The United Kingdom has announced its first round of sanctions under its new global anti-corruption regime, freezing assets and imposing restrictions on 14 individuals from Russia, as well as eight others from different parts of the world.
The 14 Russians were hit with sanctions for their involvement in corruption uncovered by the late Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and whistle-blower who helped reveal the theft of nearly $230 million from Russia’s government through fraudulent tax refunds.
The targeted Russian nationals’ assets in the United Kingdom have been frozen and they are barred from visiting the United Kingdom, according to the measures.
“As with our Global Human Rights sanctions approach, the anti-corruption sanctions are not intended to target whole countries or whole peoples, but rather to ta get the individuals who are responsible, and should be held responsible, for graft and the cronies who support or benefit from their corrupt acts,” British Foreign Secretary Dominik Raab said in announcing the sanctions..
The sanctioned Russian citizens include Dmitry Klyuyev, identified as the owner of Universal Savings Bank in Russia.
The U.K.’s new Magnitsky act, which is similar to a law enacted in the United States, is named after the Russian lawyer who was arrested and died in prison in Moscow in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of the massive tax fraud.
In the measures announced on April 26, Britain also targeted Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, Indian-born brothers at the center of a South African corruption scandal that was one of the reasons for Jacob Zuma’s resignation in February 2018.
Sanctions were also imposed on three people accused of corruption in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, including facilitating bribes to support a major drug-trafficking cartel.
Raab told British lawmakers that the sanctions would prevent the country from being used as “a haven for dirty money.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed the British sanctions, saying they strengthened efforts to counter corruption globally.
The U.S. State Department has said a vote by the Moldovan parliament to dismiss the head of the Constitutional Court was a “blatant attack on Moldova’s democratic norms and its constitutional order.”
The State Department said in a statement that parliament’s targeting of the Constitutional Court, “which only recently asserted its independence after years of state capture,” was of particular concern.
It also said parliament’s vote on April 23 was an attempt to replace Constitutional Court President Domnica Manole with a candidate of its own choosing.
The vote came after the court backed a call by President Maia Sandu to dissolve parliament, paving the way for early elections.
It appears likely to complicate a standoff between Sandu and a parliament still dominated by lawmakers aligned with her pro-Russian predecessor.
Sandu, who came to office in November on a pro-European Union ticket, has accused the Socialist-dominated parliament of sabotaging her reform agenda and repeatedly pushed for snap elections in order to acquire a working majority in the 101-seat legislature.
“We urge Moldova’s leaders and representatives to respect the rule of law, safeguard its democratic institutions, and work together to resolve the challenges facing the country, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement said.
The EU earlier said the vote was an attack on Moldova’s constitutional order.
The nonbinding vote to remove Manole must be agreed by the court itself.
A journalist from Siberia who had to leave her native city of Kiselyovsk in the Siberian region of Kemerovo earlier this year after she was attacked says she has fled Russia fearing for her safety.
Natalya Zubkova, the chief editor of the News of Kiselyovsk website, told RFE/RL on April 26 that she moved to an unspecified country a week ago after police and an investigator from Kiselyovsk visited her at her new residence in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg to question her as “a witness” in a criminal case.
Zubkova said she refused to answer any questions and called her lawyer. According to her, the case might be an another move in ongoing attempts by Kiselyovsk authorities to take her daughter from her in retaliation for her articles criticizing authorities in the Kemerovo region for the “illegal widening of coal-mining territories” in the region.
In late February, Zubkova said an unknown attacker pushed her down with her face in snow as she was walking her dog. The man threatened the journalist and her daughters with further violence if “you open your mouth again.”
Several days after the attack, Zubkova fled Kiselyovsk for Yekaterinburg, hoping that authorities in her native region will leave her alone.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said on April 6 that it had sent an investigator to Yekaterinburg to question Zubkova in the case.
Zubkova told RFE/RL on April 26 that she will continue her journalistic activities, writing about the rights of Siberia’s indigenous ethnic groups, environmental damage from mining activities in the region, and corruption among officials in Kiselyovsk.
Last August, lawyer Anton Reutov physically attacked her in a courtroom during a hearing based on Zubkova’s report about alleged fraud involving Reutov that led to an elderly woman losing her apartment.
Zubkova said that following that incident she received several death threats.
In August 2019, Mayor Shkarabeinikov accused Zubkova of inciting social discord for interviewing Kiselyovsk residents who had asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to provide them with asylum after local authorities were unable to solve environmental problems they faced.
Police in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, have arrested a man suspected of stabbing the sister of a member of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, Artur Chilingarov.
The Investigative Committee said on April 26 that the 59-year-old suspect, whose identity was not disclosed, stabbed the 71-year-old woman, injuring her arm and head in the hall of an apartment block on April 20.
According to the statement, the woman was saved by a neighbor who scared off the attacker.
The suspect, who has a criminal record, was apprehended shortly after the attack. The motive for the attack remains unclear.
Chilingarov, 81, is also a well-known Russian polar explorer.
Aleksandr Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee, has ordered an investigation into the incident.
The lawyer of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says she has been sentenced to another year in prison in Iran and given a one-year ban on leaving the country, in what London called a “totally inhumane” decision.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was found guilty of spreading “propaganda against the system” for participating in a 2009 protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in London, the lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, said on April 26.
The charity worker was previously sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters, and rights groups deny.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was moved from prison last year due to the coronavirus crisis and held under house arrest in Tehran until March, when her ankle tag was removed at the end of her five-year sentence.
“This is a totally inhumane and wholly unjustified decision,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tweeted on April 26. “We continue to call on Iran to release Nazanin immediately so she can return to her family in the U.K.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson also criticized the ruling, telling reporters that Britain was working with the United States on the issue of jailed dual-nationals in Iran.
A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained at Tehran airport after a family visit in 2016.
Prior to her arrest, she lived in London with her husband and daughter.
Iran has arrested dozens of foreign and dual nationals in recent years on espionage charges that they and their governments say are groundless.
Critics say Iran uses such arbitrary detentions as part of hostage diplomacy to extract concessions from Western countries, which Tehran denies.
The lawyer of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says she has been sentenced to another year in prison in Iran and given a one-year ban on leaving the country, in what London called a “totally inhumane” decision.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was found guilty of spreading “propaganda against the system” for participating in a 2009 protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in London, the lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, said on April 26.
The charity worker was previously sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters, and rights groups deny.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was moved from prison last year due to the coronavirus crisis and held under house arrest in Tehran until March, when her ankle tag was removed at the end of her five-year sentence.
“This is a totally inhumane and wholly unjustified decision,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tweeted on April 26. “We continue to call on Iran to release Nazanin immediately so she can return to her family in the U.K.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson also criticized the ruling, telling reporters that Britain was working with the United States on the issue of jailed dual-nationals in Iran.
