this most obviously involves abuse of article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human RightsUniversal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
. These include the case of the former heads of the oil company Yukos
YUKOS
OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" was a petroleum company in Russia which, until 2003, was controlled by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a number of other prominent Russian businessmen. After Yukos was bankrupted, Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to prison.Yukos headquarters was located in...
, Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a Russian prisoner, considered by some - such as Amnesty International - to have been imprisoned for political reasons, jailed until 2016 and a former Russian oligarch and businessman...
, and Platon Lebedev
Platon Lebedev
Platon Leonidovich Lebedev is a former CEO of Group Menatep, currently imprisoned in Russia, and is best known as a close associate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.-Conviction:...
whom Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
declared prisoners of conscience
Prisoner of conscience
Prisoner of conscience is a term defined in Peter Benenson's 1961 article "The Forgotten Prisoners" often used by the human rights group Amnesty International. It can refer to anyone imprisoned because of their race, religion, or political views...
http://rianovosti.com/russia/20110524/164210044.html, and the case of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky
Sergei Magnitsky
Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky was a Russian attorney whose death in police custody generated international media attention and launched an investigation into allegations of abuse. Magnitsky, who had alleged wide-scale tax fraud sanctioned by officials before being himself arrested, died days...
, whose efforts to expose a conspiracy of criminals and corrupt law-enforcement officials earned him sustained abuse in prison which led to his death. An analogous case was the death in custody of the businesswoman Vera Trifonova, who was in jail for alleged fraud.
Cases such as these have contributed to suspicion in other countries about the Russian justice system, which has manifested itself in the refusal to grant Russian extradition requests for businessmen fleeing abroad. Notable instances of this are the cases of the tycoon Boris Berezovsky and former Yukos vice president Alexander Temerko
Alexander Temerko
Alexander Temerko is a prominent Russian businessman in the energy sector, currently a director of the UK-based company OGN Group. He was a senior executive at the Russian company Yukos, becoming vice president in 2003 after the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He left this post in 2005...
in the UK, the media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky
Vladimir Gusinsky
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Gusinsky is a Russian media baron, is known as the founder of Media-Most holding that included Most Bank, the NTV channel, the newspaper Segodnya and magazines.-Life and career:Gusinsky was born in Moscow....
in Spain and Greece, Leonid Nevzlin
Leonid Nevzlin
Leonid Borisovich Nevzlin is a Russian-Israeli businessman. Nevzlin was a high ranking executive at Yukos, once a Russian oil firm before it was extinguished by the Russian government. That government is requesting his extradition due to hotly disputed criminal allegations against him and other...
in Israelhttp://www.mosnews.com/world/2009/03/26/nevzlin/ and Ivan Kolesnikov in Cyprus.http://www.kommersant.com/p713715/r_500/YUKOS_extradition/undefined A case that will test the attitude of the French authorities to this issue is that of the shipping magnate Vitaly Arkhangelsky
Vitaly Arkhangelsky
Vitaly Dmitrievich Arkhangelsky is a prominent Russian entrepreneur with substantial interests in shipping and insurance. The Russian authorities are seeking his extradition from France, where he and his family currently live, to face charges of economic crimes...
. The Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
revelations indicated the low level of confidence other governments have in the Russian government on such issues. Cases involving major companies may gain coverage in the world media, but there are many further cases equally worthy of attention: a typical case involves the expropriation of assets, with criminals and corrupt law-enforcement officials collaborating to bring false charges against businesspeople, who are told that they must hand over assets to avoid criminal proceedings against them. A prominent campaigner against such abuses is Yana Yakovleva, herself a victim who set up the group Business Solidarity in the aftermath of her ordeal..
Suspicious killings
Some Russian opposition lawmakers and investigative journalists are suspected to be assassinated while investigating corruption and alleged crimes conducted by state authorities or FSBFSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
: Sergei Yushenkov
Sergei Yushenkov
Sergei Yushenkov was a liberal Russian politician well known for his uncompromising struggle for democracy, rapid free market economic reforms, and higher human rights standards in Russia...
, Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin was a Russian investigative journalist, writer, and liberal lawmaker of Russian parliament. Shchekochikhin made his name writing about and campaigning against the influence of organized crime and corruption...
, Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
, Galina Starovoitova
Galina Starovoitova
Galina Vasilyevna Starovoitova was a Russian politician and ethnographer known for her work to protect ethnic minorities and promote democratic reforms in Russia.- Early life and academic career :...
, Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
, Paul Klebnikov
Paul Klebnikov
Paul Klebnikov was a Russian-American journalist and historian of Russian history. He worked for Forbes Magazine for over 10 years and at the time of his death was Chief editor of the Russian edition. His murder in Moscow in 2004 was seen as a blow against investigative journalism in Russia...
.
Situation in Chechnya
The Russian Government's policies in ChechnyaChechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
are a cause for international concern. It has been reported that Russian military forces have abducted, tortured, and killed numerous civilians in Chechnya, but Chechen separatists have also committed abuses, such as abducting people for ransom. Human rights groups are critical of cases of people disappearing in the custody of Russian officials. Systematic illegal arrests and torture conducted by the armed forces under the command of Ramzan Kadyrov
Ramzan Kadyrov
Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov is the President of Chechnya and a former Chechen rebel.Ramzan is a son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, assassinated in May 2004. In February 2007 Kadyrov replaced Alu Alkhanov as President, shortly after he had turned 30, which is the minimum age for the post...
and Federal Ministry of Interior have also been reported. There are reports about repressions, information blockade, and atmosphere of fear and despair in Chechnya.
