The Council of Europe, the continent’s oldest human rights organization, has announced an agreement to upgrade its Russian office, a sign that Russia takes the 47-member group seriously, a spokesman said, at a time when the Kremlin routinely rejects outside criticism of its rights record.

Turning its information office into a program office with diplomatic immunity will allow the council to assist the Russian government in implementing a list of 27 proposed projects, including an existing plan to create a court of appeals system in Russia.

“This cannot be carried out from [council headquarters in] Strasbourg. We have to have people on the ground, and we have to have people here that can organize all this work,” Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland told journalists at a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday.

The agreement shows that Russia is serious about the Council of Europe — the only major European-wide organization in which Russia is a significant member — and plays an important role in it, Jagland’s spokesman, Daniel Holtgen, later said by telephone.

During a two-day visit that saw meetings with senior officials, including President Vladimir Putin, and officially ended on Tuesday, Jagland also criticized the so-called “foreign agents” law and called on Russia to respect the right of the LGBT community to hold public demonstrations.

“It goes without saying that authorities have an obligation to protect LGBT people who express their views and demonstrate. This is a fundamental principle in the European Convention on Human Rights,” Jagland said. He urged the State Duma not to pass a bill banning “homosexual propaganda.”

But rather than condemn a controversial July law that forces non-governmental groups that receive foreign funding and engage in vaguely defined “political activities” to register as “foreign agents,” Jagland called on the government not to allow its implementation to harm civil society.

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April 15, 2013

U R G E N T

Honorable Senator Benjamin Cardin
Honorable Congressman Christopher Smith
Co-chairs of the Helsinki Commission of the American Congress (Committee on Foreign Affairs)

Dear co-chairs of the Helsinki Commission:

Alarming information about the escalation of wide attacks on the Russian NGOs comes every day from Moscow. Almost all powerful inspection departments on the federal and local levels (like Security Service, Prosecutors’ offices, divisions of the Interior Ministry, even Fire Departments, Taxes, Customs, Border Troops, etc.) have been thrown on central Russian and International NGOs (like “Memorial,” Moscow Helsinki Group, Human Rights Movement, “Golos,” Committee Against Tortures, – about 700 according to President Putin) in spite of recent planned examinations. We know of 222 groups across Russia that have been raided. They include religious organizations as well as pro-democracy and human right groups. The religious groups include Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Jews and Muslims. It is a concerted effort by the Putin government to destroy all such groups by applying the iron hand of the state. Raiders even came to the private apartments of the chairs of important NGOs, like Committee Against Tortures. The explanation was delivered by President Putin, – how the new law about “foreign agents” was to be implemented. In an interview to the German mass-media on April 4, 2013, he said that Russian NGOs received about 1 billion dollars during the last 4 months for “their political activity inside the country.” At the same time these NGOs “violated” the new law – they did not recognize themselves as “foreign agents.”

Everybody knows this government is deathly afraid of free expression and the possibility of true democracy and accountability for violations of human rights. Anti-American rhetoric has become part of the official foreign policy. The economic situation is very poor in Russia but its finances are investing in military equipment. Russian diplomats reject almost all Western initiatives for settling peace and stability. Persecution of the honest NGOs will inhibit the development of public society in Russia and deprive the world of truthful information. The purpose of the raids is to spread fear again all over the society. We are witnesses to the micro-Stalinization of all spheres of freedom, culture, and science. We also see the first attempts to undermine the Helsinki Final Act. The key is to help Russian NGOs to survive and to continue to operate. We need to stop their suffocation by the Putin regime.

The UCSJ has been working in the former Soviet Union since 1970 and up until 1991 was the voice of the Refuseniks. UCSJ consistently advocated for freedom of emigration throughout this time. For the last 20 years, we have been the voice of democratic forces and have fought against anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia, working as the bridge between Russian and Western public societies.

We hope that your distinguished Commission can inspire the American public and authorities to help Russian (as well as other parts of the FSU) NGOs to continue their important work. In addition, we hope you will influence the American administration to support NGO protection. As the first organizational measures we propose:

• to establish a Crisis Support Group (CSG) in Washington D.C. to coordinate efforts to support the integrity of Russian NGOs and their leadership. We are ready to open our offices in Washington DC to aid in this effort;
• to run special hearings about the Russian fulfillment of the Helsinki Human Rights Documents
• (American Congress, autumn, 2013) with the participation of several Russian NGOs leaders;
• to ask the State Department to include in the Magnitsky List the names of officials who persecute
• NGOs in the present crisis;
• to inform the European Union members about American measures and invite them to join it.

Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,

Larry Lerner

President

WASHINGTON D.C. – Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), today testified before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations on “Anti-Semitism: A Growing Threat to all Faiths.”

