Homes Of Alleged Militants' Families Torched In Chechnya

Residents of Russia's Chechnya region say the authorities are carrying out Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov's orders to destroy the homes of relatives of alleged militants held responsible for attacks. Residents of the village of Yandi said that masked men arrived in more than a dozen vehicles late on December 8 and set several homes on fire. On December 6, after 14 policemen were killed in some of the deadliest fighting in the Chechen capital in years, Kadyrov announced that relatives of militants involved in killings would be evicted from Chechnya and their homes "razed down to the basement." Residents said not all the homes torched in Yandi belonged to families of militants believed to have been involved in the Grozny attack. Amnesty International said that punishing suspects' relatives is a "flagrant violation of international law" and that Russia must hold an impartial investigation.

http://www.rferl.org/content/article/26734918.html

Magnitsky relatives appeal against his posthumous prosecution in Supreme Court

The mother of Hermitage Capital auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a detention facility, appealed to the Russian Supreme Court to block the posthumous prosecution of her son, Hermitage Capital informed RAPSI on Thursday. Hermitage Capital noted that in her appeal, Natalya Magnitskaya claims that the courts of lower instance refused to find the actions of an Interior Ministry investigator illegal. “It is the court’s responsibility to verify the validity and legitimacy of the investigator’s statement. In this case the investigator’s claims were not verified by any evidence,” the appeal states. For their part, the Press Service of the Supreme Court confirmed that the court had received an appeal from Natalya Magnitskaya regarding the May 22, 2014 ruling of the Tverskoi District Court and said it is currently under consideration. Magnitsky worked for Firestone Duncan and represented Hermitage Capital which was accused of tax evasion by Russian authorities. Magnitsky was arrested on fraud charges in November 2008 and found dead in a Moscow detention center in November 2009. Last July, the Tverskoi District Court of Moscow found Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion and closed the case due to his death. According to the case materials, Magnitsky’s and Hermitage Capital director William Browder’s actions cost the Russian Federation over 500 million rubles ($10.6 mln). Browder was sentenced to nine years in prison in absentia.

http://www.rapsinews.com/judicial_news/20141120/272620097.html

Russian Justice Ministry slams ECHR for violation of notification procedure

European Court for Human Righst deprived Russia of presenting its case in the ongoing Senchishak v. Finland case, says the statement posted on the Justice Ministry’s website on Thursday. The statement says that the Russian authorities were not informed about an application hearing, in violation of Article 36, thus depriving Russia from presenting its arguments in a case concerning human rights violation against its citizen. Russian Justice Ministry adds that similar incidents happened before, and the ECHR was duly noted. On Tuesday, ECHR issued a ruling in application of Marina Senchishak, 72, partially paralyzed Russian national who was declined a residence permit and deported by the Finnish authorities. According to the case rescords, Ms Senchishak arrived in Finland in December 2008 on a tourist visa to stay with her daughter. Her daughter has been living in Finland since 1988 and has become a Finnish citizen. Ms Senchishak applied for a residence permit on the basis of family ties. She alleged before both the immigration authorities and administrative courts that, paralysed on her right side since 2006 after having suffered a stroke, it was impossible for her to obtain adequate medical care in Russia and that she was therefore dependent on her daughter in Finland, her husband having died in 2007 and her other daughter having been missing – presumed dead – since 2003. The immigration authorities refused Ms Senchishak a residence permit and ordered her removal to Russia. Ms Senchishak alleged that her removal would be in violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) and Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) because she did not have access to medical care in Russia, it being impossible for her to obtain a place in a nursing home there, and because she would be separated from her daughter, her closest living relative. ECHR has ruled that the appeal to Article 8 was unsubstantiated, and ruled that the Russian national’s rights will not be violated by deportation.

