Russia
Despite some
minor reforms and encouraging public statements about human rights in 2010,
there was no evidence of systemic, far-reaching change. Continuing negative trends included
restrictions on freedom of assembly, harassment and obstruction of NGOs and
journalists, and racial discrimination and racist violence. The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon
Lebedev was widely condemned for failing to adhere to basic standards of
justice. No new information emerged in
the investigations into the murders of the human rights defenders Anna
Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, or the death in custody of Sergei
Magnitsky. Frequent reports of grave
human rights abuses in the North Caucasus continued. The government also failed to provide full
redress to victims of past abuses in Chechnya and elsewhere in the region.
The UK is the
only EU member state that has an ongoing formalised process of government to
government bilateral consultations on human rights with Russia. This dialogue took place in January and we
used this, the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Moscow in October and other
opportunities to lobby Russia on human rights issues and to identify areas for
cooperation. UK funding helped to
support conflict prevention and resolution efforts in the North Caucasus,
encourage free and fair elections, and support independent media.
Human rights
will remain central to the UK’s bilateral relations with Russia in 2011. We will continue to press the Russian
government to systematically address the human rights situation in the country
– including at the 2011 UK–Russia Human Rights Dialogue. Several key areas of past concern are likely
to remain in the forefront of public interest.
Parliamentary elections will take place at the end of 2011. Freedom of assembly, in particular, is at
risk of further restrictions. Justice
will continue to be an issue – including appeals by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and
Platon Lebedev. Activists for LGBT
rights are likely to seek to exercise their right to demonstrate following the
European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2010.
The outlook for the North Caucasus also remains bleak, particularly in
Dagestan. We believe that achieving a
sustainable long-term solution to the problems in the North Caucasus depends on
human rights being central to the security strategy for the region.
In 2011 the
Russian government will proceed with a number of reforms initiated in
2010. These include the draft law “On
Police”, which is set for passage through parliament in February, and the
establishment of an independent Investigative Committee. These changes could deliver a measure of much
needed reform to the country’s law enforcement institutions, especially if the
concerns of human rights activists are addressed before implementation. We will continue to work with the Russian
Federation on human rights in international institutions, including in the
Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE), and the UN.
Elections
Local
elections took place in Russia on 14 March and 10 October. Independent electoral observers reported
widespread irregularities and evidence of electoral malpractice, both during
the electoral campaigns and on election days.
These included vote-counting violations, the fraudulent use of absentee
ballots, employers pressurising staff to vote, and voters receiving gifts. Monitoring organised by Russian NGO Golos
also noted that some opposition figures were prevented from registering as
candidates due to alleged administrative errors, and that United Russia
incumbents had been using state resources to support their campaigns.
We supported
Golos’s efforts to raise awareness of legal regulations and voting procedures,
and to counteract electoral malpractice.
This included online information and analysis, as well as a number of
practical tools for voters and Russian rights activists, such as the Golos
Short-term Election Observer's Manual.
Access to justice
Access to
justice remained inconsistent in Russia, and the incomplete implementation of
European Court of Human Rights judgments continued. The UK All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights
Group emphasised this issue following their fact-finding mission to Chechnya in
February. Their report of the visit noted
that although Russia routinely paid compensation to the victims of human rights
violations, it frequently failed to follow this with meaningful investigations
into the violations themselves – fuelling a climate of impunity and increasing
the chances that similar cases would occur in future.
We provided financial support to a
number of Russian and international NGOs involved in litigating cases of human
rights abuses domestically and through the European Court of Human Rights. In 2010 the Court handed down judgments in
favour of 17 applicants supported by one of these organisations – the Russia
Justice Initiative – and awarded more than €1,720,000 in damages.
On 15
January, Russia became the last Council of Europe member to ratify Protocol 14
to the European Convention on Human Rights, designed
to streamline the way certain cases are dealt with
in the European Court of Human Rights.
This
welcome move enabled the protocol to enter into force on 1 June.
In February,
President Medvedev announced plans for a major reform of the Ministry of
Interior and the police force, with the aim of reducing corruption and
increasing public accountability. The
draft law “On Police” was opened to public consultation over the summer. Some of the concerns of human rights
activists had been addressed when the bill was submitted to parliament on 27
October, but reservations remained that the law might increase the powers of
the police in ways that could be unduly invasive.