A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained at Tehran airport after a family visit in 2016.
Prior to her arrest, she lived in London with her husband and daughter.
Iran has arrested dozens of foreign and dual nationals in recent years on espionage charges that they and their governments say are groundless.
Critics say Iran uses such arbitrary detentions as part of hostage diplomacy to extract concessions from Western countries, which Tehran denies.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) is expected to face a preliminary court hearing into a move by Moscow prosecutors to label the group as “extremist” as the government continues to tighten the screws on the outspoken Kremlin critic’s supporters.
The FBK said in a tweet on April 26 that preliminary talks with the group related to the case will be held during the day, with an official hearing scheduled for April 29.
“The important thing is that we will never learn the details of the accusations against us. All of the evidence in the case has been classified as a state secret,” the FBK said.
The January arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Navalny on what are seen as trumped-up charges have worsened ties between Russia and the West, already strained by Moscow’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and the fomenting of separatism across much of Ukraine that helped to ignite a war that has killed more than 13,000 people in the Donbas, where Moscow-backed forces hold parts of two provinces.
The FBK has rattled the Kremlin over the years with its video investigations exposing the unexplained wealth of top officials, including President Vladimir Putin.
The latest move, initiated by the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office on April 16, seeks to have the Moscow City Court label the FBK and two other organizations tied to Navalny — the Citizens’ Rights Protection Foundation and Navalny’s regional headquarters — as “extremist” as they are “engaged in creating conditions for destabilizing the social and sociopolitical situation under the guise of their liberal slogans.”
The proposal was immediately condemned by international and domestic human rights groups, who say that if the Navalny’s organizations are officially recognized as “extremist,” all of their employees could face arrest and prison terms from six to 10 years.
Last week, almost 2,000 supporters of Navalny were arrested in nationwide protests aimed at pressuring officials to allow Navalny access to proper medical treatment as fears for his life rose as he entered the third week of a hunger strike he started over the medical attention he was receiving in prison.
On April 23, Navalny ended the hunger strike, saying he had “achieved enough,” though he continues to demand that he be examined by his personal doctors for acute pain in his back and legs.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he had received life-saving treatment for a poisoning attack in Siberia in August.
He has insisted that his poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent was ordered directly by Putin. The Kremlin has denied any role in the poisoning.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated.
Navalny’s 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a prison term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time already served in detention.
The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia over the Navalny affair and the government’s crackdown on demonstrators earlier this year at rallies protesting Navalny’s arrest.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on Thursday reiterated its call for the ouster of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the Republican megadonor accused of attempting to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service last year as millions of Americans relied on the agency to participate in the presidential election.
As the House Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee held a confirmation hearing for President Joe Biden’s three nominees to the USPS Board of Governors, CREW tweeted numerous times that DeJoy must be dismissed and replaced promptly due to his actions last year and his so-called “Delivering for America” program, proposed last month.
Good morning! Today, Biden’s nominees to the USPS Board of Governors will testify before a Senate committee. The Senate must swiftly confirm these nominees — and the Board must then fire and replace DeJoy. We’ll be watching.
“Save the US Postal Service. Fire Louis DeJoy,” the group later tweeted.
“If you want to save the USPS,” it added, “you have to fire Louis DeJoy.”
Under “Delivering for America” — denounced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) as a “pathetic 10-year plan to weaken USPS,” DeJoy would raise prices, cut administrative costs, and slow down deliveries.
Biden’s three nominees — Ron Stroman, Anton Hajjar, and Amber McReynolds — said in the hearing that they would prioritize reliable mail service and took “veiled shots” at “Delivering for America” — but declined to say that they would oust DeJoy, even though the appointment of all three would give Biden and the Democrats a 5-4 majority and control of the board of governors for the first time since 2016.
Board Chairman Ron A. Bloom, a former Obama administration official, and member Lee Moak are the only Democrats on the board of governors, but both have expressed reluctance to dismiss DeJoy.
“The board of governors believes the postmaster general, in very difficult circumstances, is doing a good job,” Bloom told lawmakers in February.
As the Washington Postreported Thursday, members of Congress have been discussing with Biden administration officials the possibility of the president declining to nominate Bloom for a second term, to get rid of what critics have called “an enabler” of DeJoy.
“There’s a growing number of people who say, maybe you don’t need to fire all the board, but you need to be able to create a majority to fire DeJoy,” a House aide told the Post. “And there’s another group saying, when we get enough Democrats on the board, that will be enough to maybe slow down some of the things DeJoy is doing.”
Meanwhile, Moak’s refusal to discuss his position on DeJoy has angered Democrats including Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), whose office corresponded with Moak in January in what became an “acrimonious” exchange.
“The congressman is deeply disconcerted by the destruction and degradation of USPS over the course of the past year by Postmaster General DeJoy and the public silence of the Board of Governors in the face of it,” wrote Pascrell’s office. “To that end, an additional question we’d appreciate you clearing up for us tomorrow: will you move to fire Postmaster General DeJoy for his arson, and if not, why not?”
Moak declined to answer the question and wrote to the congressman, “If you spent more time working to solve problems than create them perhaps we would be further along.”
“Good luck tomorrow — you will need it,” he added. Moak told the Post he was referring to an upcoming conversation he expected to have with the congressman, but Pascrell on Thursday accused Moak of sending him “unhinged messages and threats.”
After I called on the President to fire the Postal leadership, one of its board members sent my office unhinged messages and threats, detailed here. It’s yet more evidence he and the entire board should be fired.https://t.co/Hg66MQIbtv
“I was the first to call for the postal board to go because rebuilding USPS starts with removing and replacing the failed leadership at the top,” Pascrell told the Post. “The exchange from this board member only proves my point. The entire board and then Mr. DeJoy should be handed their walking papers. Their unquestioning support for this postmaster general is unacceptable.”
The Russian government has designated the Latvia-based independent Meduza news outlet as a foreign agent — a move that will require it to label itself as such and will subject it to increased government scrutiny.
The Russian Justice Ministry made the announcement on April 23 on its website. while Meduza confirmed the news in a tweet.
“Hi, everyone! We’re Russia’s latest “foreign agent!” the media outlet said.
Russia’s so-called foreign agent legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” and to submit to audits.
Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media, including RFE/RL’s Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time.
Meduza is an independent media outlet with hundreds of sources in Russia and across the former Soviet Union.
It releases news in Russian and English from its headquarters in Latvia.
Security authorities in the Siberian cities of Kemerovo and Novosibirsk say they have apprehended an unspecified number of supporters of the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) said on April 21 that alleged members of the group that was banned in the country in 2003 “carried out anti-constitutional activities based on the doctrine of creating a world caliphate.”
It did not say how many suspects have been apprehended.
