For Immediate Release
July 2, 2009
Contact: Nickolai Butkevich, (202) 641-7420
nbutkevich@ucsj.com
UCSJ ISSUES RECOMMENDATIONS ON EVE OF MOSCOW SUMMIT
US Must Protect Besieged NGOs, Push for Rule of Law
Washington, DC--With less than a week to go before President Obama's first trip to Russia, UCSJ issued a series of recommendations asking for a renewed US government commitment to protect Russia's besieged human rights activists and other NGOs. UCSJ's recommendations were included in a letter from its national director, Micah H. Naftalin, to top State Department and National Security Council officials in charge of the administration's Russia policy. They include:
- A meeting between President Obama and Russia's leading human rights activists, which would serve both as a public gesture of support and a way to enhance cooperation between the US government and Russia's genuine civil society organizations. "The meeting should be substantive but it has the further value of signaling that America has respect and serious concern for the safety of these courageous, embattled defenders of democracy," the memorandum emphasized.
- "Enhanced financial support" for human rights NGOs, especially member organizations of the Coalition Against Hate, an alliance of 52 national and regional NGOs put together by the Moscow Helsinki Group, UCSJ, and the International Youth Human Rights Movement. Unfortunately, the US government has over the years dramatically lowered its levels of assistance to Russian human rights groups, while at the same time, the Russian government has become ever more repressive.
- "The U.S. Government should coordinate cooperative efforts with the NGO community to strengthen efforts through the Helsinki Process," Mr. Naftalin wrote, especially at a time that Russia is seeking to undermine the human rights agenda of the OSCE.
- To raise the issue of the Middle East peace process with the Russian leadership, given that country's historical ties to both the Arab states and the Russian Jewish community in Israel. Mr. Naftalin noted that Middle Eastern governments that spread antisemitic propaganda "cannot be seen as seriously contemplating peace" and asked that President Obama propose that Russia join the US in a "united front" pressing regional governments and movements to end the dangerous and counterproductive practice of negotiating with Israel in the international arena on the one hand, while at the same time stoking antisemitic hatred domestically.
At the heart of UCSJ's memorandum is the following recommendation: "We urge the President to make it clear to President Medvedev the importance the United States places on human rights reform as one predicate for a successful, future bilateral relationship... The dramatic rise in violent antisemitic and xenophobic hate crimes, discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities, and physical beatings, assassinations and general intimidation of human rights defenders and independent journalists are unmistakable measures of Russia’s corrupt and dysfunctional justice system" and increasing government repression. The US government should not see these issues as peripheral to its foreign policy concerns vis a vis Russia, but instead as "a sound measure of its reliability as a partner in foreign affairs, national security, and economic trade and investment."
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