According to Memorial
Memorial (society)
Memorial is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states....
reports, there is a system of "conveyor of violence" in Chechen Republic, as well as in neighbouring Ingushetiya. People are suspected in crimes connected with activity of separatists squads, is unlawfully detained by members of security agencies, and then disappears. After a while part of detainees is found in centers of preliminary detention, while some allegedly disappear forever, and then he is tortured to confess to a crime or/and to slander somebody else. Psychological pressure is also in use. Known Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
compared this system with Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
and claimed the number of several hundred cases.
A number of journalists were killed in Chechnya or supposedly for reporting on the conflict. List of names includes less and more famous: Cynthia Elbaum
Cynthia Elbaum
Cynthia Elbaum was an American photojournalist, killed in Chechnya.Cynthia Elbaum, who grew up in Ashfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Smith College with a major in Russian studies...
, Vladimir Zhitarenko
Vladimir Zhitarenko
Colonel Vladimir Zhitarenko was a military correspondent for the Russian armed forces daily Krasnaya Zvezda ....
, Nina Yefimova
Nina Yefimova
Nina Yefimova was a reporter for Vozrozhdeniye , a local Russian language newspaper in the Chechen capital Grozny. She was the 18th journalist to be killed in Chechnya since fighting escalated in December 1994....
, Jochen Piest
Jochen Piest
Jochen Piest was a correspondent for the German newsmagazine Stern.On January 10, 1995, Piest was killed in a suicide attack by a Chechen rebel against a Russian mine-clearing unit in the village of Chervlyonna, about 24 kilometers northeast of the Chechen capital, Grozny...
, Farkhad Kerimov, Natalya Alyakina, Shamkhan Kagirov, Viktor Pimenov
Viktor Pimenov
Viktor Pimenov was a cameraman for Vaynakh Television, a Chechen station supported by Moscow-backed forces.-Death:On March 11, 1996, he was fatally shot in the back by a sniper positioned on the roof of a 16-story building in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Pimenov had been filming the devastation...
, Nadezhda Chaikova
Nadezhda Chaikova
Nadezhda Chaikova was a correspondent for the Russian weekly Obshchaya Gazeta. A college of Anna Politkovskaya, she had traveled frequently to Chechnya and neighbouring regions...
, Supian Ependiyev
Supian Ependiyev
Supian Ependiyev was a veteran correspondent and editor-in-chief for the independent Chechen weekly Groznensky Rabochy, who was killed while covering a Russian Ground Forces ballistic missile attack on the Chechen capital, Grozny....
, Ramzan Mezhidov
Ramzan Mezhidov
Ramzan Mezhidov , was a freelance Chechen cameraman. On October 29, 1999, together with Shamil Gigayev, a cameraman for independent Nokh Cho television station in Grozny, he was killed during a Russian air strike on refugees fleeing Chechnya....
and Shamil Gigayev, Vladimir Yatsina, Aleksandr Yefremov, Roddy Scott
Roddy Scott
Roddy Scott was a British freelance cameraman who documented neglected conflicts in such places as Sierra Leone, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ethiopia. He derived the bulk of his income from updating a guide to war and traveled widely in his freelance journalism, usually career without sponsors or...
, Paul Klebnikov
Paul Klebnikov
Paul Klebnikov was a Russian-American journalist and historian of Russian history. He worked for Forbes Magazine for over 10 years and at the time of his death was Chief editor of the Russian edition. His murder in Moscow in 2004 was seen as a blow against investigative journalism in Russia...
, Magomedzagid Varisov, Natalya Estemirova
Natalya Estemirova
Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova was an award-winning Russian human rights activist and board member of the Russian human rights organisation Memorial. Estemirova was abducted by unknown persons on 15 July 2009 around 8:30 a.m. from her home in Grozny, Chechnya, as she was working on "extremely...
and Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
.
As reported by the Commissioner for Human Rights
Commissioner for Human Rights
The Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent institution within the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, mandated to promote the awareness of and respect for human rights in member states...
of the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
Thomas Hammarberg in 2009, "prior military conflicts, recurrent terrorist attacks (including suicide bombings), as well as wide-spread corruption and a climate of impunity have all plagued the region."
According to the Human Rights Centre Memorial, the total number of alleged abductions in Chechnya was 42 during the entire year 2008, whereas already in the first four months of 2009 there were 58 such cases. Of these 58 persons, 45 had been released, 2 found dead, 4 were missing and 7 had been found in police detention units. In the course of 2008, 164 criminal complaints concerning acts by the security forces were made, 111 of which were granted. In the first half of 2009, 52 such complaints were made, 18 of which were granted.
On 16 April 2009 the counter-terrorism operation (CTO) regime in Chechnya was lifted by the federal authorities. After that, the Chechen authorities bear primary responsibility for the fight against terrorism in the Republic. However, the lifting of the CTO regime has not been accompanied by a diminishment of activity of illegal armed groups in Chechnya.
There are reports on practices of collective punishment of relatives of alleged terrorists or insurgents: punitive house-burning has continued to be among the tactics against families of alleged insurgents. Chechen authorities confirmed such incidents and pointed out that "such practices were difficult to prevent as they stemmed from prevalent customs of revenge", however, educational efforts are undertaken to prevent such incidents, with the active involvement of village elders and Muslim clerics, and compensation had been paid to many of the victims of punitive house burnings.