Authorities in Russia and some other former Soviet republics say Hizb ut-Tahrir plays a role in a strategy used by Al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants to radicalize young people and recruit them to join radical Islamists in Syria and Iraq.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a London-based Sunni political organization that seeks to unite all Muslim countries into an Islamic caliphate.
Banned in Russia and Central Asia, Hizb ut-Tahrir says it is a peaceful movement.
Human rights groups have criticized the government’s “abuse” of counterterrorism laws and the use of “secret witnesses” and other methods in prosecuting critics and religious groups to silence dissent.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is calling on Russia to release opposition leader Aleksei Navalny from prison and ensure in the meantime that all his rights are respected, including “all necessary medical care.”
The lawmakers made the call in a resolution on April 22, a day after Russian police detained more than 1,700 people across the country during protests demanding Navalny’s release amid reports his health is failing as he enters the third week of a hunger strike.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most-vocal critic should be released “immediately and in any event before the next ‘human rights’ meeting of the Committee of Ministers in June 2021,” according to the resolution, which was backed by 105 parliamentarians during a session of the assembly in Strasbourg.
Pending his release, the document calls on the authorities to provide Navalny with “all necessary medical care, including examination and treatment by a doctor of his choice, and to ensure that his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and domestic law are fully respected.”
At total of 26 lawmakers from Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia voted against the resolution. Those who abstained included representatives from Turkey, Serbia, and one from the Czech Republic.
Navalny, 44, has been in custody since January. He went on a hunger strike to demand doctors treat him for severe pain in his back and legs.
Thousands of Russians from Vladivostok in the Far East to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea joined the April 21 protests called by leaders of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), who fear the Kremlin critic be harmed “irreparably” if he doesn’t get adequate medical treatment.
OVD-Info, which monitors the detention of political protesters and activists, reported more than 1,700 detentions across the country, with about half the detentions in St. Petersburg, in what Amnesty International described as being part of a “shocking crackdown on basic freedoms.”
The number of protesters appeared smaller than previous rallies organized by Navalny’s team amid a heavy police presence, a roundup of his allies early in the day, threats of arrest, and the closure of key meeting spots.
“There was less police violence and brutality on April 21 compared with the January and February pro-Navalny protests, but the authorities’ continued clampdown on freedom of assembly is wholly unjustified,” said Damelya Aitkhozhina, a Russia researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Photo Gallery:
Thousands Attend Pro-Navalny Protests Across Russia; More Than 1,700 Detained
Russian police detained more than 1,700 people across the country as protesters gathered on April 21 to demand the release of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. The prominent Kremlin critic is reported to be seriously ill as he enters the third week of a hunger strike, and prison authorities have rejected demands for him to be treated by independent doctors.
“The authorities are quick to allege that without police interference so-called ‘unauthorized’ gatherings become violent, but the April 21 protests showed how baseless that allegation is.”
Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow office director, said that, in many cities, the authorities arrested protesters “en masse, often using excessive force” such as in St. Petersburg, where police “used tasers indiscriminately and in several instances beat detained protesters.”
The authorities’ “attempts to trample dissent into dust are growing increasingly desperate — from the ongoing detention of Navalny and the effort to ban his movement by branding it ‘extremist,’ to the violent targeting and mass arrest of his supporters,” she added.
“There are simply not enough jail cells to lock up and silence every critical voice in Russia.”
The nationwide demonstrations came just days after the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office asked a court last week to label as “extremist” three organizations tied to Navalny — the FBK, the Citizens’ Rights Protection Foundation, and Navalny’s regional headquarters.
Prosecutors claim the organizations are “engaged in creating conditions for destabilizing the social and sociopolitical situation under the guise of their liberal slogans.”
The FBK has rattled the Kremlin over the years with its video investigations exposing the unexplained wealth of top officials, including Putin.
The prosecutor’s request comes ahead of crucial parliamentary elections later this year, in which Navalny’s organizations are seeking to organize citizens to vote against the ruling United Russia party at a time its ratings have tumbled amid growing frustration over eroding living standards.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for the poisoning attack in Siberia in August.
He has insisted that his poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent was ordered directly by Putin. The Kremlin has denied any role in the incident
.In February, a Moscow court ruled that, while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered to have been politically motivated.
Navalny’s 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a prison term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time already served in detention.
The activist, who is serving his term in a notorious prison about 100 kilometers east of Moscow, went on a hunger strike three weeks ago to protest the inadequate medical treatment he has received while in detention.
Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying four doctors from outside Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) visited Navalny in the prison on April 20 and found no serious health problems.
However, that assessment runs contrary to a letter to the FSIN last week by Anastasia Vasilyeva, Navalny’s personal physician, and three other doctors, including a cardiologist, who said the opposition leader’s health was rapidly deteriorating and his potassium count had reached a “critical level,” meaning “both impaired renal function and serious heart rhythm problems can happen any minute.”
U.S. lawmakers later on April 21 introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning the poisoning, “wrongful imprisonment and brutal treatment” of Navalny.
The United States and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on Russia for Navalny’s poisoning.
His supporters are now calling on the West to impose new sanctions on Moscow for its treatment of the opposition leader.
DUSHANBE — An imam at a Dushanbe mosque has been detained on extremism charges after he called a late Islamic cleric “one of great leaders of the country.”
State media outlets reported on April 22 that 44-year-old Imam-hatib Abdulhaq Obidov (aka Makhsumi Abdulhaq) from a mosque in Dushanbe’s Shohmansur district had been detained on suspicion of being a follower of the Salafi branch of Islam, which has been labeled as extremist and banned in the Central Asian country.
Imam-hatib Abdulhaq Obidov
The State Committee for National Security said on April 22 that Obidov was detained along with four other men on unspecified criminal charges.
The day before, the website Bomdod reported that Obidov was detained after a speech he delivered last week at the burial ceremony of well-known Islamic cleric Domullo Hikmatullo Tojikobodi, during which he called him a great leader of Tajikistan.
Bomdod cited sources in Tajikistan’s law enforcement structures as saying that authorities considered Obidov’s statement as questioning the official title of authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon, who, in accordance with a 2016 law, is officially known as the leader of the nation.
Rahmon, who has ruled Tajikistan since 1992, also enjoys special powers following a May 2016 referendum, including the right to seek as many terms in office as he wants.
Rahmon has been criticized by international human rights groups for years over his disregard for religious freedoms, civil society, and political pluralism in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic.
The State Committee on Religious Issues, Traditions, and Rites said in a statement that Obidov’s detention had nothing to do with his speech at the funeral and called on media “to stay away from spreading rumors.”
Tajikistan banned the Salafi branch of Islam in 2009 as extremist.
