Window On Eurasia: Moscow Risks Losing Membership In Council Of Europe By Ignoring Strasbourg Court
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posted by eagle on March, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 3 – Moscow could lose its membership in the Council of Europe if it continues over the next six months to ignore the decisions of the European Human Rights Court. While such an outcome is unlikely given politics involved, the threat itself highlights just how often Moscow is refusing to live up to its commitment to abide by the court’s decision.
On Saturday, Anatoly Kovler, Russia’s judge on the European Court, told Russia’s Constitutional Court that if Moscow does not eliminate the existing backlog in the implementation of the European Court’s decisions, the Council of the Council of Europe could suspend Russia’s membership (www.sobkorr.ru/news/49ABC08BCA014.html).
According to Kovler, the Strasbourg court is especially upset by Moscow’s failure to fulfill its orders in a 1990s case involving compensation for a victim of the Chernobyl nuclear accident clean up and by the Russian government’s failure even ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: YABLOKO Wants Denial Of Stalinist Crimes To Be A Criminal Offense
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 1 – YABLOKO, one of Russia’s remaining liberal parties, is calling for making the denial of Soviet crimes against the people a criminal offense as part of a broader effort to help Russians overcome the communist past and build a political and economic system capable of sustaining itself in the 21st century.
Yesterday, YABLOKO’s leadership, at the urging of party founder Grigory Yavlinsky, issued a statement calling for the Russian government to issue “a clear and unambiguous legal, political and moral assessment of the forcible seizure of power carried out by the Bolsheviks in 1917-1918, the nature of the political regime it created and its subsequent activities.”
And to make that possible, the liberal party called for making any “justification[s] of mass repressions and the destruction of millions of innocent people” or “denial[s] of mass repressions and the destruction of social groups and ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: Russian Government No Longer Supporting Search For MIAs In Afghanistan And Chechnya
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 2 – Despite pledges to do everything in its power to find those missing in action in its Afghan and Chechen wars, the Russian authorities are no longer actively supporting that effort, a Moscow paper reports today. And its failure is adding to growing anger in the Russian officers and forcing NGOs to take on what should be a government function.
The Soviet and then Russian governments never maintained a list of those missing in action in their Afghanistan and Chechen campaigns. As a result, the exact numbers are a matter of dispute, with most estimates centering around 300 MIAs in Afghanistan and 1,000 missing soldiers in Chechnya (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/021/13.html).
In the 1990s, President Boris Yeltsin created a special commission in his office to identify and where possible return MIAs. It was headed by Col. Gen. Dmitry Volkogonov and, after his death, Gen. Vladimir ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: Russia’s ‘Closed’ Cities Open Up Just A Little
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 2 – Russia’s “closed” cities are not nearly as restricted as were their Soviet predecessors – they now go by their own names rather than a number and can be found on most maps -- but these centers of secret military research remain off limits for most people, making any media reports from them especially intriguing.
In three articles posted on the Chaskor.ru portal over the weekend, Yuliya Eidel’, who visited Sarov, one of the most famous of these places, as the relative of someone who works there, describes what they are like now as well as how difficult it remains for an outsider to get into them (www.chaskor.ru/p.php?id=3860, 3861, and 3862).
Although Russia has a tradition of cities closed to outsiders extending at least to the eighteenth century, it was during the Soviet-era and especially the last years of Stalin’s rule that these institutions acquired ... >> full
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Window On Eurasia: Nizhny’s Muslims Want What Orthodox Have -- Religious Signs To Mark Their Neighborhoods
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Paul Goble
Vienna, March 2 – The Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Nizhny Novgorod wants the authorities there to allow them to erect Islamic symbols to mark neighborhoods where Muslims form a majority, a request that mirrors efforts by the Russian Orthodox Church but one that is certain to spark new concerns about the increasing number of Muslims in Russian cities.
On Friday, the presidium of the Nizhny Novgorod MSD announced that it was preparing an appeal to the deputies of the local legislature and the administration of the Red October District of the city to erect symbols of Islam around a region where Muslims now form 90 percent of the population (islamnn.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3564).
Damir-khazrat Mukhetdinov, the head of the MSD’s ulema council, noted that “in recent years, in the majority of districts of [the oblast] Orthodox crosses have been set up, and the efforts of the Russian ... >> full
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