Reconstruction of Chechnya
In 2007 report, Thomas Hammarberg noted "the efforts undertaken by the Chechen authorities to reconstruct villages and cities – in particular the capital, Grozny – and welcomed the revival of schools and hospitals". However, as of 2009, "serious economic hardship is one of the overarching problems for the population, with an official unemployment rate amounting to 32.9% in Chechnya and 52.1% in Ingushetia."On March 25, 2010 airport of Grozny became opened for international flights.
Governmental organizations
Efforts to institutionalize official human rights bodies have been mixed. In 1996, human rights activist Sergey Kovalev resigned as chairman of the Presidential Human Rights Commission to protest the government's record, particularly the war in Chechnya. Parliament in 1997 passed a law establishing a "human rights ombudsman," a position that is provided for in Russia's constitution and is required of members of the Council of Europe, to which Russia was admitted in February 1996. The Duma finally selected Duma deputy Oleg Mironov in May 1998. A member of the Communist PartyCommunist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
, Mironov resigned from both the Party and the Duma
Duma
A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
after the vote, citing the law's stipulation that the Ombudsman be nonpartisan. Because of his party affiliation, and because Mironov had no evident expertise in the field of human rights, his appointment was widely criticized at the time by human rights activists. International human rights groups operate freely in Russia, although the government has hindered the movements and access to information of some individuals investigating the war in Chechnya.
Non-governmental organizations
The lower house of the Russian parliamentDuma
A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
passed a bill by 370-18 requiring local branches of foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to re-register as Russian organizations subject to Russian jurisdiction, and thus stricter financial and legal restrictions. The bill gives Russian officials oversight of local finances and activities. The bill has been highly criticized by Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, Memorial organization
Memorial (society)
Memorial is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states....
, and the INDEM Foundation for its possible effects on international monitoring of the status of human rights in Russia. In October 2006 the activities of many foreign non-governmental organizations were suspended using this law; officials said that "the suspensions resulted simply from the failure of private groups to meet the law's requirements, not from a political decision on the part of the state. The groups would be allowed to resume work once their registrations are completed." Another crackdown followed in 2007.
Freedom of religion
The Constitution of Russian Federation provides for freedom of religion and the equality of all religions before the law as well as the separation of church and state. As Vladimir Lukin had stressed in his 2005 Ombudsman's report, "the Russian state has achieved significant progress in the observance of religious freedom and lawful activity of religious associations, overcoming a heritage of totalitarianism, domination of a single ideology and party dictatorship".Russia is a multi-ethnic country with a large majority of Orthodox Christians (61%), high proportion of Muslims (12%), 1% of Jews, about 1% of Catholics, and so on. According to Alvaro Gil-Robles
Álvaro Gil-Robles
Álvaro Gil-Robles is a Spanish jurist and human rights activist.He was Commissioner for Human Rights of Council of Europe from 15 October 1999 to 31 March 2006...
, relations between the representatives of the different religious communities are generally harmonious.
Gil-Robles emphasized the amount of state support provided by both federal and regional authorities for the different religious communities, and stressed the example of the Republic of Tatarstan as "veritable cultural and religious melting pot". Along with that, Catholics are not always heeded as well as other religions by federal and local authorities.
Vladimir Lukin noted in 2005, that citizens of Russia rarely experience violation of freedom of conscience (guaranteed by the article 28 of the Constitution). So, the Commissioner's Office annually accepts from 200 to 250 complaints dealing with the violation of this right, usually from groups of worshipers, who represent various confessions: Orthodox (but not belonging to the Moscow patriarchy
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
), Old-believers, Muslim, Protestant and others.
The different problem arises with concern of citizens' right to association (article 30 of the Constitution). As Vladimir Lukin noted, although quantity of the registered religious organizations constantly grows (22144 in 2005), an increasing number of religious organization fail to achieve legal recognition: e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness , known colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement, is a Gaudiya Vaishnava religious organization. It was founded in 1966 in New York City by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada...
, and others.
The influx of missionaries over the past several years has led to pressure by groups in Russia, specifically nationalists and the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
, to limit the activities of these "nontraditional" religious groups. In response, the Duma passed a new, restrictive, and potentially discriminatory law in October 1997. The law is very complex, with many ambiguous and contradictory provisions. The law's most controversial provisions separates religious "groups" and "organizations" and introduces a 15-year rule, which allows groups that have existed for 15 years or longer to obtain accredited status. According to Russian priest and dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
Gleb Yakunin
Gleb Yakunin
Gleb Pavlovich Yakunin is Russian priest and dissident who fought for the freedom of conscience in the Soviet Union. He was member of Moscow Helsinki Group, and he was elected to Russian Parliaments from 1990 to 1999.-Life:...
, new religion law "heavily favors the Russian Orthodox Church at the expense of all other religions, including Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism.", and it is "a step backward in Russia's process of democratization".
The claim to guarantee "the exclusion of any legal, administrative and fiscal discrimination against so-called non-traditional confessions" was adopted by PACE
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , which held its first session in Strasbourg on 10 August 1949, can be considered the oldest international parliamentary assembly with a pluralistic composition of democratically elected members of parliament established on the basis of an...
in June 2005.
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
described cases of prosecution and even murders of Muslims by Russia's law enforcement bodies at the North Caucasus. However, there are plenty of Muslims in higher government, Duma, and business.