Salafists follow a strict form of Sunni Islam and do not recognize other branches of Islam, such as Shi’a Islam and Sufism.
The majority of Muslims in Central Asia are followers of Hanafi, a more moderate branch of Sunni Islam.
CHITA, Russia — A Russian military appeals court in Siberia has upheld the sentence of Private Ramil Shamsutdinov, who was sentenced to 24 1/2 years in prison in January for killing eight fellow servicemen in a rampage he says was the result of hazing he faced in the army.
Shamsutdinov’s lawyers, Ravil Tugushev and Ruslan Nagiyev, said in a post on Instagram that their client’s sentence was upheld on April 21.
The lawyers said that it was not immediately clear if there would be a further appeal by the victims’ relatives, some of whom had appealed the sentence as too lenient.
Shamsutdinov’s defense team has said their client went on a shooting spree in October 2019, killing eight — including two high-ranking officers — in the town of Gorny in the Zabaikalye region after being tortured and beaten by other soldiers and officers during his induction into service.
In late December 2020, a jury found Shamsutdinov guilty of murder and attempted murder, but also said he deserved leniency, which according to Russian law meant his sentence shouldn’t exceed 13 years and four months in prison.
However,
was sentenced to 24 1/2 years in January, while some of the victims’ relatives sought life in prison for him.
The case shocked many in Russia and attracted the attention of rights activists after Shamsutdinov claimed that he committed the act while suffering a nervous breakdown after what he had endured.
The Defense Ministry accepted at the time that Shamsutdinov “had a conflict” with one of the officers he killed. In March 2020, Private Ruslan Mukhatov was found guilty of bullying Shamsutdinov and was handed a suspended two-year prison term.
Deadly shootings among Russian military units as the result of widespread hazing have been a focus of human rights organizations for years.
In recent years, photos and video footage have been posted online by members of the Russian military that show the severe bullying of young recruits as they are inducted into the army.
NUR-SULTAN — Prosecutors have asked a court in Nur-Sultan to sentence six defendants in the high-profile case of the killing of the teenage son of late Kazakh civil rights activist Dulat Aghadil.
Zhanbolat Aghadil, 17, was stabbed to death in a Nur-Sultan suburb in November, just 10 months after his father mysteriously died while in police custody.
Prosecutors on April 22 asked the Inter-District Court on Criminal Cases in the Kazakh capital to find defendant Omirzhan Rakhmet guilty of murdering Zhanbolat Aghadil and sentence him to 18 years in prison.
Sentences for the other five defendants in the case, who were charged with concealing a crime and failing to report a crime, should range between four and five years in prison, they added.
Rakhmet’s lawyer told reporters his client pleaded not guilty.
In February 2020, Zhanbolat Aghadil’s father, a well-known 43-year-old civil rights activist, died while being held in pretrial detention in Nur-Sultan just hours after being arrested for failing to comply with a court order to report to local police.
Authorities said Aghadil died from a heart attack, but his family and fellow rights defenders say he had no history of heart issues and suspected the real cause of death was being covered up.
Rallies were held in Nur-Sultan and other cities in February and March to demand a thorough investigation into his death.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has reiterated its call for Belarusian authorities to release Ihar Losik, a popular blogger and RFE/RL consultant, as he marked his 300th day in detention on charges widely considered to have been trumped up.
Losik has been “cruelly separated from his wife, his daughter, and his colleagues for far too long” and “must be freed from detention and allowed to rejoin his family,” RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said in a statement on April 21.
He also urged the government to cease its “repressive campaign against independent journalists, including RFE/RL reporters and staff,” and allow them to “continue their work to provide objective information to the people of Belarus.”
Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, has orchestrated a brutal crackdown since protesters flooded streets across the country following a presidential election they say was rigged in his favor.
Almost 30,000 people have been detained since the vote, hundreds beaten, several killed, and the media targeted by security forces.
Losik, 28, is among more than 300 political prisoners caught up in the crackdown, according to human rights groups.
Losik has been in pretrial detention since June 2020. He was initially charged with allegedly using his popular Telegram channel to “prepare to disrupt public order” ahead of the August 2020 election.
Earlier this month, he tried to slit his wrists and launched a four-day hunger strike after being informed of new, unspecified charges. He had previously launched a six-week hunger strike to protest the original charges.
On March 22, 11 days after he was informed of the new charges, a court extended Losik’s pretrial detention to May 25. He has yet to face a court hearing on any of the alleged offenses police say he committed.
The Belarusian opposition says its candidate, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, won the vote. The West has refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.
The European Union, the United States, and other countries have slapped sanctions on top Belarusian officials in response to the crackdown on protesters and the opposition.
In a letter addressed to Losik on March 26, a bipartisan group of seven U.S. lawmakers condemned his “unjust and illegitimate detainment,” saying they stand “shoulder to shoulder” with him, his family, and all other Belarusians struggling in the country’s prodemocracy movement.
“We join the international community in strongly condemning your unjust and illegitimate detainment by the Belarusian authorities,” the congressmen said in their letter. “We stand ready to hold those complicit in your illegitimate detention to account through targeted sanctions working with our friends and allies in the European Union.”
The U.S. State Department and other members of Congress have previously condemned the wrongful detention of Losik and other political prisoners.
On April 19, the U.S. State Department announced it would not renew a special license authorizing transactions with nine state-owned Belarusian companies, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying that the country’s “regression” on human rights is “exemplified” by independent media experts like Ihar Losik and other Belarusians “unjustly imprisoned by the Lukashenka regime for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
A Turkmen activist and outspoken critic of the tightly controlled Central Asian nation’s government who resides in Istanbul says she has come under pressure in Turkey ahead of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Ashgabat.
Dursoltan Taganova told the Moscow-based Memorial human rights group on April 20 that she was summoned to Turkey’s immigration service last week, where she was warned that she may face problems with her residency unless she stops her political activities.
According to Taganova, during the questioning on April 15, a Turkish immigration official asked her about her relatives, permanent address, her request for political asylum, and the reasons for her being critical of the Turkmen government.
“They told me: ‘Stop your presentations on the Internet. That is what the Turkish government needs. We do not want you to have problems with your residency here’,” Memorial cited Taganova as saying.
Taganova also said that Turkish officials made it clear that they were monitoring her correspondence with other bloggers and their online presentations criticizing the Turkmen government.
She added that several days ago her TikTok account was blocked after she used it for her blog about economic problems in Turkmenistan.
Last July, Taganova, along with dozens of other Turkmen, mostly migrant workers, was arrested in Istanbul on charges of violating coronavirus restrictions.
She and others were detained just hours before they planned to hold a rally in front of the Turkmen Consulate in Istanbul to criticize Ashgabat’s inadequate response to the pandemic and to call for President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov’s resignation.
