Human Rights and the Will to be free

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S.House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Friday to name and shame Russian human rights violators as part of a broader bill to drop Cold War-era trade restrictions,...

Pussy Riot verdict to be announced tomorrow! Sound the alarm for justice.....

Make no mistake: This is not a conversation that Russian authorities want to have. But thanks to you and everyone who has raised their voices to sound the alarm, this is a conversation they now must have.

Tomorrow, a court will rule on the fate of Pussy Riot. Masha, Nadia and Maria, who are being detained for their peaceful performance of a protest song in a cathedral, could very well be carted off to a labor camp in Siberia where they will be at risk of rape and other abuses. ...

It wasn’t that long ago when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Syrian President Bashar Assad was a force for reform. Now she is outraged that Russia is allegedly backing Assad with weapons. At the same time, the U.S. is arming the government of Bahrain, which oppresses its Shia majority.

Duplicity and hypocrisy may be inevitable in diplomacy. However, ostentatious duplicity and hypocrisy are not. Sanctimoniously denouncing Moscow for behaving like Washington tarnishes America’s image abroad.

The shocks that have lately rocked the Middle East have surprised Russia, along with many other international actors.

Russia is making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot received guilty verdicts today for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." The young women were each sentenced to two years in jail. Their crime: staging a nonviolent anti-Putin protest at Moscow's main cathedral. In addition, not shaken by a recent gay rights protest at the London Olympics, the Kremlin maintains its ban on LGBT organizations from the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

The Russian government is using antiextremism and incitement laws, which were enacted to combat hate crimes, to systematically silence dissenting voices including independent media, activists, religious believers, and LGBT and other minority groups. Russians who do not agree with President Putin and are unafraid to speak their mind are in trouble.

Secretary Hillary Clinton will travel to Russia in September for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference. Tell the Secretary to stand with those fighting hatred and intolerance, not those perpetrating it. ....

At the end of this week on August 17, judge Marina Syrova will issue a verdict in the trial of feminist punk band Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. Jailed since March, they have been charged with “hooliganism,” of “gross violation of the public order and religious hatred,” for lip-syncing for 40 seconds to a “punk prayer” (“Virgin Mary, Chase Putin Out!”) in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior last December, following a protest against Russian president Vladimir Putin and charges of fraud in parliamentary elections. The three women could face up to seven years in prison though comments by Putin last week that they not be judged “too severely” suggest they may not receive the full sentence.

The trial of Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova has become a “certified international cause,” as Michael Idov, editor in chief of GQ Russia, wrote in a New York Times op-ed. Amnesty International has named the three women “prisoners of conscience”; the US government has expressed concerns; Madonna, Bjork and hundreds of artists and performers have voiced support; more than 40,000 Russians have signed a petition protesting their arrest and detention; Russian civic and cultural figures have petitioned the country’s Supreme Court human rights ombudsperson for their release.

...

...And yet, increasingly loud voices from outraged human rights groups and activists were clamouring for the UK authorities to do something about his company’s role in abetting the atrocities of Bashar Al-Assad against the people of his own country. According to a report in The Telegraph last month, The Professor Katsman, a freighter ship owned by the North West Shipping Company, which Lisin controls through his Cyprus-based Fletcher Group Holdings. The company denied knowledge of the contents of the cargo it took to Syria. However, the actions of the crew, which switched off the ship’s transponder, according to Human Rights First., a human rights non-profit organization based in New York, shortly before showing up at Tartus, Syria, only one day after more than 100 people were massacred by Al-Assad’s troops. ...

...

They're not the three young women in jail: Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alekhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29 – or Nadia, Masha and Katya, as they're known. Nobody has been allowed to see them. Not their husbands, families or friends. But Pussy Riot is not just three women. It's a collective of "more than 10" women, including two others who performed in the cathedral and are still at large. And all of them have vanished since the arrests. They've all gone to ground. This isn't surprising given the danger they're in. They've spent five months in hiding, waiting to see if they'll be arrested too. And this is their first interview for western media.

Although they're not the imprisoned women, they don't have to be. That's the intention of the balaclavas – they're meant to be anonymous, indivisible, representative. It doesn't matter which of them got arrested. That's the point – that they're not individuals, they're an idea. And that's the thing that has gripped Russia and caught the attention of the rest of the world, too: that the Russian government has gone and arrested an idea and is prosecuting through the courts with a vindictiveness the Russian people haven't before seen. An idea perpetrated by three young, educated, middle-class women, or devushki (girls), as the Russians call them.

...

Pussy Riot aren't just the coolest revolutionaries you're ever likely to meet. They're also the nicest. They're the daughters that any parent would be proud to have. Smart, funny, sensitive, not afraid to stand up for their beliefs. One of them makes a point of telling me how "kindness" is an important part of their ideology. They have also done more to expose the moral bankruptcy of the Putin regime than probably anybody else. No politician, nor journalist, nor opposition figure, nor public personality has created quite this much fuss. Nor sparked such potentially significant debate. The most amazing thing of all, perhaps – more amazing even than calling themselves feminists in the land women's rights forgot – is that they've done it with art.

http://is.gd/zdQPoi ; Pussy Riot performing 'Holy Shit'

@ Cathedral of the Redeemer on February 21st

...

It is almost misfortunate of Russia and the Ex-Soviet Republicans that since 1992 till the date, through different warlords, Islamic Propagandist Party, (Islami Tabliqi Jumaet) and particularly through extremist religious students, Pakistan has expanded its Islamic ideology to such an extent in Central Asia that it could wreak havoc at any time whenever it felt necessary to under particular conditions. And Russia and its neighbors cannot afford to tolerate it under current situation. To shorten the debate, the reason why Pakistan cannot be taken into the game is because it has always proven to be an untrustworthy partner, and also neither does it has any capacity of doing any good to any end. So, if the world really wants a result oriented war against terrorism, unlike Pakistan, than they should seriously consider the natural geography of different nationalities in that region and support their freedom movements, otherwise Pakistan is already a sunken ship, it can drown their ships too.

Months have passed between Russia’s crucial veto at the UN security council that have effectively scuppered any chance of effective international sanctions....

Russia, through the continued irresponsible use of its veto, and its continued arms deals with Syria has got blood on its hand. We have seen only snippets of the atrocities that are taking place as the Syrian regime continues to deny free and unfettered access to international human rights monitors. History will tell us the extent of what is occurring, all we know for sure now is that Russia is allowing this bloodshed to continue.