Human Rights, "Reset," Russia, terrorism and the Caucasus -- you need to read this Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Sarah Mendelson of CSIS has a terrific piece over at Foreign Policy that:

• gives a simple overview of what's going on in the North Caucasus (Chechnya and its neighbors);

• puts the recent killings of Russian human rights defenders into a broader context; and

• gives a terrific explanation of how the new Obama Administration approach could work to lever real progress inside Russia on civili society issues, but also what it will take to do so, from the Administration but also from other governments and our own media and non-governmental groups.

The two money graphs:

[Obama's] new approach is one I heartily applauded as one of the conveners of the Civil Society Summit, the Moscow forum where Obama delivered that message. Over two days of discussion, I heard a multitude of Russian policy thinkers and activists articulate a deep desire to alter the dynamic of U.S.-Russian engagement, after years of one-way American lectures about the rule of law and democracy. Across the Russian political spectrum, they want peer-to-peer engagement. But the long-time trend within policy communities of either not acknowledging, or not knowing what to do about the disastrous human rights situation in the North Caucasus, poses a major challenge to the new approach. At the summit, my colleagues and I acknowledged what we referred to with purposeful vagueness as the "asymmetries" in Russian and American civil societies. We gingerly tip-toed around the bare, brutal fact: These two countries cannot engage as equals while our peers are routinely disappeared and murdered, their killers free on the streets and the government indifferent about, if not, as some believe, involved in their deaths.

And:

Clearly, the burden to end impunity in the North Caucasus needs to shift away from the activists, lawyers, and journalists who gather each victim's story in painstaking detail, and away from overworked and underfunded organizations like Memorial, Human Rights Watch, the Danish Refugee Council, and Caucasian Knot. They have already provided a plethora of information on the abuses. Tens of thousands of cases have reached the European Court of Human Rights. Several Russian lawyers recently published a 1,200 page book making the case for an international tribunal for crimes committed in Chechnya. (The book has an English summary section starting on page 559.) But I have yet to see one Western news outlet report on its publication.  The situation where activist after activist essentially walks into a hail of bullets demands a new strategy. The burden ought to shift to policymakers and diplomats, to the Obama administration and European governments. It ought to shift to Germany, which has a special relationship with Russia, to Sweden, which holds the current EU presidency, and, most of all, to the Kremlin.

 

Comments

[kb]

"At the summit, my colleagues and I acknowledged what we referred to with purposeful vagueness as the "asymmetries" in Russian and American civil societies"

What "asymetries" is that?
The USA has torture chambers and so does Russia.
The USA snatches people from the streets of other countries and russia doesnt.
The USA launches wars of aggression and the Russians dont.

The USA is a deeply unpleasant bunch of thugs and bleeting how the USA is 'special' or how the US is 'a city on a hill' doesn't convince anyone.

I mean , everyone knows the USA is deeply convinced of it's own wonderfulness but everyone else is quite well aware of the brutality and viciousness that the USA represents.

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