Most of the detainees were released about five hours later, but Taganova was remanded in custody as Turkish authorities wanted to deport her back to Turkmenistan.
She was released in October after a group of 11 human rights organizations urged Turkish authorities not deport her, saying she would face arbitrary arrest and torture if she was returned to Turkmenistan.
Protests against Berdymukhammedov were staged for several months last year by Turkmen citizens residing in Turkey, the United States, and Northern Cyprus.
Government critics and human rights groups say Berdymukhammedov has suppressed dissent and made few changes in the restrictive country since he came to power after the death of autocrat Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006.
MOSCOW — Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer for Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been detained by police for unknown reasons just hours ahead of planned nationwide protests to demand the immediate release of the jailed opposition politician.
“The police carried out an ‘interception’ plan, pulling Lyubov Sobol out of a taxi near the Avtozavodskaya metro station. According to her, many officers in uniforms were involved in her detainment. It is not clear where they are taking her,” Sobol’s lawyer, Vladimir Voronin, tweeted on April 21.
Last week, Sobol was handed a one-year suspended sentence of correctional labor for illegally forcing her way into the apartment of Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Konstantin Kudryavtsev in December, hours after Navalny had published a recording of what he said was a phone conversation with Kudryavtsev.
During the 49-minute phone call, in which Navalny posed as an FSB official conducting an internal review, Kudryavtsev described details of an operation to poison the Kremlin critic in August.
Sobol, who went to Kudryatsev’s apartment building to question him, rejected the charge, saying the case was filed to silence her.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for a poisoning attack in Siberia in August.
He has insisted that his poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent was ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The FSB and the Kremlin have denied any role in the poisoning, despite Kudryavtsev’s comments.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that, while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered as being politically motivated. Navalny’s 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time already served in detention.
The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia over the Navalny affair and its crackdown on protesters.
Last month, Sobol said she plans to run for parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, in September elections.
Sobol is currently under house arrest in another case. She and several other associates and supporters of Navalny were charged with violating sanitary regulations during unsanctioned rallies in January to protest Navalny’s incarceration.
QYZYLORDA, Kazakhstan — A court in southern Kazakhstan has handed a parole-like sentence to an activist for supporting the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement, one of several activists sentenced for supporting the opposition group in recent years.
The Court No. 2 in the southern city of Qyzylorda on April 20 sentenced Muratbai Baimaghambetov to two years of “freedom limitation” and 170 hours of community work.
Baimaghambetov, who was arrested in September 2020, told RFE/RL that he will appeal the sentence.
The activist is known for his rights activities in the region.
While in pretrial detention, human rights organizations in Kazakhstan recognized Baimaghambetov as a political prisoner.
Several activists in the Central Asian nation have been handed “freedom limitation” and prison sentences in recent years for their support or involvement in the activities of DVK and its associate, Koshe (Street) party, as well as for taking part in unsanctioned rallies organized by the two groups.
DVK is led by Mukhtar Ablyazov, the fugitive former head of Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank and outspoken critic of the Kazakh government. Kazakh authorities labeled DVK as extremist and banned the group in March 2018.
Human rights groups have said Kazakhstan’s law on public gatherings contradicts international standards as it requires preliminary permission from authorities to hold rallies and envisions prosecution for organizing and participating in unsanctioned rallies even though the nation’s constitution guarantees its citizens the right of free assembly.
BAIMAK, Russia — An outspoken environmental activist who has been looking into illegal gold mining in Russia’s Bashkortostan region says he was viciously beaten by unknown attackers in the town of Baimak.
Ildar Yumagulov was hospitalized with two broken legs after three men attacked him 200 meters away from a police station on April 18.
He told RFE/RL that two masked men in black clothing beat him with baseball bats and that when he managed to escape the attack, a third masked man appeared and knocked him down to allow the attack to continue.
“They beat me with baseball bats, targeting my legs, breaking them. One leg was fully smashed, surgery is planned for tomorrow,” Yumagulov said, adding that the attackers did not say a word during the attack.
Bashkortostan’s Interior Ministry has not commented on the attack.
According to Yumagulov, the attack is most likely linked to his latest activities on gold mining in the Urals, where, according to him and his colleagues, mining companies are violating environmental safety norms.
Yumagulov’s colleague, Ilsur Irnazarov, told RFE/RL that unknown individuals were suspected of following Yumagulov and his car for several weeks before the attack.
“We’re certain the attack is linked to Ildar Yumagulov’s public activities and his civil stance…. It was an act of intimidation to scare Ildar and all enviromental activists of the Urals and our republic in general,” Irnazarov said.
Yumagulov is known for his various activities against uncontrolled gold mining in Bashkortostan.
In recent weeks he was working on finding details of possible plans by a gold-mining company to start a mine in the Baimak district of the republic.
Jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s health has rapidly deteriorated and he could suffer cardiac arrest “any minute,” according to doctors demanding immediate access to the prominent Kremlin critic.
The plea came from Navalny’s personal doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva, and three other doctors, including a cardiologist, in a letter to Russia’s Federal Prison Service officials that was posted to Vasilyeva’s Twitter account on April 17.
Navalny, 44, announced a hunger strike at the end of last month in protest at what he said was the refusal of prison authorities to allow him to receive proper medical care for acute back and leg pain.
The opposition leader said on April 16 that prison authorities were threatening to put him in a straightjacket to force-feed him.
The doctors’ statement said that blood tests showed that Navalny’s potassium count had reached a “critical level.”
“This means both impaired renal function and that serious heart rhythm problems can happen any minute,” the letter said.
Navalny was arrested in January on his arrival from Germany where he was treated for poisoning in Siberia with what was defined by European labs as a nerve agent in August last year. He has accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering the poisoning, which Kremlin has denied.
A Moscow court sentenced the opposition leader in February to 2 1/2 years in prison on charges he says were politically motivated.
Amnesty International has sharply criticized a request by Russian prosecutors to have the Anti-Corruption Foundation of imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny banned as an “extremist” organization.
“Tens of thousands of peaceful activists and the staff of Aleksei Navalny’s organizations are in grave danger,” Natalia Zviagina, head of Amnesty’s Moscow office, said in an April 17 statement. “If their organizations are deemed ‘extremist’ they will all be at imminent risk of criminal prosecution.”
The Amnesty statement also decried Russia’s “long history of abusing ‘anti-extremism’ legislation and said that if the courts grant the prosecutors’ request on labeling Navalny’s organization “extremist,” “the result will likely be one of the most serious blows for the rights to freedom of expression and association in Russia’s post-Soviet history.”
On April 16, the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office asked the Moscow City Court to label as “extremist” three organizations tied to Navalny: the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the Citizens’ Rights Protection Foundation, and Navalny’s regional headquarters. Prosecutors said the organizations were “engaged in creating conditions for destabilizing the social and sociopolitical situation under the guise of their liberal slogans.”