Press freedom
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
put Russia at 147th place in the World Press Freedom Index (from a list of 168 countries). According to the Committee to Protect Journalists
Committee to Protect Journalists
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent nonprofit organisation based in New York City that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.-History:A group of U.S...
, 47 journalists have been killed in Russia for their professional activity, since 1992 (as of January 15, 2008). Thirty were killed during President Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
's reign, and the rest were killed under the former president Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
. According to the Glasnost Defence Foundation, there were 8 cases of suspicious deaths of journalists in 2007, as well as 75 assaults on journalists, and 11 attacks on editorial offices. In 2006, the figures were 9 deaths, 69 assaults, and 12 attacks on offices. In 2005, the list of all cases included 7 deaths, 63 assaults, 12 attacks on editorial offices, 23 incidents of censorship, 42 criminal prosecutions, 11 illegal layoffs, 47 cases of detention by militsiya
Militsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
, 382 lawsuits, 233 cases of obstruction, 23 closings of editorial offices, 10 evictions, 28 confiscations of printed production, 23 cases of stopping broadcasting, 38 refusals to distribute or print production, 25 acts of intimidation, and 344 other violations of Russian journalist's rights.
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
, famous for her criticisms of Russia's actions in Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
, and the pro-Kremlin Chechya government, was assassinated in Moscow. Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...
believes that the murders of writers Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Shchekochikhin
Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin was a Russian investigative journalist, writer, and liberal lawmaker of Russian parliament. Shchekochikhin made his name writing about and campaigning against the influence of organized crime and corruption...
(author of Slaves of KGB), Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
, and Aleksander Litvinenko show that the FSB
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
has returned to the practice of political assassinations, practised in the past by the Thirteenth KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
Department.
Opposition journalist Yevgenia Albats
Yevgenia Albats
Dr. Yevgenia Markovna Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, writer and radio host. As of year 2011, she workes as a chief editor of The New Times magazine.-Early life and education:...
in interview with Eduard Steiner has claimed: "Today the directors of the television channels and the newspapers are invited every Thursday into the Kremlin office of the deputy head of administration, Vladislav Surkov
Vladislav Surkov
Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov is a Russian businessman and politician. Currently he is a First Deputy Chief of Staff of the President of the Russian Federation and a top aide to Vladimir Putin. Vladislav Surkov is widely seen as the main ideologist of the Kremlin...
to learn what news should be presented, and where. Journalists are bought with enormous salaries."
Freedom of assembly
- See Freedom of assembly in RussiaFreedom of assembly in RussiaFreedom of assembly in the Russian Federation is granted by Art. 31 of the Constitution adopted in 1993: Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets....
- See Moscow PrideMoscow PrideMoscow Pride is a demonstration of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered persons . It was intended to take place in May annually since 2006 in the Russian capital Moscow, but has been regularly banned by Moscow City Hall, headed by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov until 2010...
- See Strategy-31Strategy-31Strategy-31 is a series of civic protests in support of the right to peaceful assembly in Russia guaranteed by Article 31 of the Russian Constitution...
Ethnic minorities
Russian Federation is a multi-national state with over 170 ethnic groups designated as nationalities, population of these groups varying enormously, from millions in case of e.g. Russians and Tatars to under ten thousand in the case of Nenets and Samis. Among 83 subjectsFederal subjects of Russia
Russia is a federation which, since March 1, 2008, consists of 83 federal subjects . In 1993, when the Constitution was adopted, there were 89 federal subjects listed...
which constitute the Russian Federation, there are 21 national republics (meant to be home to a specific ethnic minority), 5 autonomous okrugs (usually with substantial or predominant ethnic minority) and an autonomous oblast
Jewish Autonomous Oblast
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast is a federal subject of Russia situated in the Russian Far East, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast of Russia and Heilongjiang province of China. Its administrative center is the town of Birobidzhan....
. However, as Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
Gil-Robles
Gil-Robles
Gil-Robles is the surname of:*Álvaro Gil-Robles, b. 1944, Spanish lawyer and Jurist and human rights activist*José María Gil-Robles, b. 1935, Spanish European politician*José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones, 1898-1980, Spanish advocate and politician...
noted in 2004 report, whether or not the region in "national", all the citizens have equal rights and no one is privileged or discriminated on account of their ethnic affiliation.
As Gil-Robles noted, although co-operation and good relations are still generally the rule in most of regions, tensions do arise, whose origins vary. Their sources include problems related to peoples that suffered Stalinists repressions, social and economic problems provoking tensions between different communities, and the situation in Chechnya and the associated terrorist attacks with resulting hostility towards people from the Caucasus and Central Asia, which takes the form of discrimination and overt racism towards the groups in question.
Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe in May 2007 issued concern that Russia still hasn't adopted comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, and the existing anti-discrimination provisions are seldom used in spite of reported cases of discrimination.
As Gil-Robles has noted in 2004, minorities are generally represented on local and regional authorities, and participate actively in public affairs. Gil-Robles emphasized the degree of co-operation and understanding between the various nationalities living in the same area, as well as the role of regional and local authorities in ethnic dialogue and development. Along with that, Committee of Ministers in 2007 noted certain setbacks in minority participation in public life, including the abrogation of federal provisions for quotas for indigenous people in regional legislatures.
