The total number of Jehovah’s Witnesses currently being prosecuted for their faith in Russia has reached 206.
Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: The Case of Jehovah’s Witnesses
All posts by dmitry
Today, we’d like to remind people who respect human rights once again about The Kremlin’s political prisoners. The very fact people are imprisoned in today’s Russia for their political and religious beliefs shouldn’t be tolerated by the world.
There is a bittersweet development we believe is important to write about today. Yesterday, Konstantin Kotov, 34, imprisoned under the “Moscow case,” married a 19-year-old suspected extremist, Anna Pavlikova, at Moscow’s infamous Matrosskaya Tishina jail.
Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: The Case of Anna Pavlikova and Konstantin Kotov
Eduard Malyshevsky and Nikita Chirtsov were the last to be detained in the Moscow Case. They have been charged under Article 318, Section 1, of the Russian Criminal Code (‘Using force against a public official without endangering life or health’).
Free Russia Foundation supports a protest letter to CFR over a tainted donation from a Kremlin-connected oligarch Len Blavatnik
On March 27, 2019, in Magas, Ingushetia, clashes occurred between participants of a protest rally and The National Guard (RosGvardiya) and police officers after they tried to disperse the rally. 10 police and RosGvardiya officers reportedly received various injuries. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on the use of violence against law enforcement officers.
Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: The Case of the Protestors in Magas
COALITION OF PRO-DEMOCRACY RUSSIANS
Activatica * Free Russia Foundation * Free Russia House Kyiv * Forum Russischsprachiger Europäer e.V. * Solidarus * Stowarzyszenie “Za Wolną Rosję”* Russie-Libertes * Herzen Foundation
invite you to a conference
PUTIN’S NORD STREAM 2 PIPELINE AND ITS REAL COSTS TO EUROPE
learn more at RethinkTheDeal.eu
OCTOBER 10, 2019
9:00 AM to 15:30 PM
THE WESTIN GRAND BERLIN
FRIEDRICHSTRASSE 158-164
10117 BERLIN
The Nord Stream 2 project – that delivers no new gas to Europe, exploits political and strategic vulnerabilities, increases supply risks, destroys nature and drives members of the EU apart – is quickly advancing toward its completion.
Yet no public discussion of this important decision has been held where the German people can evaluate the basics of the Nord Stream 2 on its merits.
You’ve heard from the gas lobbyists, the gas companies and the Kremlin (the same Kremlin that has carried out yet another assassination on the EU soil). What you won’t hear from them are the environmental, security and financial risks of completing the pipeline. There is another side.
Please join us for this open forum where prominent European energy experts, environmental scientists, strategists and human rights defenders examine the true objectives and costs of the Nord Stream 2.
Free Admission. Registration is required.
With questions, email: [email protected]
AGENDA:
08:30 – 09:00 Registration and Breakfast
09:00 – 09:15 Opening Remarks
09:15 – 10:30 Panel I: Examining the Nord Stream 2 Deal on Its Merits
10:30 – 10:45 Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:00 Panel II: Environmental Impact of NS2
12:00 – 12:30 Buffet Lunch
12:30 – 13:45 Panel III: Economic Implications of NS2 for Germany and the EU
13:45 – 14:00 Coffee Break
14:00 – 15:15 Panel IV: NS2 as Politics by Other Means
15:15 – 15:30 Closing Remarks
15:30 Adjournment
Confirmed Speakers:
- Natalia Arno, President, Free Russia Foundation
- Ralf Fuecks, Managing Director, Zentrum Liberale Moderne
- Rebecca Harms, former Member of the European Parliament
- Gustav Gressel, Senior Policy Fellow, ECFR
- Ilya Zaslavskiy, Head of Research, Free Russia Foundation
- Evgeniya Chirikova, Environmental activist, Activatica
- Mikhail Korchemkin, East European Gas Analysis
- Margarita Assenova, Associate Scholar, Center for European Policy Analysis; Director of Programs for the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Jamestown Foundation