In her testimony, Dr. Lantos Swett notes that:

Clearly, anti-Semitism in contemporary Europe, while not nearly as virulent as in the past, has persisted, even in well-established democracies. It has led to religious freedom violations, ranging from governmental actions limiting religious practices to private actors perpetrating violent acts in Europe’s cities against Jewish individuals and property.

Denouncing such hate is crucially important to show that “never again” will the forces of democracy and freedom turn their back on Jewish communities when they face the scourge of anti-Semitism. The Executive and Legislative branches of our government, along with USCIRF, can play an important role pressing other countries to condemn hatred of the Jewish people.

Click here to view the full testimony.

This is another result of the case against prisoner of conscience Ales Bialiatski, whose trial was universally declared as unfair. He is the chair of Viasna and Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights. Part of his punishment, in addition to a four and a half year prison sentence, is a fine and the confiscation of Viasna’s office.

“This is yet another blatant disregard of the Parliamentary Assembly’s calls to the authorities of Belarus to stop harassing civil society and human rights defenders,” said Andres Herkel, Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe (PACE) rapporteur on Belaru. “Meanwhile, Ales Bialiatski, Viasna’s Chairman and a human rights defender, is still in jail, where he is subject to ill-treatment, despite repeated calls to the authorities to free and rehabilitate all political prisoners in Belarus.”

The staff at Viasna remain steadfast in their mission, however.

As a result of Svoboda’s gains in Ukrainian parliament, the European Jewish Association now is calling for protection of Ukrainian Jews.  In a statement, Rabbi Menachem Margolin said, ”We are not presuming of course, to interfere in internal Ukraine affairs and its voters’ decisions, however we are very concerned about the safety of Ukrainian Jews and are seeking to prevent expansion of anti-Semitism in Europe.”

Corneliu Vadim Tudor stated, while appearing on the Romanian Realitatea TV show last Thursday,  “In Romania there was never a Holocaust,” adding, “I will deny it ’til I die because I love my people.”

In a statement issued Monday, the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania expressed “outrage,” adding that  “Vadim Tudor’s words desecrated the memory of more than 280,000 Romanian Jews who perished in the Holocaust.” 

The Institute now wants an investigation launched to determine whether Tudor has violated the law on hate speech, as well as a formal probe into why Realitatea TV gave Tudor a platform for expressing Holocaust denial.

Some members of the European Parliament are now calling for his resignation.

A similar incident with Romanian politician Dan Sova occurred in March, when he stated  that during the Holocaust, “no Jew suffered on Romanian territory,” adding, “only 24 Romanian citizens of Jewish descent were killed” and this act was “carried out by German soldiers. Romanian soldiers were not involved in the action. This is a historical fact.” He later retracted his statements and is now the Romanian Minister for Parliamentary Affairs.

EU ministers are meeting today in Brussels to determine whether sanctions against Belarus should be expanded. Latvia is an important part of this, as they import a great deal of Belarusian oil products and have a history of blocking the adoption of EU sanctions against Belarus.

The Netherlands is also a key player. According to Belarus, last year the Netherlands imported 20.3% of Belarusian exports, or $6 billion worth of goods, mainly oil products. Nevertheless, the Dutch do not consider themselves to be a major Belarus importer. They view the Netherlands as simply a “transit country” when it comes to Belarusian oil.

Zakharova explains in this EU Observer Article, “After trans-shipment in Dutch ports, the [Belarusian] dictator’s crude becomes clean enough to be sold to the US, which has imposed sanctions on direct oil trade with Lukashenko’s henchmen.”

Ultimately, the US ends up buying the same Belarusian oil that it has imposed sanctions against.

Now, Lukashenko is concerned with ensuring that any new EU sanctions will not disturb this current set-up. He’s conveniently freed two political prisoners and relaxed his anti-West rhetoric in time for today’s meeting. The question, as Zakharova puts it, remains “are [the EU diplomats] happy to keep playing dumb, just like the Dutch MPs who say oil transit is not the same as oil imports?”

Source: EU Observer

To obtain this new European legal status, it is required to fulfill certain criteria and respect the values on which the EU is founded, namely ‘respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.’ The part regarding minorities is a new addition that will leave far right parties struggling to receive this status.”

Source: United E-News

European Jewish Union (EJU) held a conference in Brussels on ‘European Integration and its impact on anti-Semitism’, on September 4, 2012
European Jewish Union CEO Tomer Orni, the organizer of the conference together with the European Jewish Parliament and Tzedek, the Association of European Jewish Lawyers, opened the discussion on Tuesday by insisting “anti-Semitism is part of Europe’s DNA”. “It is rooted in Europe and there were always different sources of motivations for anti-Semitism.”

For further information please email info@eju.org