Under Russian law, membership in or funding of an “extremist” organization is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The move is the latest in a series of assaults on Navalny since he suffered a nerve-agent poisoning attack in August 2020. He and his supporters blame that attack on Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives acting at the behest of authoritarian President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny spent weeks in Germany recuperating from the attack. When he returned to Russia in January, he was arrested and later sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on charges he says were trumped up to hinder his political activity.
Navalny has been on a hunger strike in prison since March 31, demanding he be examined by his own doctor amid what his supporters have described as a “deliberate campaign” by prison officials to undermine his health.
On April 17, the French daily Le Monde and other leading European newspapers published an open letter signed by more than 70 actors, writers, directors, and other cultural figures demanding that Navalny be provided adequate medical treatment.
“As a Russian citizen, he is entitled to an examination and treatment by a doctor of his choice,” read the letter, which was signed by Nobel Prize laureates Herta Mueller, Louise Gluck, Orhan Pamuk, and Svetlana Alexievich, among others.
DUSHANBE — The wife of a suspected terrorist in Tajikistan, whose confession was shown on television nationwide, says her husband’s admission of guilt was coerced by investigators.
Imomali Idibegov’s televised statement, where he admitted to having links with terrorists, was broadcast on April 14.
During the program where the statement was made, Idibegov’s wife, Dilbar Ghanieva, confirms that her husband was detained on April 6 on terrorism charges.
But on April 15, Ghanieva told RFE/RL that police had forced them to confess to something her 38-year-old spouse had not done.
“The police interrogated us and insulted us with very vulgar words for a week. In the end, my husband could not stand it and said: ‘Let my wife go, I will confess to anything you want,’” she told RFE/RL.
“I know for sure that my husband is not a terrorist. They also forced me…to say on television that my husband is a terrorist,” Ghanieva said.
Though there was no immediate evidence to back up Ghanieva’s claims, domestic and international human rights groups have said that police in Tajikistan often use illegal methods to coerce people suspected in different crimes, including terrorism, as well as individuals persecuted for their political views or rights activities to confess.
The Interior Ministry has said Idibegov has expressed support for the Islamic State and other terrorist groups via the Internet and distributed materials propagating terrorism while working in Russia as a migrant worker in 2015-2017.
According to the ministry, Idibegov is also wanted in Russia, where he, along with two Uzbek nationals, is suspected of planning a series of terrorist attacks and financially supporting the Islamic State terrorist group.
In all, 29 Tajik citizens are wanted in Russia on terrorism-related charges.
Authorities in Tajikistan have said that about 2,000 citizens of the country joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, of whom more than 500 were killed.
NOVI SAD, Serbia — A Serbian broadcast journalist is in the hospital after being beaten by unidentified assailants in the northern city of Novi Sad, the latest in a string of attacks against media workers in the Balkan country.
Dasko Milinovic said in a tweet that he was tear-gassed and beaten with metal bars early on April 16 by two hooded men who then fled the scene.
The attack was condemned by Prime Ministe Ana Brnabic, who called it a “terrible and inadmissible” occurrence and vowed that the attackers will be “severely punished.”
Serbia, which is formally seeking European Union membership, is under growing pressure from the bloc to improve press freedoms and safety for reporters, especially for those investigating crime and corruption.
Local police told RFE/RL that they were investigating the incident in which Milinovic suffered “minor injuries,” according to a medical report quoted by the police.
Milinovic and his colleague, Mladen Urdarevic, host a daily satirical show called Alarm on their Internet radio station.
Following the attack, Milinovic wrote on Twitter that his state was good and blamed the attack on what he called “fascists.”
“I’m fine. Fascists are stupid as hell. I was tear-gassed and hit in the arm three times. Thanks for caring. Death to fascism!” Milinovic wrote.
The Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina (NDNV) called for the perpetrators of the attack to be brought to justice.
“This is another incident in a very short period of time in which journalists were directly attacked,” the NDVD said.
“Barbaric attacks show how seriously endangered the physical security of journalists and media workers in Serbia is today,” NDVD said, adding that such attacks were “a direct consequence of the inaction of state institutions, which do not solve attacks on journalists.”
Brnabic, speaking to journalists in Belgrade on April 16, said that the attack represented “a red line, which must not be crossed in a civilized society.”
In its latest report on Serbia, the EU said that “cases of threats, intimidation, and violence against journalists are still a source of serious concern.”
In February, a Serbian court sentenced Dragoljub Simonovic, the former mayor of a Belgrade suburb, to more than four years in prison for being behind a 2018 arson attack on the home of investigative reporter Milan Iovanovic.
President Aleksandar Vucic, who has been Serbia’s president since 2017, has faced accusations of curbing media freedoms and democracy.
RFE/RL has filed an urgent petition with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to block Russia from enforcing penalties for violations of its controversial “foreign agent” law that could cost the broadcaster more than $1 million.
The broadcaster said in a news release late on April 15 that it had asked the court in Strasbourg to grant interim measures ordering Russia to refrain from enforcing hundreds of “administrative protocols” that it has brought or threatened to bring against the media organization under the law, which critics say is aimed at muzzling independent media, especially RFE/RL.
The interim measures would be in place until the court can rule on the Russian government’s actions, RFE/RL said.
The “foreign agent” laws apply to foreign-funded media and to nongovernmental organizations that have been judged by the government as engaging in political activity and that receive foreign funding.
The laws have been widely criticized as aiming to undermine civil society and discredit critical reporting and dissent.
While RFE/RL has complied with all of its legal obligations under the “foreign agent” law, it has declined to implement the new labeling requirement established by the state media-monitoring agency Roskomnadzor.
The measures are “clearly intended to damage its reputation and viability as an independent media organization in Russia,” RFE/RL’s news release said.
As a result, Roskomnadzor has filed 390 violation cases, so-called protocols, against RFE/RL’s Moscow bureau and its general director, Andrei Shary, over a period of three months. Fines from those actions total approximately $1,430,000.
Roskomnadzor is due to begin filing an additional 130 cases against RFE/RL and Shary on April 16, with additional fines estimated at nearly $1 million, RFE/RL said.
If the fines are not paid, Russian authorities have the power to place RFE/RL into insolvency and/or to block access to its media sites, while Shary faces the prospect of a prison sentence of up to two years and personal bankruptcy.
RFE/RL argues that Russia’s actions violate the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press that are protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and says that if the court does not act now, its Moscow bureau and its general director “will suffer irreversible harms.”
RFE/RL also warned that, left unchecked, the Kremlin’s campaign will have a chilling effect on what is left of independent media in Russia.
“RFE/RL will not be put in a position of undermining freedom of speech and journalistic integrity,” RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said.