http://www.rapsinews.com/judicial_news/20141120/272622679.html

Russia's Constitutional Court Turns Down Pussy Riot Member Complaint

The Russian Constitutional Court has turned down an appeal by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the Pussy Riot punk band, against what she sees as the violation of her constitutional rights by Russian Criminal Code Article 213 Part 2. The Constitutional Court published a relevant resolution on its official website on Wednesday. Tolokonnikova, one of the participants in the so-called punk prayer at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, appealed the provisions of Criminal Code dealing with disorderly conduct under which she was convicted in August 2012. Tolokonnikova argued that this article disproportionately restricts the freedom of expression, qualifies the violation of religious standards as a violation of public order, and criminalizes actions merely based on their perception by the majority of the public as unacceptable. The Constitutional Court noted in its resolution that freedom of speech always has certain limits indicated in the constitution and international law, and this fully concerns discussions on religious matters. Hence, the resolution says, the statute in question does not contain uncertainty either for citizens or for law enforcement agencies or courts, while the assessment of factual circumstances of a case is not within the Constitutional Court's purview, it said. Tolokonnikova was released from prison in December 2013 in line with an amnesty declared by the State Duma to mark the 20th anniversary of the constitution. She had been found guilty of disorderly conduct and sentenced to 2 years in a general security penitentiary in August 2012 for a so-called punk prayer that five women from the Pussy Riot punk band wearing balaclavas staged at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow in February 2012.

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=11594

Russian Constitutional Court Head Slams Liberalism and Homosexuality, Praises Serfdom

Russian Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin, speaking at an intenational congress in Seoul, called liberalism one of the major problems of the modern world. Accrding to Zorkin, liberalism impede development of people and countries and promotes “aggressive struggle of sexual minorities for equal self-realization opportunities within the frames of the permissiveness ideology”. Days earlier Zorkin published an article in Rossiyskaya gazeta in which he characterized the serfdom as a “staple” of the Russian nation, suggesting that its abolishing in 1861 may have been a mistake. "Despite all its drawbacks, serfdom was the brace holding together the nation's internal unity," Zorkin wrote. "It was no accident that, according to historians, the peasants told their former masters after the reform: 'We were yours and you were ours.'"

http://www.ng.ru/politics/2014-10-02/3_zorkin.html
http://www.rg.ru/2014/09/26/zorkin.html
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-02/putin-brings-back-serfdom
http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-judge-praises-serfdom/26616056.html

More Bolotnaya Activists Jailed in Russia

A Moscow judge has sentenced three Russians to prison over violence at a 2012 protest in Moscow against President Vladimir Putin. The court on August 18 ordered Ilya Gushchin jailed for two and a half years and Alexander Margolin and Alexei Gaskarov to three and a half years each on charges of rioting. A fourth defendant, Yelena Kokhtareva, received a suspended sentence. The four were the latest in a series of Russian activists tried over violence at a protest on the eve of Putin's May 2012 inauguration. Prominent opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov was sentenced in July to four and a half years. Kremlin opponents say the trials in the "Bolotnaya Case" are part of a campaign to stifle dissent. They contend that protesters were provoked and that the state's claims of violence are exaggerated.

http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-bolotnaya-protest-prison/26536611.html

Strasbourg Court Orders Russia to Pay 2 Billion Euro to Yukos Shareholders

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) awarded shareholders in Yukos 1.9 billion euros ($2.6 billion) in compensation after the former oil company argued Russia had unlawfully seized it after imposing bogus taxes and via a sham auction. Just days after some of Yukos's former shareholders won $50 billion in The Hague, the Strasbourg-based court said Russia should also pay 300,000 euros in costs and expenses, plus any tax. An interim ruling by the ECHR in 2011 found that Russia had not misused legal proceedings to destroy Yukos but ruled that enforcement proceedings used against Yukos had been disproportionate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-russia-yukos-echr-idUSKBN0G00QQ20140731

Pussy Riot Wants a €250K Payout From Russia

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are seeking damages in the amount of 250,000 euros ($336,000) in their case against Russia before the European Court of Human Rights, Vedomosti reported Monday. The women are seeking 120,000 euros in moral damages each, and an additional 10,000 euros between the two to cover legal fees, according to the report. Tolokonnikova and Alyohkina were hit with two-year prison terms in August 2012 for their "punk prayer" performance in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral earlier that year. They were sentenced alongside a third member of the group, Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was released last October after a court transferred her prison term to a suspended sentence. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were granted amnesty and released in December.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/pussy-riot-wants-a-250k-payout-from-russia/504173.html