- Alan Riley, Senior Fellow, the Institute for Statecraft in London
- Julian Röpcke, BILD
- Marko Mihkelson, Deputy Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee of Estonian Parliament
- Svitlana Zalishchuk, former MP of Ukrainian Parliament
- Olena Pavlenko, President of DiXi Group
- Sijbren de Jong, SHAPE NATO
- Boris Reitschuster, Journalist
- Jens Høvsgaard, Danish author
COALITION OF PRO-DEMOCRACY RUSSIANS
Activatica * Free Russia Foundation * Free Russia House Kyiv * Forum Russischsprachiger Europäer e.V. * Solidarus * Stowarzyszenie Za Wolną Rosję* Herzen Foundation * Russie-Libertés
invite you to a conference
PUTIN’S NORD STREAM 2 PIPELINE AND ITS REAL COSTS TO EUROPE
learn more at RethinkTheDeal.eu
September 26, 2019
9:00 am to 3:30 pm
Hilton the Hague hotel
Zeestraat 35, 2518
The Hague, the Netherlands
The Nord Stream 2 project – that delivers no new gas to Europe, exploits political and strategic vulnerabilities, increases supply risks, destroys nature and drives members of the EU apart – is quickly advancing toward its completion.
Yet no public discussion of this important decision has been held where the Dutch people can evaluate the basics of the Nord Stream 2 on its merits.
You’ve heard from the gas lobbyists, the gas companies and the Kremlin (the same Kremlin that still won’t tell the truth about MH 17). What you won’t hear from them are the environmental, security and financial risks of completing the pipeline. There is another side.
Please join us for this open forum where prominent European energy experts, environmental scientists, strategists and human rights defenders examine the true objectives and costs of the Nord Stream 2.
Free Admission. Registration is required. REGISTER HERE
With questions, email: [email protected]
AGENDA:
09:00 – 09:15 Opening remarks:
- Natalia Arno, President of Free Russia Foundation
- Richard Hoogland, D66 Board Member Department International Cooperation
09:15 – 10:30 Examining the Nord Stream 2 Deal on Its Merits
Moderator: Ilya Zaslavskiy, Head of Research, FRF
Speakers:
- Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, D66 MP
- Bram van Ojik, politician and diplomat of the GreenLeft party
- Mikhail Krutikhin, Partner, RusEnergy consulting agency
- Jan Frederik Braun, Strategic Energy Analyst, the Hague Center for Strategic Studies
- Can Ögütcü, Lead analyst for energy security, NATO SHAPE
10:30 – 10:45 Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:00 Environmental Impact of NS2
Moderator: Jan Frederik Braun, Strategic Energy Analyst, the Hague Center for Strategic Studies
Speakers:
- Evgeniya Chirikova, Environmental activist, Activatica
- Scott Martin, Global Rights Compliance
- Dmitry Berezhkov, former Vice President, Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North
- Stephan Singer, Senior Advisor Global Energy Policies, Climate Action Network International
12:00 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30 – 13:45 Economic implications of NS2 for the Netherlands and the EU
Moderator: Roman Nitsovych, Research Director, DiXi Group
Speakers:
- Mikhail Korchemkin, East European Gas Analysis
- Prof. Alan Riley, Senior Fellow, the Institute for Statecraft in London
- Borbála Takácsné Tóth, Senior Research Associate, Regional Centre for Energy Policy Research
13:45 – 14:00 Coffee break
14:00 – 15:15 NS2 as Kremlin Politics by Other Means
Moderator: Tony van der Togt, Associate Senior Research Fellow Clingendael
Speakers:
- Rem Korteweg, Senior Research Fellow, Clingendael Institute
- Svitlana Zalishchuk, former MP of Ukrainian Parliament
- Jan Šír, Assistant Professor, Department of Russian and East European Studies, Charles University in Prague
- Ilya Zaslavskiy, Head of Research, FRF
15:15 – 15:30 Closing remarks:
- Natalia Arno, President of Free Russia Foundation
Memorial Human Rights Centre, in accordance with international guidelines defining the term ‘political prisoner,’ has declared Abdulmumin Gadzhiev a political prisoner. We demand his immediate release.
Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: The Case of Abdulmumin Gadzhiev
On Thursday, September 12, 2019, a prosecutor asked the court to sentence Pavel Ustinov to six years in jail. According to investigators, the man was an active participant in an unauthorized rally in central Moscow on August 3, 2019. While under arrest, Ustinov resisted a National Guard officer causing the officer to suffer a dislocated shoulder. The defendant pleads not guilty. Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: The Case of Pavel Ustinov
On September 16, 2019, the “Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM)” will take place in Warsaw. Continue reading Coalition For Sovereign Elections Calls on the OSCE to Highlight ‘Creeping Annexation’ of Georgia on the Upcoming Human Dimension Implementation Meeting
Tuesday, September 17
10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EDT
(Light refreshments served at 10:00 a.m.)
National Endowment for Democracy
1025 F Street NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20004
Welcome and Opening Remarks:
Daniel O’Maley, Deputy Editor and Digital Policy Specialist, Center for International Media Assistance
Speakers:
Natalia Arno, President, Free Russia Foundation
Ron Deibert, Director, The Citizen Lab
David Kaye, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression
Valentin Weber, University of Oxford and OTF Information Controls Fellow
Moderator:
Laura Cunningham, Principal Director, Open Technology Fund
The rapid proliferation of censorship and surveillance technology around the world is threatening human rights. These technologies are no longer limited to countries who have the resources and technical capabilities to build them from scratch. Authoritarian governments across the globe are acquiring state of the art repression technology at an alarming rate. These technologies are then used to target journalists and human rights defenders, stifle free speech, and undermine democracy.
Authored by OTF Information Controls Fellow Valentin Weber, a new research report to be released at the event tracks the export of Chinese and Russian censorship and surveillance technology around the world, providing fresh insight into the importance of telecommunications infrastructure to modern authoritarianism.
This report adds to a growing body of research that demonstrates how widespread this technology has become and that the sources range from Western companies to those closely affiliated with the Chinese and Russian governments. The panel will explore the alarming rate with which this sophisticated technology has been employed to silence dissent, the widespread harms this proliferation has caused, and what can be done to counter it.
Speaker Bios:
Natalia Arno is the president and founder of Free Russia Foundation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan US-based nongovernmental organization that informs US policy makers on events in Russia in real time and supports the formulation of an effective and sustainable US policy on Russia. In 2004, Natalia joined the International Republican Institute, a US nonprofit nonpartisan organization advancing democracy worldwide. She worked there for ten years, six of which were as Russia Country Director. In December 2009, Natalia represented Russia in the World Summit of World Leaders in Geneva, Switzerland. Forced to leave Russia as a result of her pro-democracy work, Natalia founded the Free Russia Foundation with a number of other pro-democracy exiled activists in 2014. The organization serves as a voice for those who cannot speak under the repression of the current Russian leadership.
Ron Deibert is professor of political science and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. He was a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative (2003-2014) and Information Warfare Monitor (2003-2012) projects. Mr. Deibert was one of the founders and (former) VP of global policy and outreach for Psiphon, one of the world’s leading digital censorship circumvention services. He has published numerous articles, chapters, and books on issues related technology, media, and world politics. He was one of the authors of the landmark Tracking Ghostnet (2009) and the Shadows in the Cloud (2010) reports, which documented two separate major global cyber espionage networks, and the Great Cannon report, which documented a new offensive “cyber weapon” co-located with China’s Great Firewall. He is the author of Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace (2013).
David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. His 2019 book, Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (Columbia Global Reports), explores the ways in which companies, governments and activists struggle to define the rules for online expression. Mr. Kaye’s most recent report to the UN Human Rights Council addressed the challenge of regulating the private surveillance industry.
