On February 21, 2020, on the second day of the Winter Session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, a side event was held in Vienna on the problem of political prisoners in the OSCE area. More
Speakers Maria Eismont, a lawyer and a journalist; Vladimir Kara-Murza, Vice President, Free Russia Foundation; Gunnar M. Ekeløve-Slydal, Head of Policies of Norwegian Helsinki Committee; Ilya Nuzov, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH); and Olga Shamshur Flydal, Senior Advisor at Norwegian Helsinki Committee presented recent developments concerning political prisoners in some of the OSCE participating states including Russia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Also they discussed developments in other OSCE participating states concerning weakening of safeguards for fair trials and increased political control over the judiciary. The speakers also focused on proposing measures and ideas on how the OSCE and its participating states can deal with these problems.
The event was hosted by the Delegation of the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania and arranged in cooperation with the Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the OSCE. It was moderated by Bjørn Engesland, Secretary General of Norwegian Helsinki Committee. The opening and ending remarks were made by Ms. Rūta Miliūtė and Mr. Laurynas Kasčiūnas, members of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly from Lithuania.
At the event, reference was made to the definition of political prisoners adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in 2012, and endorsed by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in 2014. According to this definition, political imprisonment or deprivation of liberty:
Prague will rename the square in front of the Russian embassy in honor of the Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. The ceremonial renaming will take place on February 27, the same day when the Russian opposition leader was assassinated five years ago. More
President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent opponent at the time, Nemtsov was shot dead near the Kremlin in February 2015.
In recent years, the name Nemtsov has appeared in the toponymy of different cities around the world. First, at the end of February 2018, Boris Nemtsov Plaza appeared in Washington, DC. In August 2018, a square named after Boris Nemtsov was opened in front of the Russian Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania. The square named after Boris Nemtsov was opened in March 2019 near the building of the Russian Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine. Also, commemorative plaques associated with the name of Nemtsov appeared in some cities in Russia.
Based on reporting by Denikn.cz
On December 2, 2019, Free Russia Foundation marks its fifth birthday.
In our first five years we have:
With a rapidly-expanding network of regional offices and partnerships, we have earned a much-cherished reputation as a global embassy for pro-democracy Russians. We will continue to open doors and provide high-profile platforms in the West to these courageous men and women. We take our growing numbers as a confirmation that our work matters and we are on the right path.
We are very proud of our achievements, but today is not a date to celebrate. The real celebration will come on the day when there is no more need for Free Russia Foundation and when our organization becomes irrelevant. The day when the rights, dignity and hope are restored to the Russian people.
We are grateful for your support in this fight. Together we will succeed.
If you want to support our fight for a free Russia, please donate via this fundraising campaign: https://www.facebook.com/donate/636048250264187/
Free Russia Foundation supports a protest letter to CFR over a tainted donation from a Kremlin-connected oligarch Len Blavatnik
On 8 October NY Post and Motherjones revealed that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is under heavy criticism over its acceptance of $12 million donation from Len Blavatnik, an oligarch with deep ties with the Kremlin and Russian security services whose wealth accumulation overlapped with multiple corruption scandals around the world.
56 distinguished foreign policy professionals and anti-corruption activists signed a letter to CFR President Richard Haass and its Board of Directors, urging the elite think tank to reverse its decision. The signatories include five CFR members, dozens of former top State Department officials and renowned dissidents and academics. It also includes David Kramer, Chairman of the Board of Free Russia Foundation, and Natalia Arno, Founder and President of the Foundation. The letter was organized by Ilya Zaslavskiy, Head of Research at Free Russia, with the help of Sarah Chayes, author and anti-corruption researcher, and other activists.
Free Russia Foundation stands against reputation laundering and normalization of acceptance of money connected to the corrupt Putin’s regime and advocates higher due diligence standards by all policy-making centers in the West. If you share our concern over oligarchic donations tainted by cooperation with the Kremlin, please co-sign the letter to CFR in the comments to the published letter or simply email your name and title to admin@underminers.info.