"Russian Facebook" Founder Flees Russia, Claims Persecution

Pavel Durov, the founder of Russia’s largest social networking website, fled the country on Tuesday, a day after he said he was forced out as the company’s CEO for refusing to share users’ personal data with Russian law enforcement agencies. Durov, who created Vkontakte seven years ago, first announced his intention to leave the company on April 1 but withdrew his resignation letter two days later. On Monday, he announced that he had been fired and that the social network would now fall under “full control” of Kremlin-linked Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin and Vkontakte billionaire shareholder Alisher Usmanov. The move to oust Durov is widely seen as part of a wider campaign by the Kremlin to tighten its grip on the Internet, and observers said the authorities aimed to “cleanse” the management of Russian Internet companies in the hopes of gaining control of their content. Last week, Durov said in an interview with the New Times that the Federal Security Service had turned up the pressure on Vkontakte employees dramatically in recent months, demanding that Durov release personal information about Euromaidan activists. He said the Prosecutor General's Office ordered him to shut down a group on the website dedicated to anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, though he refused to do so. “I am out of Russia and have no plans to go back,” Durov said Tuesday in an interview with Techcrunch, a news website focused on technology. He said he intended to launch a mobile social network outside Russia.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/vkontakte-founder-flees-russia-claims-persecution/498715.html

Putin to Snowden: Russia Doesn't Carry out Mass Surveillance

President Vladimir Putin has told the National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden, that Russia is not carrying out mass surveillance programmes of the kind Snowden exposed in the US. Snowden made a video-link appearance during Putin's marathon televised question and answer session to ask the president about Russia's attitude to mass surveillance. Snowden asked: "Does Russia intercept or store or analyse the communication of millions of individuals?" He went on to ask whether increasing the effectiveness of internal security systems could ever justify such actions. To applause from the studio audience, Putin responded: "Mr Snowden you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for a intelligence service, we are going to talk the same language." He said Russia did not have a comparable programme, stating: "Our agents are controlled by law. You have to get court permission to put an individual under surveillance. We don't have mass permission, and our law makes it impossible for that kind of mass permission to exist." He said he was aware that "criminals and terrorists" relied on this kind of interception, and that their actions demanded a response from the security services. "We have to use technical means to respond to their crimes, including those of a terrorist nature, we do have some efforts like that. We don't have a mass control. I hope we don't do that," he said. "We don't have as much money as they do in the US," he added.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/putin-edward-snowden-russia-mass-surveillance

Tajik Journalist Made to Pay $6K for Insulting 'Intellectuals'

A journalist in Tajikistan who used a profanity to describe the Central Asian nation’s intellectual class has been ordered to pay a group a self-described cultural leaders $6,000 in damages, her newspaper reported Tuesday. Olga Tutubalina, who is chief editor of the local Asia-Plus newspaper, quoted Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in remarking in an opinion column about the return of a previously opposition-minded poet to the former Soviet nation that “intellectuals are not the brains of a nation but its [expletive].” A court in the capital, Dushanbe, ordered Tutubalina and her newspaper to publish an apology and pay 30,000 somoni to three plaintiffs, who represent the interests of the Academy of Sciences, the Writers’ Union and the Artists’ Union. The plaintiffs had argued that the profanity was used in an “untrue” manner to “defame their honor, dignity and business reputation,” Asia-Plus reported. The newspaper noted, however, that the court did not rule that the word in question was an unprintable vulgarity or that the plaintiffs are “intellectuals.” The US Embassy in Tajikistan condemned the ruling, stating that the judgment would have a chilling effect on press freedoms.

http://en.ria.ru/world/20140226/187887628/Tajik-Journalist-Made-to-Pay-6K-for-Insulting-Intellectuals.html