Valentin Weber is a DPhil Candidate in Cyber Security at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security, University of Oxford. Mr. Weber is interested in how the cyber domain is changing conflicts and state strategies. His current research focuses on the integration of cyber and grand strategy, as well as on the role of information controls in state strategies. He previously worked for the International Security Department at Chatham House.
Yulia Galyamina, a Municipal Deputy and unregistered candidate for the Moscow City Parliament, has been jailed for a third consecutive time this week on the same charge of “organizing an unsanctioned rally.” Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: #MoscowElectionCrisis The Case of Yulia Galyamina
On 8 September 2019 Russia’s largest cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg – will hold elections, respectively, for the City Duma and municipal councils. Continue reading Moscow and St. Petersburg Candidates Call on the OSCE to Monitor Regional Elections
Working group of the “Coalition for Sovereign Elections” calls International community to give strong immediate reaction on aggression of the Kremlin in Georgia. Continue reading Coalition for Sovereign Elections Calls International Community to Give Strong Immediate Reaction on Aggression of the Kremlin in Georgia
FRF was reportedly one of 30 organizations subjected to phishing attacks on the highly-encrypted ProtonMail servers and remains under a barrage of Kremlin propaganda amid massive protests in Moscow. Continue reading FRF has seen increased targeting by sophisticated cyber and legislative attacks by the Kremlin in recent months
Over the last weekend, as the Kremlin continued its crackdown on recent protests calling for free elections in the city, police in Moscow arrested 1,001 demonstrators, according to independent monitoring group OVD-info. Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: #MoscowElectionCrisis Continues
The political crisis in Moscow is unraveling at a dizzying speed, and it is doing so along the worst possible scenario. Continue reading The Bolotnaya Square Case 2.0: Top Ten Takeaways
Fearful of independent voices even at local levels, Putin’s regime disqualified every single pro-democracy candidate from participating in the Moscow City Council elections. Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: #MoscowElectionCrisis
The Free Russia Foundation team and the Board of Directors are grieving together with our friend and Vice President Vladimir Kara-Murza and his family on the loss of his father, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a very talented Russian journalist. Continue reading FRF Mourns Loss of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Sr.
Ten opposition-minded residents of Moscow and Moscow region have been charged with creating an extremist group, ‘New Greatness,’ (Novoe Velichie) in December 2017, allegedly for the purposes of the violent overthrow of the government and constitutional order of Russia (Article 282.1 of the Russian Criminal Code). Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: The Case of New Greatness
CASE UPDATE: Yesterday, September 10, 2020, was 600 days since Anastasia Shevchenko, an activist with the Open Russia movement, was placed under a house arrest. Continue reading The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: The Case of Anastasia Shevchenko
Director, South Caucasus
Media manager and political expert from Russia based in Tbilisi, Georgia since 2012. He started his career at the Echo of Moscow. He is a recently appointed representative for Deutsche Welle on South Caucasus, as well as director for media project: “Information in Russian VS Soft Power of the Kremlin” project. For two years he has been producing a famous talk-show “Border Zone,” where he discusses regional conflicts, foreign policy of Russia as well as NATO and EU politics on the post-Soviet space.
Director for Special Investigations
Michael Weiss is editor-at-large at The Daily Beast. He is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror and of The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money. He is currently overseeing The Lubyanka Files project, which consists of translating and curating KGB training manuals still used in modern Russia for the purposes of educating Vladimir Putin’s spies.
Russia is known as a country with a high level of domestic violence. There are no official statics available, while the Crisis Centers for Women and other organizations concerned with this issue face serious challenges, when they try to collect data on crimes and violence.
Continue reading Russian faux family values: Domestic violence decriminalized in Russia
A conversation between Irina Kosterina and Sergei Oushakine, Princeton, New Jersey, 2015. Part 2.
Continue reading We are good at keeping quiet — about many things…
A conversation between Irina Kosterina and Serguei Oushakine, Princeton, New Jersey, 2015.
Continue reading We do not learn from the past, we live in it