Photo by Roman Synkevych on Unsplash
On September 16, 2019, the “Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM)” will take place in Warsaw. More
To the attention of:
OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Miroslav Lajčák
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President, George Tsereteli
OSCE Democratic Institutions and Human Rights office Director, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir
September 10, 2019
APPEAL
On September 16, 2019, the “Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM)” will take place in Warsaw. This meeting serves as a platform for the 57 OSCE participating States, the OSCE Partners for Co-operation, OSCE structures, civil society, international organizations and other relevant actors to take stock of the implementation of OSCE human dimension commitments, discuss associated challenges, share good practices and make recommendations for further improvement.
The Working Group of the “Coalition for Sovereign Elections” – Georgia 2020, express it’s gratitude to the OSCE Permanent Council for the distributed statement covering current situation on the occupation lines in Georgia. At the same time we call on OSCE Leadership as well as the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights to include “Ongoing aggression of the Kremlin in Georgia” in the Agenda of the Meeting and respectfully invite the Permanent Representative of Georgia to OSCE H.E. David Dondua to report on events taking place on the so-called border with occupied Tskhinvali region.
Since August 7, 2019 – the eleventh anniversary of the Russia-Georgia war – the occupation regime has been continuously carrying out illegal and unjustified provocations against Georgia. Since the beginning of August, a new wave of borderization and creeping annexation in the Gugutiantkari village has caused Georgian citizens to lose their homes again.
At the moment, the situation has gone beyond the level of provocations that Georgia is used to during the last 11 years of its occupation. The Kremlin-backed unrecognized regime has been directly threatening Georgia with a military conflict for several days, recalling the 2008 Russian-Georgian war. The threats come amid the process of borderization and kidnapping of Georgian citizens (nine people have been kidnapped since the beginning of the August). Soldiers and military equipment of the occupying forces have been stationed directly near the demarcation line.
Recently, occupying forces also closed the checkpoint between Tskhinvali region and territory under Georgian jurisdiction permanently prohibiting the free movement of local citizens. In the last few days, they moved their military point 1.2 kilometers further into Georgian territory, thus expanding their occupation line. The regime has published a map that totally differs from the one that was negotiated by all sides and that is still used by the EU Monitoring Mission. According to this map, more and more Georgian villages will be occupied.
The Russian forces, in cooperation with the KGB of the so-called South Ossetia implement described actions.
As a reminder, “security” of the occupied region of Georgia (so-called South Ossetia) is provided by the Russian Federation. Mr. Oleg Shiran, a former Russian “FSB” officer, heads the KGB of the occupied Tskhinvali region. This means that the Russian government is the only actor responsible for the violations of international law and direct aggression against Georgia. The fact that the new wave of aggression is controlled from the Kremlin is also clearly visible by the campaign of lies in the Russian media actively broadcasting news about “elections” in Abkhazia and “provocations of Georgians.”
Further, the Russian side itself is engaged in provocations. The situation is very tense, more than at any other time since the war in 2008. Georgia is working at all levels to de-escalate situation, as well as to inform the international community about the new developments of unjustified aggression from the side of occupying forces. Without an immediate and
unequivocal response from the international society, which includes the OSCE and other interested actors, the occupying regime will not stop unpunished provocations against a sovereign State.
We respectfully call on participants of the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting to highlight these topics during the conference in Warsaw and prepare joint statement and concrete recommendations for Georgian government as well as European institutions on new effective mechanisms to counter aggression of the Kremlin in Georgia and human rights violations that take place on the occupied territory and occupation lines.
The statement is issued on behalf of the “Coalition for Sovereign Elections”:
The working group of “Coalition for Sovereign Elections” consists of well-known Georgian experts, journalists, activists and NGO representatives and take focus on external influence in Georgia. 09.10.2019
Contact person: Egor Kuroptev, Director of the “Free Russia Foundation” on South Caucasus egor.kuroptev@4freerussia.org