“We will not allow Roskomnadzor and the Kremlin to make editorial decisions about how we engage our audiences in Russia,” he was quoted as saying.
RFE/RL hopes the ECHR “will view these actions by the government of Russia for what they are: an attempt to suppress free speech and the human rights of the Russian people, and a dangerous precedent at a time when independent media are under assault around the globe,” Fly said.
Russia’s so-called “foreign agent” legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as “foreign agents,” and to submit to audits.
Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media. In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL’s Russian Service, known locally as Radio Svoboda, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time on the list.
Since October, Roskomnadzor has ordered broadcasters designated as foreign agents to add a lengthy statement to news reports, social-media posts, and audiovisual materials specifying that the content was created by an outlet “performing the functions of a foreign agent.”
RFE/RL is an editorially independent media company funded by a grant from the U.S. Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Each week, nearly 7 million people access RFE/RL’s news portals in Russia.
RFE/RL’s Russian-language news services are the only international media outlets with a physical presence in Russia to have been designated “foreign agents.”
ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Jailed Kazakh activist Kenzhebek Abishev, who started a hunger strike several days ago protesting the cancellation of his release on parole and prison conditions, was rushed overnight to hospital in a critical condition.
Abishev’s lawyer, Gulnar Zhuaspaeva, told RFE/RL on April 15 that an ambulance brought her client to the Qapshaghai City Hospital overnight.
According to her, physicians diagnosed Abishev, who was recognized by human rights groups as a political prisoner, with coronary heart disease.
Zhuaspaeva quoted the hospital’s doctor, Zubaira Sarsenova, as saying that Abishev’s current condition had improved to “stable.”
An opposition activist, Rysbek Sarsenbaiuly, told RFE/RL that Abishev did not stop his hunger strike, adding that he and other activists urged him via the hospital window to end it to stay alive.
Sarsenbaiuly said he and his colleagues will demand authorities restore the court decision on Abishev’s early release on parole.
Abishev, who was jailed for being linked to a political movement founded by a fugitive tycoon, launched the hunger strike on April 11 and wrote an open letter to President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev asking him to intervene in his case.
In his letter, Abishev called the cancellation of the court decision to release him on parole in February and the case against him “illegal,” adding that his medical conditions — heart and respiratory problems — had worsened due to the lack of proper medical treatment in prison.
There have been no official statements regarding Abishev’s hunger strike either by Kazakhstan’s Penitentiary Service or the Prosecutor-General’s Office.
On February 1, the Qapshaghai City Court in Kazakhstan’s south ruled that Abishev can be released on February 16, more than three years early, for good behavior while in prison, a procedure allowed by Kazakh laws.
However, the Almaty regional prosecutor’s office appealed the ruling at the very last moment, arguing that the 53-year-old activist’s good behavior in custody was not enough for his release since he still has more than three years to serve. The court then scrapped the move, leaving Abishev in prison.
Abishev was sentenced to seven years in prison in December 2018 after he and two other activists were found guilty of planning a “holy war” because they were spreading the ideas of the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement. His prison term was later cut by eight months.
Abishev pleaded not guilty, calling the case against him politically motivated.
The DVK was founded by Mukhtar Ablyazov, an outspoken critic of the Kazakh government who has been residing in France for several years.
Ablyazov has been organizing unsanctioned anti-government rallies in Kazakhstan via the Internet in recent years.
MOSCOW — Since his return to Russia and subsequent jailing in January, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny has been the subject of heated debates amid a wave of criminal cases and harassment against those who publicly endorse him.
Students have been expelled and supporters of all stripes subjected to punitive measures for speaking out in favor of the Kremlin critic and his yearslong campaign against authoritarian President Vladimir Putin.
But throughout the clampdown, one institution has largely maintained a guarded silence: the Russian Orthodox Church.
So when Aleksei Uminsky, the head of a parish in east-central Moscow, urged “Christian mercy” for Navalny in a two-minute video posted online, his words prompted a spate of accusations and an unusual public apology that forced the institution to break its silence and exposed a division within it over political issues and proximity to the state.
“For me as a priest, it’s not so important what an inmate’s name is or what crime he was convicted of,” Uminsky says in the video, without specifically endorsing Navalny or his politics. “But what is hugely important for me are the words of Christ, who urges the same attitude toward every person who finds themselves behind bars as toward Christ himself.”
Navalny’s deteriorating health since he was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on February 2 has been a cause célèbre for Russian civil society and many public figures concerned about the scale and severity of the state’s campaign to root out opposition ahead of parliamentary elections expected in September.
It’s also the latest dark turn in Navalny’s monthslong ordeal, which began with his poisoning with a military-grade nerve agent in August, continued with his jailing upon his return from treatment in Germany, and now, his relatives and supporters allege, could reach a grim denouement with a hunger strike that he commenced in early April over inadequate medical care at a notorious prison 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
A still image from CCTV footage shows what is said to be jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny speaking with a prison guard at his prison outside Moscow earlier this month.
Church leaders, who hold sway over millions of faithful in Russia, have been tight-lipped over the Navalny saga. So heads turned when, within two days of Uminsky’s public plea on April 7, the Russian Orthodox Church’s Spas TV channel aired a lengthy tirade against the priest.
During a one-sided, 90-minute program titled Who Is Dragging The Church Into Politics And Making Martyrs Of Criminals?, Sergei Karnaukhov, a lecturer in politics at a Moscow university, described Uminsky as a “criminal in a cassock” and suggested the priest should be arrested before he “plunges our church into an abyss.” Karnaukhov called for a broader, concerted campaign to discipline priests who undermine Russia’s constitution.
Uminsky, a well-regarded priest who has published extensively on the topic of church teaching and served as a television host in his own right, has long cultivated a reputation as one of the few Russian clergymen who openly sympathizes with the opposition. He has visited Russian prisons to speak with inmates and chaplains and has added his name to initiatives in support of jailed Russian protesters.
In 2019, amid a crackdown following rallies in Moscow that led to prison sentences for participants, Uminsky was one of more than 180 priests who signed an open letter urging the authorities to show leniency and free arrested activists. It was an intervention in politics that church scholars said was unprecedented in Russia since the 1991 Soviet collapse, and it prompted a move by church authorities to discipline some clergymen who endorsed it.
Karnaukhov’s denunciation of Uminsky’s statement was in line with the Kremlin’s long-standing conspiratorial narrative about protests and those who back them. But despite its close ties to the state, the Orthodox Church has often been riven by conflicting views over whether and how to respond to opposition protests and the authorities’ often violent tactics to suppress them. And the stance of Uminsky, a respected clergyman, has only deepened that ambivalence.
“Uminsky has long irritated the most conservative members of the church,” church expert Roman Lunkin told RFE/RL. “But disciplining him would risk alienating other church members, especially young believers who may feel sympathy for Navalny.”