Although the Constitution of the Russian Federation recognises Russian as the official language, the individual republics may declare one or more official languages. Most of subjects have at least two – Russian and the language of the "eponymous" nationality. As Ministers noted in 2007, there is a lively minority language scene in most subjects of the federation, with more than 1,350 newspapers and magazines, 300 TV channels and 250 radio stations in over 50 minority languages. Moreover, new legislation allows usage of minority languages in federal radio and TV broadcasting.
In 2007, there were 6,260 schools which provided teaching in altogether 38 minority languages, and over 75 minority languages were taught as a discipline in 10,404 schools. Ministers of Council of Europe has noted efforts to improve the supply of minority language textbooks and teachers, as well as greater availability of minority language teaching. However, as Ministers has noted, there remain shortcomings in the access to education of persons belonging to certain minorities.
There are more than 2,000 national minorities' public associations and 560 national cultural autonomies, however the Committee of Ministers has noted that in many regions amount of state support for the preservation and development of minority cultures is still inadequate. Alvaro Gil-Robles noted in 2004, that there's a significant difference between "eponymous" ethnic groups and nationalities without their own national territory, as resources of the last are relatively limited.
Russia is also home of a particular category of minority peoples, i.e. small indigenous peoples of the North and Far East, who maintain very traditional lifestyles, often in a hazardous climatic environment, while adapting to the modern world. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian Federation passed legislation to protect rights of small northern indigenous peoples. Gil-Robles has noted agreements between indigenous representatives and oil companies, which are to compensate potential damages on peoples habitats due to oil exploration. As Committee of Ministers of Council of Europe noted in 2007, despite some initiatives for development, the social and economic situation of numerically small indigenous peoples was affected by recent legislative amendments at the federal level, removing some positive measures as regards their access to land and other natural resources.
Alvaro Gil-Robles noted in 2004, that like many European countries, Russian Federation is also host to many foreigners, who when concentrated in a particular area make up so-called new minorities, who experience troubles e.g. with medical treatment due to absence of registration. Those who are registered encounter other integration problems because of language barriers.
Committee of Ministers has noted in 2007 that despite efforts to improve access to residency registration and citizenship for national minorities, still those measures haven't regularised the situation of all the persons concerned.
Foreigners and migrants
On October 2002 the Russian Federation has introduced new legislation on legal rights of foreigners, designed to control immigration and clarify foreigners' rights. Despite this legal achievement, as of 2004, numerous foreign communities in Russia faced difficulties in practice (according to Alvaro Gil-RoblesÁlvaro Gil-Robles
Álvaro Gil-Robles is a Spanish jurist and human rights activist.He was Commissioner for Human Rights of Council of Europe from 15 October 1999 to 31 March 2006...
).
As of 2007, almost 8 million migrants are officially registered in Russia, while some 5-7 million migrants do not have legal status.
Most of foreigners arriving in Russia are seeking jobs. In many cases they have no preliminary contracts or other agreements with a local employer. A typical problem is the illegal status of many foreigners (i.e., they are not registered and have no identity papers), what deprives them of any social assistance (as of 2004) and often leads to their exploitation by the employer. Despite that, foreigner workers still benefit, what with seeming reluctance of regional authorities to solve the problem forms a sort of modus vivendi. As Gil-Robles noted, it's easy to imagine that illegal status of many foreigners creates grounds for corruption. Illegal immigrants, even if they have spent several years in Russia may be arrested at any moment and placed in detention centres for illegal immigrants for further expulsion. As of 2004, living conditions in detention centers are very bad, and expulsion process lacks of funding, what may extend detention of immigrants for months or even years. Along with that, Gil-Robles detected a firm political commitment to find a satisfactory solution among authorities he spoke with.
There's a special case of former Soviet citizens. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1991 Nationality Law recognised all former Soviet citizens permanently resident in the Russian Federation as Russian citizens. However, people born in Russia who weren't on the Russian territory when the law came into force, as well as some people born in the Soviet Union who lived in Russia but weren't formally domiciled there weren't granted Russian citizenship. When at December 31, 2003 former Soviet passports became invalid, those people overnight become foreigners, although many of them considered Russia their home. The majority were even deprived of retirement benefits and medical assistance. Their morale has also been seriously affected since they feel rejected.
Another special case are Meskhetian Turks. Victims of both Stalin deportation from South Georgia and 1989 pogroms in the Fergana valley
Fergana Valley
The Fergana Valley or Farghana Valley is a region in Central Asia spreading across eastern Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Divided across three subdivisions of the former Soviet Union, the valley is ethnically diverse, and in the early 21st century was the scene of ethnic conflict...
in Uzbekistan, some of them were eventually dispersed in Russia. While in most regions of Russia Meskhetian Turks were automatically granted Russian citizenship, in Krasnodar Krai
Krasnodar Krai
-External links:* **...
some 15,000 Meskhetian Turks were deprived of any legal status since 1991. Unfortunately, even measures taken by Alvaro Gil-Robles in 2004 didn't make Krasnodar authorities to change their position; Vladimir Lukin in the 2005 report called it "campaign initiated by local authorities against certain ethnic groups". The way out for a significant number of Meskhetian Turks in the Krasnodar Krai became resettlement in the United States. As Vladimir Lukin noted in 2005, there was similar problem with 5.5 thousand Yazidi
Yazidi
The Yazidi are members of a Kurdish religion with ancient Indo-Iranian roots. They are primarily a Kurdish-speaking people living in the Mosul region of northern Iraq, with additional communities in Transcaucasia, Armenia, Turkey, and Syria in decline since the 1990s – their members emigrating to...
s who before the disintegration of the USSR moved to the Krasnodar Krai from Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
. Only one thousand of them were granted citizenship, the others could not be legalized.