Pussy Riot Members Arrested in Sochi

Police in the Russian Olympic host city of Sochi detained three members of the anti-Kremlin feminist punk group Pussy Riot and several journalists for questioning Tuesday about a theft in a local hotel. Human rights organizations said at least 10 people, including Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were detained Tuesday afternoon. Sochi rights activists Semyon Simonov and David Khakim and photojournalist Yevgeny Feldman were also detained, SochiWatch said. Police confirmed in a statement that they had taken a group of people to a police station in the nearby mountain resort town of Adler and were “interviewing everyone staying at this hotel” in connection with the theft. Tolokonnikova said on her Twitter account that she, Alyokhina and another female Pussy Riot activist were arrested while walking around Sochi after arriving in the city to record a protest video. “We’re in Sochi to carry out a Pussy Riot protest. The song is called ‘Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland,’” she wrote. She said officers had used force to detain them and that they had been forced to give statements without a lawyer.

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140218/187652422/Pussy-Riot-Members-Arrested-in-Sochi.html

Russia Limits Adoptions to Countries Allowing Same-Sex Unions

Russia introduced measures Thursday to restrict adoptions of children to people in countries that recognize same-sex marriages. A decree published on the government’s website states that a ban on adoptions will apply to married gay couples and unmarried couples. Restrictions will affect countries that traditionally adopt large quantities of Russian orphans, including Spain, France and Canada. Same-sex marriage is set to become law in the United Kingdom later this year. “Adoptions can be carried out by members of either sex with the exception of… people in a union of two people of the same sex that has been registered as a married according to the legislation of their country... and also unmarried people in such countries,” reads the decree, which has been signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

http://en.ria.ru/news/20140213/187496779/Russia-Limits-Adoptions-to-Countries-Allowing-Same-Sex-Unions.html

Pussy Riot Group Severs Ties With Freed Activists

Two Russian women who served jail time for performing an anti-Kremlin song in a Moscow cathedral are “on the other side of the barricades” from their ex-group Pussy Riot, the feminist punk collective said. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have abandoned radical feminist art actionism to campaign for prisoners’ rights, the group said in an online statement, available in English and Russian. “They completely forgot about the aspirations and ideals of our group – feminism, separatist resistance, fight against authoritarianism and personality cult,” the group said on Thursday. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova’s change of career has produced “two brave, interesting, controversial human rights defenders,” the statement said. But “they are no longer Pussy Riot,” which is an anonymous, feminist, leftist radical art collective, the group said.

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140207/187295497/Pussy-Riot-Group-Severs-Ties-With-Freed-Activists.html

Ukraine Cracks Down on Dissent

Ukraine's parliament rushed through wide-ranging powers Thursday to suppress opposition protests and label non-governmental organizations as "foreign agents" if they receive money from abroad. The measures threaten jail terms for protesters who block entrances to government buildings and 15 days in detention for those who take part in demonstrations not sanctioned by the police, even if peaceful. Protesters also face up to 15 days in detention for covering their faces with masks or helmets. People will also be detained for 15 days if they set up tents, stages or other makeshift structures without approval from city authorities. The move is apparently aimed at the thousands of people who have joined anti-government protests on Kiev's Independence Square, known as Maidan. The United States on Thursday condemned the parliament of Ukraine's decision to pass wide-ranging laws severely restricting the right to protest as undemocratic. “Both the process and the substance of the Rada's actions today cast serious doubt on Ukraine’s commitment to democratic norms,” the US State Department said in a statement.

http://en.ria.ru/world/20140116/186601073/Ukraine-Proposes-Sweeping-Crackdown-on-Dissent.html
http://en.ria.ru/world/20140117/186622165/US-Condemns-Ukraines-Anti-Protest-Laws-as-Undemocratic.html

