On November 12th, President Dmitry Medvedev delivered his annual address to Parliament, in which he urged a new generation of Russians to help modernise the country and make a break from the past. President Medvedev highlighted an overreliance on oil revenues, pervasive corruption and a lack of initiative inherited from communism as the main barriers to Russia's progress. Meanwhile, developments in Russia continue to reveal a growing gap between the Kremlin's reform rhetoric and actual trends.
Four days after President Medvedev's address to Parliament, Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year old lawyer for the Hermitage Capital Management Fund, died in a Moscow detention centre. Arrested a year ago for denouncing corrupt government officials, Magnitsky had developed serious health problems due to the inhumane conditions of his incarceration. Untreated despite pleas for medical care, his health rapidly deteriorated and he died of apparent toxic shock and heart failure.
Human rights activists and Magnitsky's colleagues have repeatedly spoken out about the practice in Russia of denying medical attention to people in custody as a way of forcing them to cooperate with prosecutors or corrupt officials. Many will recall the story of Vasily Aleksanyan, a former executive of Yukos, who was denied treatment for HIV/AIDS and cancer over a two-year period from 2006 to 2008. Aleksanyan was released - on bail - only after his health had degenerated to a terminal state.
In a statement released through his lawyers, Khodorkovsky stated that Magnitsky had become a pawn in a dangerous game and that it was unacceptable for a person's freedom, health and life to be exploited by an investigator, prosecutor or judge.
Magnitsky's death is yet another reminder of the risks of standing up to the regime in Russia. In an environment where human rights activists, journalists and lawyers are murdered with impunity, there is an undeniable chilling effect on the development of Russia's civil society. With the Kremlin's reformist rhetoric unmatched by effective action, Russia's rule-of-law crisis is only worsening.
THE SECOND SHOW TRIAL CONTINUES
November marked the ninth month of the second show trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. The trial is currently expected to conclude in the spring of 2010. Throughout November the prosecution paraded a series of compliant witnesses into the courtroom. Their testimony was marked both by prosecutorial coercion and irrelevance to the allegations against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev.
One of the prosecution's witnesses revealed this month that a secret parallel investigation of a new case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is underway. Nadezhda Sheck, a former employee of the International Financial Alliance MENATEP, was called two days before her scheduled testimony in court and told by investigators that she was being questioned for one of multiple ongoing investigations. Judge Viktor Danilkin threatened the witness with criminal liability if she disclosed any details of her recent interrogations. Vadim Klyuvgant, Khodorkovsky's lawyer, asserted that Ms. Sheck's revelation was a clear example of how the prosecution uses illegal tactics and places undue pressure on witnesses before giving their testimony in court, and exposed how the judge openly aids and abets the prosecution in such illegal activities.
Compounding the infringement of the defendants' rights, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev had their harsh conditions of detention extended to February 17, 2010. The court granted a petition from the prosecution in favor of this extension, based mostly on a reiteration of arguments made when the detention issue was last being reviewed in August.
As new grounds for holding Khodorkovsky and Lebedev under strict conditions of detention, the prosecution also made reference to ongoing foreign shareholder lawsuits challenging the validity of the forced bankruptcy of Yukos. Those lawsuits are before the European Court of Human Rights and courts in the Netherlands. Neither Khodorkovsky nor Lebedev are participating in the lawsuits, or in the multi-billion-dollar Energy Charter Treaty-based arbitration case against the Russian Federation for the wrongful expropriation of Yukos. Many observers are convinced that when independent foreign courts or arbitral forums examine the Yukos affair, the political motivations behind the persecution of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev will be established as matters of fact. With Russian prosecutors citing these foreign legal actions in petitioning to keep Khodorkovsky and Lebedev under severe conditions of incarceration, the implication is that both men are being held hostage to the outcome of these cases.
YUKOS ECHR DEVELOPMENTS
Earlier this month, the European Court of Human Rights hearing scheduled for November 19 in the $98 billion complaint against Russia by Yukos International was postponed to allow Andrei Bushev, a recently-appointed Russian ad hoc judge, more time to study the case. The hearing in Strasbourg is now scheduled for January 14, 2010. This is the fifth time that Russia has changed its ad hoc judge since the case was filed, each time further delaying the start of the proceedings.
BERLIN WALL COMMEMORATION
As the trial continued, Berlin commemorated the 20th anniversary of East and West Germany's first step towards unification. Khodorkovsky's mother Marina spoke out against a 'similar wall being erected today,' and she stated that the events unfolding in her son's trial at Moscow's Khamovnichesky Court echo the most frightening elements of the USSR.
Meanwhile, television viewers around the world watched the toppling of one thousand dominoes along the former route of the Berlin Wall. One of the dominoes, sponsored by the non-profit Committee to Free Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, was dedicated to Khodorkovsky both as an individual victim of violations of human and civil rights, and on behalf of all other Russian prisoners suffering from the unlawful deprivation of their liberty.
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
On November 12 the European Parliament adopted a resolution ahead of the EU-Russia Summit held in Stockholm on November 18, expressing concern over developments in Russia that undermine efforts at closer EU-Russia relations. The resolution urged the EU Council and Commission to pay "utmost attention to the ongoing second trial of former Yukos Oil chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which is already replete with severe due process violations," and called upon Russian authorities "to combat arbitrariness, to respect the rule of law and not to use the judiciary as a political tool."
In a letter handed to President Medvedev during the Stockholm summit, more than 100 Members of the European Parliament expressed concerns to the President about the shortcomings of the rule of law and abuses of human rights in Russia. The MEPs wrote that recent developments "raise grave concerns," explicitly denouncing the second trial against Khodorkovsky and the murders of human rights activists. They expressed a hope for "real progress" for human rights, property rights and in the fight against corruption.
NEW DOCUMENTARY
On November 17, over 200 people from the U.S. government, think tanks, media and entertainment industry gathered for a private screening and panel discussion of the film "Vlast" (Power), a documentary directed by Cathryn Collins that tells the story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's trial and continued politically-driven persecution in Russia. The event was co-presented by the Tom Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice and the Creative Coalition.
CRITICISMS GREET PRIME MINISTER PUTIN ABROAD
On November 26, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived for a two-day visit to France under a barrage of negative press. In Le Monde, pointed questions were raised about the Russian Prime Minister's negative impact on the rule of law in his country. The newspaper's coverage of the Putin visit was accompanied by a front-page exclusive interview with Khodorkovsky. Another major daily newspaper, Libération, headlined: "Putin in Paris, Murders in Moscow" and "Corruption, Murders...the Putin Routine."