Against this backdrop, Karnaukhov’s public condemnation of Uminsky’s stance — and especially his calls for criminal charges — elicited a spat among bodies tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, a generally ultraconservative faith whose head, Patriarch Kirill, has aligned himself publicly with Putin and been accused of, and vehemently denied, engaging in large-scale corruption.
Orthodoxy And The World, a popular news website focused on church issues, announced it was severing ties with Spas TV until the channel apologizes to Uminsky. Karnaukhov’s words represented the “mockery of a respected priest,” the outlet said. After several other church figures and religious experts criticized the Spas TV program, the channel promised to issue an apology to Uminsky.
The apology, or something close to it, came at the end of a studio discussion on April 12. Golovanov, the Spas TV presenter, stopped short of defending Uminsky, but acknowledged that airing Karnaukhov’s accusations was a mistake. He said the church’s role was to rise above social conflicts and mediate peace between warring parties. He promised his program would return to its original primary focus: church teaching and questions of faith.
“Spas TV, like the church, unites people of all stripes,” Golovanov said. “Sorry to all those who were offended.”
MOSCOW — A Moscow court has placed in de facto house arrest four editors of the student magazine Doxa who have been accused of “engaging minors in actions that might be dangerous” over a video related to unsanctioned rallies to protest the incarceration of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.
The Basmanny district court late on April 14 ordered Armen Aramyan, Vladimir Metyolkin, Natalya Tyshkevich, and Alla Gutnikova not to leave their homes between 11.59 p.m. and midnight for two months, giving them only one minute to be outside each day.
The four were detained for questioning at the Investigative Committee after their homes and the magazine’s offices were searched over the video, which the magazine posted online in January.
Dozens of supporters held single-person protests near the court and organized “a live chain,” to express support for the four editors. Police detained one of the protesters.
As the journalists left the court one by one after the announcement of their pretrial restrictions, supporters cheered and applauded them.
The video for which the journalists were charged questioned teachers’ moves to warn students about possible repercussions they could face for participating in unsanctioned rallies on January 23 and 31 in protest of Navalny’s arrest.
Doxa editors say the video was deleted from the magazine’s website following a demand from Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor to remove it.
More than 10,000 supporters of Navalny were detained across Russia during and after the January rallies.
Many of the detained men and women were either fined or handed several-day jail terms. At least 90 were charged with criminal offenses and several have been fired by their employers.
Human rights groups have called on Moscow repeatedly to stop targeting journalists because they covered the protests or expressed solidarity with protesters since both are protected under the right to freedom of expression.
“Instead of targeting journalists, the authorities should hold accountable police who attack journalists and interfere with their work,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement on February 3.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning in Siberia in August 2020 that several European laboratories concluded was from a military-grade chemical nerve agent.
Navalny has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered as being politically motivated.
Navalny’s 3 1/2-year suspended sentence from that case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison, given the amount of time he had been held in detention.
BISHKEK — Raimbek Matraimov, the controversial former deputy chief of the Kyrgyz Customs Service who was placed on the U.S. Magnitsky sanctions list for his involvement in the illegal funneling of hundreds of millions of dollars abroad, has been released from custody and the investigation has been closed.
The State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said on April 15 that the money-laundering probe against Matraimov was stopped after investigators had not found any cash or real estate belonging to Matraimov or members of his family abroad.
When Matraimov was rearrested in February, the UKMK said he was held as a suspect for laundering money through the purchase of property in China, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates.
A Bishkek court in February ordered pretrial custody for Matraimov in connection with the corruption charges after hundreds of Kyrgyz protested a previous ruling mitigating a sentence after a guilty plea to no jail time and fines of just a few thousand dollars.
The court had justified the mitigated sentence by saying that Matraimov had paid back around $24 million that disappeared through schemes that he oversaw.
That decision was based on an economic-amnesty law passed in December 2020 that allows individuals who obtained financial assets through illegal means to avoid prosecution by turning the assets over to the State Treasury.
The idea of an economic amnesty was announced in October by Sadyr Japarov, then-acting Kyrgyz president, just a day after Matraimov was detained and placed under house arrest.
Japarov has since been elected president on a pledge to stamp out graft and enact reforms. Japarov also championed a new constitution — approved by voters earlier this month — that expands the power of the president.
Critics say the amnesty legislation was proposed and hastily prepared by lawmakers to allow Matraimov and others to avoid conviction for corruption, while the constitutional changes create an authoritarian system and concentrate too much power in the hands of the president..
In June 2019 an investigation by RFE/RL, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Kloop implicated Matraimov in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan by Chinese-born Uyghur businessman Aierken Saimaiti, who was subsequently assassinated in Istanbul in November 2019.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the estimated $700 million scheme involved a company controlled by Matraimov bribing officials to skirt customs fees and regulations, as well as engaging in money laundering, “allowing for maximum profits.”
In a section on respect for civil liberties, including freedom of the press, the State Department noted threats to journalists involved in that report, which implicated Matraimov.
In January, the 49-year-old Matraimov changed his last name to Ismailov, while his wife, Uulkan Turgunova, changed her family name to Sulaimanova.
The changed names, confirmed to RFE/RL by a spokesperson for Kyrgyzstan’s state registration service, were seen as an attempt to evade the U.S.- imposed sanctions.
There have been no official statements from lawyers for Matraimov’s family to explain the name change.
NUR-SULTAN — Kazakh activist Erbol Eskhozhin has gone on trial over his alleged links with the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement as authorities continue to roundup supporters of the group that is led from abroad by former banker Mukhtar Ablyazov.
The Saryarqa district court in the Kazakh capital began the hearing on April 14 as about a dozen of activists rallied in the city, demanding Eskhozhin’s release and expressing support for dozens of other activists sentenced for backing the DVK in recent years.
The trial is being held online due to coronavirus precautions.
Eskhozhin, 44, was arrested in December 2020 and charged with taking part in the activities of the DVK, which was labelled as extremist and banned in the country in 2018.
Last December, the charge was changed to organizing activities for the DVK, which is an offense punishable by up to six years in prison. Eskhozhin has rejected the charge as politically motivated.
In recent years, many activists across the Central Asian nation have been convicted for their involvement in the activities of the DVK and its associated grouping, the Koshe (Street) Party.
Last week, human rights activists in Kazakhstan’s second-largest city, Almaty, expressed concerns over the situation faced by another jailed DVK supporter, Aset Abishev, who, the activists said, was placed in solitary confinement after he cut his wrists to protest his treatment by guards and overall prison conditions.
After I called on the President to fire the Postal leadership, one of its board members sent my office unhinged messages and threats, detailed here. It’s yet more evidence he and the entire board should be fired.
