UN Panel Criticizes Russia on Human Rights
The Associated Press
GENEVA — Russia fails to protect journalists, activists, prison inmates and others at odds with authorities from a wide range of abuses, including torture and murder, the UN Human Rights Committee said Friday. The findings came in a report by an 18-member panel of independent experts who urged the Kremlin to implement a number of legal reforms. They include narrowing the broad definitions of terrorism and extremism under Russian law, decriminalizing defamation cases against journalists and granting appeal rights to people forced into psychiatric hospitals by the courts. The report held Russia responsible for reported attacks on civilians by armed groups in South Ossetia in the aftermath of the August 2008 war with Georgia, saying Russia should have moved to stop them, and called for Moscow to investigate those abuses. It also said journalists were subject to politically motivated trials and convictions, discouraging critical media reporting, and urged the government to take action against what the panel called an increasing number of hate crimes and racially motivated attacks. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said he had not seen the report and could not comment. The harshest criticism, perhaps, was reserved for the justice system in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus. The panel cited reports of torture, forced disappearance, arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial killing in those regions committed by the military and security services, saying the perpetrators “appear to enjoy widespread impunity” from punishment for their actions. The Human Rights Committee gave Moscow one year to report back on how it was investigating abuses in the North Caucasus and South Ossetia, and protecting journalists and activists throughout Russia. The panel has no enforcement power, but it issues regular reports to draw public attention to human rights violations around the world. While the report did not cite specific cases or statistics, it alluded to the killings of a number of journalists and human rights activists in Russia that remain unresolved, including the 2006 shooting of Anna Politkovskaya. The internationally known journalist was a harsh critic of the Kremlin and exposed widespread human rights abuses and corruption in Chechnya.
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