In 2006 Russian Federation after initiative proposed by Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
adopted legislation which in order to "protect interests of native population of Russia" provided significant restrictions on presence of foreigners on Russian wholesale and retail markets.
There was a short campaign of frequently arbitrary and illegal detention and expulsion of ethnic Georgians
2006 deportation of Georgians from Russia
2006 deportation of Georgians from Russia refers to a controversial displacement of several hundreds of citizens of Georgia by the government of Russia during the 2006 Georgia-Russia crisis....
on charges of visa violations and a crackdown on Georgian-owned or Georgian-themed businesses and organizations in 2006, as a part of 2006 Georgian-Russian espionage controversy
2006 Georgian-Russian espionage controversy
The 2006 Georgian–Russian espionage controversy began when the Government of Georgia arrested four Russian officers on charges of espionage, on September 27, 2006...
.
Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
reported that "[In 2005] some 300,000 people were fined for immigration violations in Moscow alone. [In 2006], according to Civil Assistance
Civil Assistance
Civil Assistance was a British civil defence group in the 1970s.Formed as a breakaway of Unison by General Sir Walter Walker, Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Northern Europe from 1969 to 1972, it was a voluntary group that aimed to break any planned general strike.In August 1974 Walker...
, numbers are many times higher."
Racism and xenophobia
As Alvaro Gil-Robles noted in 2004, the main communities targeted by xenophobia are the Jewish community, groups originating from the Caucasus, migrants and foreigners.In his 2006 report, Vladimir Lukin has noted rise of nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments in Russia, as well as more frequent cases of violence and mass riots on the grounds of racial, nationalistic or religious intolerance.
Human rights activists point out that 44 people were murdered and close to 500 assaulted on racial grounds in 2006. According to official sources, there were 150 "extremist groups" with over 5000 members in Russia in 2006.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has noted in 2007, that high-level representatives of the federal administration have publicly endorsed the fight against racism and intolerance, and a number of programmes have been adopted to implement these objectives. This has been accompanied by an increase in the number of convictions aimed at inciting national, racial or religious hatred. However, there has been an alarming increase in the number of racially motivated violent assaults in the Russian Federation in four years, yet many law enforcement officials still often appear reluctant to acknowledge racial or nationalist motivation in these crimes. Hate speech has become more common in the media and in political discourse. The situation of persons originating in the Northern Caucasus is particularly disturbing.
Vladimir Lukin noted that inactivity of the law enforcement bodies may cause severe consequences, like September 2006 inter-ethnic riot in town Kondopoga
Kondopoga
Kondopoga is a town and the administrative center of Kondopozhsky District of the Republic of Karelia, Russia, situated on the coast of the Kondopozhskaya Gulf of Lake Onega, near the mouth of the Suna River and Kivach Nature Reserve, about from Petrozavodsk...
of the Republic of Karelia
Republic of Karelia
The Republic of Karelia is a federal subject of Russia .-Geography:The republic is located in the northwestern part of Russia, taking intervening position between the basins of White and Baltic seas...
. Lukin noted provocative role of the so-called Movement Against Illegal Immigration
Movement Against Illegal Immigration
The Movement Against Illegal Immigration is a Russian nationalist and anti-Illegal immigration organization. The organization is led by Aleksandr Belov a former member of ultra-nationalist Pamyat...
. As the result of the Kondopoga events, all heads of the "enforcement bloc" of the republic were fired from their positions, several criminal cases were opened.
According to nationwide opinion poll carried by VCIOM
VCIOM
All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, VTsIOM, [established in 1987; till 1992 – All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion] is the oldest polling institution in the post-Soviet space and is one of the leading sociological and market research companies in Russia.-General...
in 2006, 44% of respondents consider Russia "a common house of many nations" where all must have equal rights, 36% think that "Russians should have more rights since they constitute the majority of the population", 15% think "Russia must be the state of Russian people". However the question is also what exactly does the term "Russian" denote. For 39% of respondents Russians are all who grew and were brought up in Russia's traditions; for 23% Russians are those who works for the good of Russia; 15% respondents think that only Russians by blood may be called Russians; for 12% Russians are all for who Russian language is native, for 7% Russians are adepts of Russian Christian Orthodox
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
tradition.
According to statistics published by Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
The Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del is the interior ministry of Russia. Its predecessor was founded in 1802 by Alexander I in Imperial Russia...
, in 2007 in Russia foreign citizens and people without citizenship has committed 50,1 thousand crimes, while the number of crimes committed against this social group was 15985.
As reported by the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, in 2010 SOVA-Center noted a significant drop of racially motivated violence in Russia in 2009, related to 2008: "71 people were killed and 333 wounded in racist attacks last [2009] year, down from 110 killed and 487 wounded in 2008". According to a SOVA-Center report, the drop was mostly "due to police efforts to break up the largest and most aggressive extremist groups in Moscow and the surrounding region". Most of the victims were "dark-skinned, non-Slavic migrant laborers from former Soviet republics in Central Asia ... and the Caucasus". As Associated Press journalist Peter Leonard commended, "The findings appear to vindicate government claims it is trying to combat racist violence".
