Today in The Geneva Observer, Stephanie Nebehay reports on the anxious Russian voices coming out of Geneva who have denounced what they fear will be yet another escalation in Vladimir Putin’s brutal crackdown on dissent in Russia following his "re-election" this weekend.

Repression in Russia Expected to Worsen after Putin ‘Re-election’, Activists Warn from Geneva

Vladimir Putin’s inevitable anointing this weekend as Russian president—in an essentially unopposed ‘election’ exercise—is likely to lead to a complete crushing of domestic critics, a UN human rights investigator and leading Russian activists have told Geneva audiences.

“Many observers predict that [...] the authorities [may begin] an even stronger form of repression,” Mariana Katzarova, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Russia, told a diplomatic event held on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council on Monday. “After the election there will probably be another massive mobilization [of Russian troops]. The right to be a conscientious objector is not respected, although it is the law,” she said, adding that many early recruits were forcibly taken from minority ethnic groups in rural areas. 

The speakers voiced deep concern for hundreds of Russians already detained as “foreign agents” under strict new laws, and hundreds more who participated in peaceful tributes to opposition leader Alexei Navalny. They hold the Kremlin responsible for his sudden death last month in an Arctic penal colony. Russian officials say Navalny, 47, died a “natural death.”

With the election set for March 15–17, Navalny’s widow Yulia, currently out of the country, has called for Russians to form long queues at polling stations from midday on Sunday and to spoil their ballots or write “Navalny” on them. Putin, who has already changed the constitution to extend his eligibility, is expected to secure a fifth six-year term. 

In an ominous sign, Navalny’s longtime ally Leonid Volkov was attacked with a hammer by an unknown assailant outside his home in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on Tuesday night. He had recently dismissed the election as a “circus” and “propaganda effort.” 

“It is going to get worse and worse and worse,” Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov predicted at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH), following the world premiere of the documentary Of Caravan and the Dogs. The film, being screened again on Saturday night (March 16), chronicles the swift clampdown on human rights groups and independent media including Muratov’s Novaya Gazeta, in the days and weeks after Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. In the film, a grim-faced Muratov is shown telling a shaken editorial staff that “We’re over.”

“Fear and Repression”

Katzarova, a former investigator for Amnesty International in Russia, including during the deadly conflicts in Chechnya, was appointed as the first independent UN human rights expert on Russia a year ago. Speaking on a festival panel following the documentary screening, Katzarova called Russia “an authoritarian society moving fast to totalitarianism,” adding, “I am Bulgarian and grew up in Communist times. I know what fear and repression are.”

Muratov, who still lives in Moscow, appealed repeatedly for the release of campaigners and artists imprisoned for expressing opposition to the Ukraine war. At both events he held up enlarged photographs of those serving lengthy prison sentences.

Muratov was part of the defense team at the recent trial of Oleg Orlov, co-chair of the NGO ‘Memorial’ set up in the late 1980s to preserve the memory of Soviet-era victims and to document continuing abuses. Orlov, who features in the documentary, was sentenced last month to two and a half years for “discrediting” the armed forces in an article saying Putin had descended into fascism.

Katzarova chastised diplomats from the European Union for having refused recently to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. They should take up “every opportunity,” she said, “and demand an investigation into Navalny’s death and to release political prisoners. Without communication with them we will have the next Navalny.”

“A Matter of Survival”

Muratov and Katzarova both called for Western governments to push Moscow to release or exchange political prisoners—including lawyer activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who himself testified to the Human Rights Council in 2019 about the growing number of political prisoners. “It is not a trade, it is a matter of human rights, a matter of survival,” Muratov said. “Governments should demand protection for them and demand the release of all political prisoners from Russian authorities.” 

Vadim Prokhorov, the lawyer for Kara-Murza as well as for opposition politician Ilya Yashin, voiced concern for their fates at the diplomatic event billed as ‘Life and Death in Isolation—Political Prisoners in Russia’. Kara-Murza, who also has British nationality, is kept in “absolutely Stalinist” conditions, while Yashin was jailed for eight years for his YouTube posts on the “war crimes” committed by Russian troops in Bucha, Ukraine, according to Prokhorov, who has fled his homeland. 

“An international campaign for the release of Russian political prisoners could be a good initiative of the international community to save their lives,” Prokhorov said. “All political prisoners always told me the worst thing for political prisoners is to be forgotten.” 

Access to Independent News

Fears are also growing that in the post-election period, Russians will be cut off from access to foreign news outlets, leaving only official state-run media.

“Russian propaganda is effective at the moment, even elsewhere, in Europe,” Kirill Martynov, the current editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta who fled Moscow eight days after the invasion of Ukraine, told the film audience. 

“Truth is what Putin fears most. That is why he systematically suppresses it.”

“Truth is what Putin fears most. That is why he systematically suppresses it,” Russian filmmaker in exile Askold Kurov told me when I recently spoke with him as The G|O partners with the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights, which opens tomorrow.