We continued
to fund projects aimed at improving access to justice in Russia. One of these, run by the Independent Council
for Legal Expertise, developed a new system for assessing police performance,
establishing conciliation services across Russia to reduce police abuse of
juvenile offenders, and creating arbitration tribunals allowing public
participation in administering justice.
Rule of law
We continued
to support President Medvedev’s modernisation agenda, particularly the focus on
strengthening the rule of law. This
included the development of a UK–Russia memorandum of understanding on justice
cooperation, signed in November.
However,
events in 2010 demonstrated the scale of reform necessary. The conduct of the second trial of Mikhail
Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, which concluded on 30 December, raised serious
questions about the application of justice in Russia. In his statement on the verdict, William
Hague called on Russia “to respect the principles of justice and apply the rule
of law in a non-discriminatory and proportional way.” The EU High Representative for Foreign
Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission,
Catherine Ashton, described the conduct of the trial as “a matter of serious
concern and disappointment”.
The
investigation into the death in pre-trial detention of Sergei Magnitsky due to
inadequate medical treatment had not concluded by the end of 2010. On the anniversary of his death on 16
November, the Prosecutor-General’s Office announced that it was extending the
“preliminary” investigation until 24 February 2011. On the same day, the European Parliament
passed a resolution calling for sanctions against officials involved in
Magnitsky’s death to prevent them from entering the EU, and to freeze their
assets.
During 2010
we supported the Social Partnership Foundation’s work to establish a network of
independent prison monitoring boards and conduct an independent investigation
into the Magnitsky case.
In October,
the Russian government introduced penal system reforms to provide healthcare
for detainees and eliminate inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners. It also began a process to amend the criminal
procedure code in order to abolish the pre-trial detention of individuals with
ill health.
Human rights
activists expressed concern at controversial new legislation expanding the
competence of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and allowing them to issue
official warnings to those suspected of planning or “creating the conditions
for” criminal activities. The law also
introduced a new penalty of up to 15 days’ detention for obstructing or
refusing to obey the request of an FSB officer.
Corruption
remains a widespread feature of Russian society. Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption
Perceptions Index ranked Russia 154 out of 178 countries. They also reported that 53% of Russians believe
that corruption had increased in the country over the past three years. Russia’s Presidential Anti-Corruption Council
made little impact in 2010. Russia
failed to meet its obligations to the Council of Europe’s Group of States against
Corruption, fulfilling just nine out of the Group’s 26 recommendations. The Group assessed that Russia had failed
comprehensively to criminalise corruption or create effective punishments for
offenders.
Death penalty
Since 1996
Russia has had a de facto moratorium
on the use of the death penalty. This
was extended indefinitely by the Russian Constitutional Court in November
2009. However, Russia remained the only
Council of Europe member state not to have ratified Protocol 6 to the European
Convention on Human Rights, requiring the abolition of the death penalty,
despite undertaking to do so when it became a member. At the UK– Russia Bilateral Human Rights Consultations,
we urged Russia to abolish the death penalty.
Human rights defenders
Human rights
defenders in Russia remained at high risk in 2010. A widespread climate of impunity continued,
resulting from a long-standing series of unsolved attacks on human rights
defenders. Human rights defenders,
particularly those working on issues related to the North Caucasus, were
subjected to frequent intimidation, threats of violence and physical attacks.
The Mothers
of Dagestan for Human Rights received persistent threats. In June, human rights lawyer Sapiyat
Magomedova was beaten by police officers in Khasavyurt, Dagestan while
attempting to gain access to one of her clients in the police station. By the end of the year no prosecutions had
been made. In July, Oleg Orlov, head of
the human rights organisation Memorial, was charged with slandering Chechen
President Ramzan Kadyrov. He faced up to
three years’ imprisonment as a result.
Several international human rights organisations believed that the
charges against him were politically motivated and expressed concern over the
conduct of the trial, set to continue in 2011.
Other human rights defenders in the North Caucasus region, particularly
in Chechnya, reported receiving threats during 2010. They feared for their safety and did not wish
to be named.
Such threats
were not confined to the North Caucasus.