Psychiatric institutions
There are numerous cases in which people "inconvenient" for Russian authorities have been imprisoned in psychiatric institutions during the past several years.Little has changed in the Moscow Serbsky Institute
Moscow Serbsky Institute
The Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry is a psychiatric hospital and the main center for the forensic psychiatry of the Soviet Union and Russia. The institution was briefly called the Serbsky Institute in the past and is briefly called the Serbsky Center now...
where many prominent Soviet dissidents had been incarcerated after having been diagnosed with sluggishly progressing schizophrenia
Sluggishly progressing schizophrenia
Sluggishly progressing schizophrenia or sluggish schizophrenia was a category of schizophrenia diagnosed by psychiatrists in the Soviet Union...
. This Institute conducts more than 2,500 court-ordered evaluations per year. When war criminal Yuri Budanov
Yuri Budanov
Yuri Dmitrievich Budanov was the Russian military officer convicted by a Russian court of kidnapping and murder in Chechnya.Budanov was highly controversial in Russia: despite the conviction, Budanov enjoyed widespread support of Russian households, as polled by public opinion. At the same time,...
was tested there in 2002, the panel conducting the inquiry was led by Tamara Pechernikova, who had condemned the poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya
Natalya Gorbanevskaya
Natalya Yevgenyevna Gorbanevskaya is a Russian poet, translator of Polish literature and civil rights activist. She is also a citizen of Poland.- Life :Gorbanevskaya graduated from Leningrad University in 1964 and became a technical editor and translator...
in the past. Budanov was found not guilty by reason of "temporary insanity". After public outrage, he was found sane by another panel that included Georgi Morozov, the former Serbsky director who had declared many dissidents insane in the 1970s and 1980s. Serbsky Institute also made an expertise of mass poisoning of hundreds of Chechen school children by an unknown chemical substance of strong and prolonged action, which rendered them completely incapable for many months. The panel found that the disease was caused simply by "psycho-emotional tension".
Disabled and children's rights
Currently, an estimated 2 million children live in Russian orphanages, with another 4 million children on the streetsStreet children
A street child is a child who lives on the streets of a city, deprived of family care and protection. Most children on the streets are between the ages of about 5 and 17 years old.Street children live in junk boxes, parks or on the street itself...
. According to a 1998 Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
report, "Russian children are abandoned to the state at a rate of 113,000 a year for the past two years, up dramatically from 67,286 in 1992. Of a total of more than 600,000 children classified as being 'without parental care,' as many as one-third reside in institutions, while the rest are placed with a variety of guardians
Legal guardian
A legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called a ward. Usually, a person has the status of guardian because the ward is incapable of caring for his or her own interests due to infancy, incapacity, or disability...
. From the moment the state assumes their care, orphan
Orphan
An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...
s in Russia – of whom 95 percent still have a living parent – are exposed to shocking levels of cruelty
Cruelty
Cruelty can be described as indifference to suffering, and even positive pleasure in inflicting it. If this is supported by a legal or social framework, then receives the name of perversion. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept....
and neglect
Neglect
Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care....
." Once officially labelled as retarded
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
, Russian orphans are "warehoused for life in psychoneurological institutions. In addition to receiving little to no education in such institutions, these orphans may be restrained in cloth sacks, tethered by a limb to furniture, denied stimulation, and sometimes left to lie half-naked in their own filth. Bedridden children aged five to seventeen are confined to understaffed lying-down rooms as in the baby houses, and in some cases are neglected to the point of death." Life and death of disabled children in the state institutions was described by writer Ruben Gallego
Ruben Gallego
Rubén David González Gallego was born in Moscow, Russia, with severe cerebral palsy.Gallego was separated from his family at the age of one; he was sent to a state orphanage, because his grandfather, Ignacio Gallego, who was Secretary-General of the Spanish Communist Party, was ashamed of him and...
.
Despite these high numbers and poor quality of care, recent laws have made adoption of Russian children by foreigners considerably more difficult.
Human trafficking
The end of communism and collapse of the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
has contributed to an increase in human trafficking, with the majority of victims being women forced into prostitution. Russia is a country of origin for persons, primarily women and children, trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Russia is also a destination and transit country for persons trafficked for sexual and labour exploitation from regional and neighbouring countries into Russia and beyond. Russia accounted for one-quarter of the 1,235 identified victims reported in 2003 trafficked to Germany. The Russian government has shown some commitment to combat trafficking but has been criticised for failing to develop effective measures in law enforcement and victim protection.
See also
- Human rights in the Soviet UnionHuman rights in the Soviet UnionHuman rights in the Soviet Union have been viewed differently, one view by the communist ideology adopted by the Soviet Union and another by its critics. The Soviet Union was established after a revolution that ended centuries of Tsarist monarchy...
- Freedom of assembly in RussiaFreedom of assembly in RussiaFreedom of assembly in the Russian Federation is granted by Art. 31 of the Constitution adopted in 1993: Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets....
- Freedom of the press in RussiaFreedom of the press in RussiaThe issue of freedom of the press in Russia involves both the ability of directors of mass media outlets to carry out independent policies and the ability of journalists to access sources of information and to work without outside pressure...
- Politics of RussiaPolitics of RussiaThe politics of Russia take place in a framework of a federal semi-presidential republic. According to the Constitution of Russia, the President of Russia is head of state, and of a multi-party system with executive power exercised by the government, headed by the Prime Minister, who is appointed...