Ukraine Opposition Leader Lutsenko Injured in Police Clash

Yuri Lutsenko, a top organiser of the mass protests that have gripped Kiev for weeks, was injured shortly after midnight when he tried to intervene in a confrontation between riot police and opposition activists. The ex-interior minister "was hit several times over the head with a club before he fell,” his spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times, who said he was taken to hospital where he received treatment. The clashes erupted outside a Kiev court when three activists were sentenced to six years in jail after being found guilty of planning to blow up a statue of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin in the nearby town of Borispol in 2011. The opposition argued the verdicts were politically motivated. Ukraine's top human rights official said 11 people were taken to hospital after the clashes when police used tear gas and and clubs against demonstrators. The demonstration is the latest in a series of protests after President Victor Yanukovich decided against signing a free trade and association agreement with the European Union in November, choosing instead to increase ties with Russia.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-opposition-leader-yuri-lutsenko-injured-in-police-clash-9053248.html
http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=1192981 (video)

Freedom-of-Assembly Demonstration Dispersed in Moscow

On 31 December 2013 the Moscow police dispersed an opposition demonstration meeting on Triumfalnaya Square in support of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees the "right to assemble peacefully without weapons, hold rallies, meetings and demonstrations, marches and pickets." About 30 activists, including their leader, well-known writer Eduard Limonov, were arrested. The activists hold similar meetings on the 31st day of each month having 31 days. The demonstrations are invariably banned and dispersed by the police. On the same day another anti-Putin demonstration was dispersed near the Kremlin, with 10 activists arrested.

http://lenta.ru/news/2013/12/31/limonov/
http://www.echo.msk.ru/news/1229614-echo.html
http://grani.ru/Politics/Russia/activism/strategy31/m.223062.html (photo)
http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/grani_ru/1229612-echo/ (photo)
http://grani.ru/Politics/Russia/activism/strategy31/m.223062.html (video)

Azerbaijan's Arrest of Vote Monitor Draws Outcry

The arrest of an independent election monitor in the oil-rich authoritarian former Soviet state of Azerbaijan drew vocal international condemnation Tuesday. A court in the capital, Baku, on Monday ordered that Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center chairman Anar Mammadli be detained for three months as investigations are carried out into claims he was engaged in illegal entrepreneurship. The center, which has for years faced routine harassment from the authorities, conducted extensive monitoring of widely criticized October elections that secured a third term in power for iron-fisted President Ilham Aliyev. The US Embassy in Azerbaijan said it was deeply troubled by Mammadli’s arrest and that it was compelled to question whether the “detention is related to his organization's election monitoring and reporting activities.”

http://en.ria.ru/world/20131217/185661073/Azerbaijans-Arrest-of-Vote-Monitor-Draws-Outcry.html

Putin to Examine Political Prisoners List, His Spokesman Denies Their Existence

Prominent Russian writer Boris Akunin refused to participate in a writers’ meeting that is supposed to be attended by President Vladimir Putin. Akunin said he does not want to be anywhere close to the president until there are political prisoners in Russia. Akunin mentioned jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, “Bolotnaya Square case” (a controversial criminal case instituted on mass riot charges) prisoner Sergey Krivov. In response Putin’s press-secretary Dmitry Peskov dismissed all accusations. “I do not understand, whom he means by ‘political prisoners.’ Those arrested in the ‘Bolotnaya case’? But they are not political prisoners; they are charged with hooliganism and violence against officers. This has nothing to do with politics,” Peskov said. He went on to comment on Akunin personally: “He is very well-known and respected writer. of course he has a right for his own opinion. But we also have a right to say his opinion has nothing to do with reality.” Later on a list of 70 political prisoners was passed to Vladimir Putin by opposition party RPR-Parnas leader Vladimir Ryzhkov. Putin publicly promised to “examine” the list.

http://slon.ru/fast/russia/akunin-ya-s-putinym-v-odnom-zale-ne-syadu-1022143.xhtml
http://www.echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/1201829-echo/
http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/news/2013/11/20/n_3338993.shtml

Protesters Detained on Red Square

A few protesters were detained Sunday on downtown Moscow’s Red Square, according to reports from the Moscow department of the Russian Interior Ministry and media. The ministry said five people had been detained and taken to a police station for violating public order. Meanwhile, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper said eight people had been held. The newspaper said its correspondent made a few photos of the protest, whose participants unfolded three banners that read “My country has been seized by enemies,” “Resist” and “You can’t jail everyone.”

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131117/184765028/Protesters-Detained-on-Red-Square.html