In May, a court in the Sverdlovsk region sentenced the human rights
activist Alexei Sokolov to five years’ imprisonment. Human Rights Watch believed that the charges
were false and likely to have been a retaliatory punishment for his work as a
human rights defender. On 4 November,
Konstantin Fetisov, an environmental activist who had campaigned against the
construction of a new motorway through the Khimki forest north of Moscow, was
hospitalised following a vicious attack.
NGOs
continued to face general intimidation.
In September, Russian authorities carried out snap inspections on 38 Russian
and international NGOs. Officials
demanded financial and organisational information at short notice and
threatened to prosecute NGOs for administrative offences if this information
was not supplied in time.
There was
little progress in 2010 in the investigations into the high-profile murders of
Russian human rights defenders in previous years. The investigations into the murders of Anna
Politkovskaya in 2006, and Natalya Estemirova in 2009, had produced no results
by the end of the year. The trial of
those accused of the 2009 murder of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov was
set to open in early 2011.
We maintained
close contact with many Russian human rights defenders and organisations working
to protect their interests. We supported
Russian NGOs such as Agora, which provides legal protection for human rights
defenders across Russia, and the Nizhny Novgorod
Committee
Against Torture, which runs an innovative network of investigation teams in
Chechnya. We also contributed to the
implementation of a new EU strategy to protect human rights defenders in
Russia, participated in the trial monitoring of cases against human rights
defenders, and raised individual cases with the Russian authorities in our
bilateral contacts and together with EU partners.
Freedom of expression
Media freedom
in Russia remained limited in 2010. The
NGO Reporters Without Borders ranked Russia 140 out of 178 countries in their
2010 Annual Press Freedom Index.
According to the Glasnost Defence Foundation, 12 journalists were killed
and a further 58 attacked in Russia during the year. Ninety journalists were detained by the FSB
and 45 criminal prosecutions were brought.
In November, the Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin was brutally beaten
outside his home in central Moscow.
President Medvedev was swift to condemn the attack and order an
investigation, but no suspects had been apprehended by the end of the
year. The chair of the Presidential Council
on Human Rights said that the attack was undoubtedly linked to Kashin’s reporting
of sensitive topics and proposed stricter penalties for those convicted of
threatening or attacking journalists.
Television
news remained dominated by state-owned news channels, which very rarely
provided coverage of opposition politicians or viewpoints critical of the
government. Some newspapers and radio
stations were able to take a more independent line, but self-censorship was
widely practised and editors avoided highly sensitive topics such as criticism
of the government’s policies on human rights and the North Caucasus or
allegations of official corruption. The
internet, however, continued to be predominantly free, although it is not used
as a source of news by the majority of people in Russia.
Broadcast and
print media freedom in the North Caucasus were particularly restricted. Online news is therefore often the only
source of impartial reporting. We
continued to support the work of the independent media agency Caucasian Knot
which provides balanced and objective online media reporting of news from
across the Caucasus region. More than 3
million people accessed the site in each quarter of 2010.
Freedom of religion and belief
In general,
the government continued to respect the constitutional provision for religious
freedom, although some minority religious groups were subjected to
restrictions. Believers of those
religions considered to be traditional – Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, and
Buddhism – were able to operate and worship freely. But the vagueness of the law “On Freedom of Conscience
and Associations” continued to leave potential for abuse, with minority
religious groups more likely to be targeted.
For example, Russian authorities in several regions prevented Jehovah’s
Witnesses from opening places of worship, citing alleged administrative
offences such as the contravention of fire regulations.
We made our
concerns in this area clear to the Russian government, including at our
bilateral Human Rights Consultations in January.
Women’s rights
Domestic
violence remains a major problem in Russia.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs estimates that 80% of women have
experienced domestic violence at least once in their lives. According to the women’s rights NGO ANNA,
many women are reluctant to report violence, and law enforcement agencies
frequently failed to respond to reports when they were made. Gender discrimination in employment remains
commonplace, with many job descriptions specifying gender and age requirements. In some parts of the North Caucasus, women
continue to face honour killings, bride kidnapping, polygamy, and enforced
adherence to Islamic dress codes.
On 18 June,
uniformed men drove around the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny firing
paintball guns at women who were not wearing headscarves. Human rights activists, including the head of
the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, believed that these attacks were
carried out by police. Chechen President
Ramzan Kadyrov welcomed the incidents, calling the victims “naked women” and
announcing his “gratitude” to the assailants.