- Moscow Helsinki GroupMoscow Helsinki GroupThe Moscow Helsinki Group is an influential human rights monitoring non-governmental organization, originally established in what was then the Soviet Union; it still operates in Russia....
- International human rights instrumentsInternational human rights instrumentsInternational human rights instruments are treaties and other international documents relevant to international human rights law and the protection of human rights in general...
- LGBT Human Rights Project Gayrussia.ru
Further reading
- Emma Gilligan. Defending human rights in Russia: Sergei Kovalyov, dissident and human rights commissioner, 1969-2003. RoutledgeCurzon. 2004. ISBN 0-415-32369-X.
- Pamela A. Jordan. Defending Rights in Russia: Lawyers, the State, And Legal Reform in the Post-Soviet Era. University of British Columbia Press. 2006. ISBN 0-7748-1163-3.
- Andrew Meier. Black Earth: A Journey through Russia After the Fall. Norton. 2005. ISBN 0-393-32641-1.
- Anna PolitkovskayaAnna PolitkovskayaAnna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
. Putin's RussiaPutin's RussiaPutin's Russia is a non-fiction book by the late Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya about life in modern Russia.Politkovskaya argues that Russia still has aspects of a police state or mafia state, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. In a review, Angus Macqueen wrote: Politkovskaya describes...
. Harvill. 2004. ISBN 0-805-07930-0. - Archana Pyati. The New Dissidents: Human Rights Defenders and Counterterrorism in Russia. Human Rights First. 2005. ISBN 0-9753150-0-5.
- David SatterDavid SatterDavid Satter is a former Moscow correspondent and expert on Russia and the Soviet Union who wrote books about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet Russia.-Life and career:...
. Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. Yale University Press. 2003. ISBN 0-300-09892-8. - Jonathan Weiler. Human Rights in Russia: A Darker Side of Reform. Lynne Rienner Publishers 2004. ISBN 1-58826-279-0.
FSB, terror
- Yevgenia AlbatsYevgenia AlbatsDr. Yevgenia Markovna Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, writer and radio host. As of year 2011, she workes as a chief editor of The New Times magazine.-Early life and education:...
. The State Within a State: The KGB and its Hold on Russia - Past, Present, and Future. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1994. ISBN 0-374-18104-7. - Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander LitvinenkoAlexander LitvinenkoAlexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
. Blowing up Russia: Terror from within. S.P.I. Books. 2002. ISBN 1-56171-938-2.
Chechnya
- Khassan BaievKhassan BaievDr. Khassan Baiev is a Chechen-American trauma surgeon who upheld the Hippocratic oath to treat thousands of civilians and combatants on both sides of the First and Second Chechen Wars, including Russian soldiers and Chechen fighters....
and Ruth Daniloff. The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire. Walker. 2004. ISBN 0-8027-1404-8. - Anna Politkovskaya. A Dirty War: A Russian reporter in Chechnya. Harvill. 2001. ISBN 1-860-46897-7.
- Anna Politkovskaya. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. University of Chicago Press. 2003. ISBN 0-226-67432-0.
External links
- Harassment chronicles
- Prisoners Union - organization of political prisoners in Russia
- Report 2007: Russian Federation - report by Amnesty InternationalAmnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
. - Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation - Office of Ombudsman Vladimir LukinVladimir LukinVladimir Petrovich Lukin is Russian liberal political activist currently serving as the Human Rights Commissioner of Russia...
. English translations of some reports are in the index. - Chronicle of persecutions in Russia
- Report by Mr. Alvaro Gil-Robles on his Visits to the Russian Federation - Published by the Council of EuropeCouncil of EuropeThe Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...
, Commissioner for Human RightsCommissioner for Human RightsThe Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent institution within the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, mandated to promote the awareness of and respect for human rights in member states...
, 2005-04-20. - OHCHR: Russian Federation - from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human RightsOffice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human RightsThe Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is a United Nations agency that works to promote and protect the human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948...
- Review of the Russian Federation by the United Nations Human Rights CouncilUnited Nations Human Rights CouncilThe United Nations Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations System. The UNHRC is the successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights , and is a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly...
's Universal Periodic Review, February 4, 2009 - U.N. Team in the Russian Federation
- Statement by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights - the statement of Louise ArbourLouise ArbourLouise Arbour, is the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Court of Appeal for Ontario and a former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda...
after her visit to Russia, including Chechnya, 2006-02-24. - Committee Against Torture - in Nizhny Novgorod.
- Human Rights Watch: Russia
- Human Rights Watch: Positively Abandoned - Discrimination against HIV-Positive Mothers and their Children, June 2005.
- HIV/AIDS and Human Rights in Russia - U.N. Chronicle, 2006.
- IFEX: Russia - from the International Freedom of Expression ExchangeInternational Freedom of Expression ExchangeThe International Freedom of Expression eXchange , founded in 1992, is a global network of around 90 non-governmental organisations that promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression....
. - IPI Watch List: Russia - from the International Press InstituteInternational Press InstituteInternational Press Institute is a global organisation dedicated to the promotion and protection of press freedom and the improvement of journalism practices. Founded in October 1950, the IPI has members in over 120 countries....
. - FSUMonitor.com - published by the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union.
- RFE/RL: Russia Report - published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
- Human Rights Country Reports - published by the U.S. Department of State
- International Religious Freedom Reports - published by the U.S. Department of State
- Human Rights Violations in Chechnya - last updated in 2006.
- Human Rights in Russia - links.