THE GENEVA OBSERVERPhilippe Mottaz

Katzarova said that Google wants to leave Russia as the company's profits in the country have plunged, due to sanctions imposed on Russian banks which mean YouTube subscribers can no longer use them for payment. “There is no alternative source of information,” she said, calling for a campaign to convince the US tech giant to remain in the country.

Russia will probably block access to YouTube, Wikipedia and Messenger anyway, Muratov told Swiss public television RTS. “It won’t be long now.”

-SN

What is the problem with human rights? That’s the rhetorical question posed by Daniel Warner in an op-ed, inspired not by the Human Rights Council’s March session or by the Human Rights Film Festival (FIFDH), but by Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union speech.

The Problem with Human Rights

The International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) is taking place in Geneva until Sunday (March 17), and the United Nations Human Rights Council is currently holding its 55^th regular session. But what relevance do human rights have to the two major conflicts taking place today? Official declarations of “grave breaches” and “serious violations” of human rights have not led to a stop in the fighting in either Ukraine and Gaza. For many of us, when it comes to human rights, there are too many pious pronouncements about violations with too few consequences for the violators.

What is the problem with human rights? If the basics of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were written in a non-legal, straightforward manner, I believe most people would agree with the Declaration’s principles. The first sentence of the Preamble could certainly use editing: Beginning “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” it continues for 320 words before arriving at a period.

But besides the obvious semantic difficulties, the central problem is the implementation of human rights principles and treaties. While human rights are now ‘mainstreamed’ within the United Nations system, their regular operationalization on the ground is lacking. What is the point of having lofty principles and legal treaties when they are so often violated?

An example of a lofty principle: Article 1 of the Declaration says: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Who guarantees that all human beings “should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood?” The “should” is conditionally ambiguous. Who is responsible when people don’t act “in a spirit of brotherhood?” Ought and is are not the same. The United Nations Human Rights Council and its country-examining Universal Peer Review are based on naming and shaming, and little more.

In his 1938 book, The Tyranny of Words, American social theorist Stuart Chase took on the problem of the relationship between words and actions. Chase looked for what he called “referents,” identifiers of the relationship between what is said and what is done. Article 1 of the Declaration, for example, has no referent for who should do what to guarantee that a spirit of brotherhood exists. Chase’s opus was an early foray into semantics. His insistence on referents explains why concepts like human rights may not have had the global impact the Universal Declaration’s authors envisioned. In principle, most people would agree with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR); what comes next is the challenge. Mainstreaming human rights in the UN system is not the same thing as being able to implement human rights on the ground or to punish violations. To use Chase’s terms, the UDHR lacks a referent.

There is no global governance to ensure human rights implementation; there is no global government to punish violators. Since states are still the principal international actors, it is up to states to implement the lofty principles in the Declaration.

A good example of the relevance of human rights with a specific referent is President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union address. Without judging the quality of the speech—or Biden’s intention or ability to implement human rights at home and abroad—his frequent indirect reference to human rights is noteworthy.

Biden mentioned several rights: to education, health, decent living. Like many other political figures, the US President believes citizens have rights. And he sees himself as the referent for ensuring that citizens enjoy these rights.

I do not wish to overemphasize the importance of the FIFDH or the meeting of the Human Rights Council this week, but now is an opportune moment to highlight that all people have rights and that a government’s job is to guarantee their respect and implementation. Governments, their policies, and their actions, not Declarations or treaties, are the human rights referent Chase was looking for.

-DW

Why the BRICS Matter

Speaking of the FIFDH, during our Tuesday (March 12) debate on the BRICS, we had the great unexpected last-minute pleasure of welcoming Celso Amorim for a brief chat before the panel discussion. This is what President Lula’s National Security Advisor—himself an early architect of the BRICS—told The G|O’s Jamil Chade when asked about the significance of the BRICS today, and what some consider an odd alliance between democratic countries and authoritarian regimes: 

Celso Amorim: "A former Western foreign minister asked me, “Why does Brazil place such an emphasis on the BRICS?” Brazil supports the BRICS, I told him, because it reinforces the G20. I believe that with the G20, the international community has been able to come up with the best combination so far in terms of effectiveness and representativity. The G20 is the best synthesis of what the world is nowadays. Over the last few years, however, the Western countries of the G7 decided to recapture the international agenda. I believe that the BRICS and the G20 represent the best hope for a more democratic world."

JC: Where does China, or Russia, fit in?

C.A "The BRICS is an alliance based on affinities, but not necessarily affiliated on values. It is an affinity of interest: we want a more balanced world. We don’t want the world to be dominated by a single superpower. My old friend Madeleine Albright [former US Secretary of State] often said the US was the last remaining superpower. There was a certain arrogance in such statements. But nor do we want China to be the world’s only superpower. We want a balanced world; we want to address the challenges of diminishing inequalities, of climate change. I think the BRICS can offer a contribution to a decision-making process that is not, currently, either balanced or fair."

You can watch the full debate here.

Today's Briefing: Stephanie Nebehay - Daniel Warner - Jamil Chade - Philippe Mottaz

Editorial assistance: David Jenny

Edited by: Dan Wheeler

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