Minorities and other discriminated
groups
In 2010 the
Moscow city authorities again refused to permit a Gay Pride march to take place
in the city. In October, the European
Court of Human Rights ruled that the persistent banning of gay rights
demonstrations violated the right to freedom of assembly. It also underlined that preventing such
rallies was illegal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
We
raised the issue of non-discrimination with Russia bilaterally, and also championed
the cause within the Council of Europe, which resulted in the adoption of the
Committee of Ministers’ recommendation against discrimination on grounds of
sexual orientation and gender identity in March.
According to the Russian disability rights NGO Perspektiva,
there are more than 12 million disabled people in Russia. People with disabilities continue to face
barriers to employment and education, and widespread discrimination. Russian laws on accessibility for disabled
people exist, but are frequently unenforced.
Although Russia signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities in September 2008, ratification had not taken place by the end of
2010. We supported work by Perspektiva
and the Mental Disability Advocacy Centre to bring Russian legislation into
line with the standards required by the convention.
Racism
Human rights
organisations continued to express concern over ongoing incidents of racial
discrimination and racist violence in Russia.
According to the Russian NGO Sova, grassroots xenophobic violence
increased in 2010, with 37 people killed and 368 injured in racially motivated
attacks. In December, a series of
demonstrations by nationalist groups culminated in a serious outbreak of
violence in Moscow’s Manezh Square.
Demonstrators clashed with riot police, before carrying out attacks on
people of non-Slavic appearance. The UK welcomed steps taken by President Medvedev to condemn
the violence.
Conflict
The situation
in the North Caucasus remains of deep concern, with human rights violations
continuing in a context of resurgent terrorist violence and ongoing conflict
between state security forces and militant groups. Russian official figures stated that more
than 300 militants were killed in the region in 2010. The North Caucasus Federal Government
reported that murders across the region increased by 5% during the year.
Violence in
Dagestan continued unabated. Incidents
of violence increased in Kabardino-Balkaria, and a number of terrorist attacks
took place in Chechnya. The security
situation in Ingushetia remained serious, but with overall levels of violence
decreasing. The Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe’s report in June on human rights in the North Caucasus
called the situation “the most serious… in the entire geographical area
encompassed by the Council of Europe in terms of human rights protection and
the affirmation of the rule of law”.
We supported
a number of Russian and international NGOs seeking to mitigate and resolve
conflict in the North Caucasus region.
This included funding for Nonviolence International to build
understanding and trust between youth and law enforcement officers, and the NGO
Memorial to monitor the human rights situation in the region and collect
first-hand evidence of human rights violations for use in trials.
Reports of
torture, abductions and extra-judicial killings by federal security personnel
in the North Caucasus continued in 2010.
We worked with the Russian NGO Committee Against Torture to facilitate
independent investigations into allegations of torture. Evidence from these enabled the prosecution
of cases in Chechnya, as well as entrenching local courts’ knowledge and use of
human rights law.
Other issues: Freedom of assembly
The year 2010
began with the detention of a veteran human rights defender, 82-year-old
Lyudmila Alexeyeva during a New Year’s Eve demonstration at Triumfalnaya Square
in central Moscow. The demonstration was
part of the Strategy 31 campaign, named after the
article of the Russian constitution which guarantees freedom of assembly. The campaign holds demonstrations in cities
across Russia on the 31st day of every month with 31 days. Over the course of the year Moscow authorities continued
to ban Strategy 31 demonstrations from taking place in the square, despite
authorising other protests in the same location, such as those by pro-Kremlin
youth groups. When the demonstrators
sought to assert their right to assemble, police carried out mass arrests,
often using violence in order to do so.
The Moscow authorities did grant permission for the 31 October rally and
again for a rally on 31 December.
Although the October rally passed off peacefully, mass arrests of
protesters and opposition politicians in December reversed this positive trend.
We continued
to address the issue of freedom of assembly with the Russian government,
including at the UK–Russia Human Rights Dialogue in January. We urged Russia to adhere to its UN and
Council of Europe commitments and underlined the importance of peaceful protest
and democratic dialogue.
