The comedy that is the Alexandr Litvinenko murder case took yet another turn to the absurd yesterday when the US House of Representatives began looking a resolution that calls on Russia to fully cooperate with Britain. Apparently, the mighty Empire feels that Russia should extradite Andrei Lugovoi even though the Russian Constitution forbids extradition. I think that if the resolution passes, it will be a good reason for Russia not to comply.

In the meantime, Russian deputy prosecutor general Sabir Kekhlerov issued a reply to the British request to extradite Lugovoi. “Great Britain has the right, if they believe they have proven the guilt of one of our citizens, to send all of the materials to us. If the general prosecutor’s office believes that the British side has presented us with sufficient grounds, they will be given an appropriate legal appraisal,” he told Kommersant. The business daily added, quoting Interfax, that a representative in the prosecutor’s office stated that “it is not a fact that the conclusions of our investigators will coincide with those of the British [investigators].”

If all that wasn’t enough, Boris Berezovsky is once again soothsaying to anyone willing to listen. The other day he claimed that Putin was behind Litvinenko’s death. Now he’s predicting that Andrei Lugovoi will be next in a pine box. In an interview with the Associated Press, Berezovsky claimed that Lugovoi will be “killed within the next two or three years” and that “he is the suspect of the plot in London, but he is also the witness of the plot in Moscow, and that is more dangerous.” Then he said assuredly, “I tell you there is no doubt in Russia Lugovoi will be killed. They don’t want to keep him alive because he is a witness of Putin’s crime.” In our next episode, Borya predicts the next World Cup champion, Miss Universe, and the invention of teleportation.

And just to keep the Litvinenko story from losing its spy vs. spy flavor, there is the mysterious videotape from 1998 that depicts Litvinenko and two other FSB agents claiming that their superiors ordered them “to kill, kidnap and frame prominent Russians.” The video was made as “insurance” in case one of the FSB agents turned up dead. Well one of them did. According to the Moscow Times, in the video,

Litvinenko and his colleagues sit on couches with journalist Sergei Dorenko, speaking solemnly of their repugnance at the violence and immorality they claim had infected the FSB. More than six months later, Litvinenko repeated many of the same accusations at a news conference — including that he had been ordered to kill businessman Boris Berezovsky. That news conference, in which Litvinenko appeared with other purported FSB men disguised in masks or dark glasses, was later regarded by critics as a ruse engineered by Berezovsky. But Litvinenko told the same account in the tape that he did not intend to make public.

Dorenko, now a talk-show host on Ekho Moskvy radio, showed a few excerpts of the tape on television in 1998 after Litvinenko’s news conference, but the full video has not been broadcast. Dorenko made the tape available to the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.

In the tape, Litvinenko also contends that he was ordered to beat up or plant a weapon on Mikhail Trepashkin, another former FSB agent who was imprisoned several years later for revealing state secrets. The videotaped claim appears prophetic: Trepashkin, who investigated claims that the FSB was behind a series of apartment building explosions that killed about 300 people in 1999, was arrested in 2003 after police said they found a gun in his car. His lawyers said the weapon was planted. Trepashkin was convicted of disclosing state secrets and is now in prison. Amnesty International has said the charges “appear to have been politically motivated.”

Another man in the tape identifies himself as Alexander Gusak, Litvinenko’s direct superior, and says there was talk in the FSB of kidnapping Umar Dzhabrailov, a wealthy Chechen businessman based in Moscow.

In the tape, Litvinenko is casually dressed, with a full head of thick hair and an intent manner. He admits he is worried but insists he is not fearful.

“I do understand that a security officer is not supposed to give interviews or appear on television,” he said. “But now I realize the time has come. If I were afraid, I wouldn’t do what I do now. But I fear for the life of my wife, my child.”

Gusak says on the tape that he believes the situation in the agency had become intolerable.

“The reason we have gotten you out of bed,” he says to Dorenko, is to describe actions by the agency “that contradict the current law, with the Criminal Code and, we will say it directly, do not meet our moral demands.”

I assume that all this will avaialble on the Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case Special Edition 2-disc DVD?

Amnesty International has released its annual “State of the World’s Human Rights.” The report documents and evaluates the status of human rights around the world, providing regional and individual country reports. The report is available in English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic.

In the report’s forward, Irene Khan, Amnesty’s Secretary General, describes the growing climate of fear that envelopes the globe. “Today far too many leaders are trampling freedom and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears,” she writes, “fear of being swamped by migrants; fear of “the other” and of losing one’s identity; fear of being blown up by terrorists; fear of “rogue states” with weapons of mass destruction.” Moreover, this fear “thrives on myopic and cowardly leadership” who use real reasons for fear to promulgate “policies and strategies that erode the rule of law and human rights, increase inequalities, feed racism and xenophobia, divide and damage communities, and sow the seeds for violence and more conflict.”

The theme of fear is further reflected in Amnesty’s regional evaluation of Europe and Central Asia. There, fear has resulted in an increase in racially motivated attacks against immigrants, discrimination, and the development of or cooperation with states that violate fundamental human rights in the name of security and the “war on terror.” These violations include refusing due process, unlawful detention, torture, rendition, expulsion, and the repression of dissent. Most of the violations have occurred in former Soviet and Yugoslav states, but Western European states such as Greece, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Germany, and Spain are also cited. In all the European continent as a whole is responsible for direct or indirect violations of human rights or simply turning a blind eye.

In regard to Russia in particular, a number of human rights continued to be violated. These include the failure to solve the murders of journalists, the government’s clamp down on NGOs, a tightening control over media, the use of detention, torture, abductions, and trial without jury, especially in the Chechnya and Ingushetia, the failure to prevent, and in some cases fostering, racial and sexual hatred, discrimination, and violence, government corruption, and the intimidation, repression, and harassment of dissidents.

The bulk of Russia’s human rights violations, of course, is concentrated in the North Caucasus, where despite Moscow’s proxy Razman Kadyrov’s efforts to restore normalcy, the conflict between Russian and Chechen security forces with armed insurgents continues. The shear number of armed actors in the region coupled with “their arbitrary actions and their lack of accountability” make “it difficult to determine the identity of those responsible for serious human rights violations.”

At the same time, Amnesty’s language is neither overly condemning or harsh when it comes to Russia. The report is more one a catalog of Russia’s failure to prevent human rights violations. For example, Russian authorities failed to “adequately to tackle racism and discrimination,” “to provide adequate protection for women at risk,” and “to co-operate fully with international human rights mechanisms.” Throughout the report there are other “failures” on the part of the Russian government. These include the failure to investigate torture and arbitrary detention, ratify or comply with human rights treaties, to provide protection to protesters, and to meet international trial standards. All of this gives the impression that the Russian government is really well intentioned when it comes to human rights, but just lacks the political fortitude, resources, and measures to comply with international standards. Unfortunately, Amnesty’s use of a language of failure, not only in the case of Russia but also to describe several other regions around the world, takes any bite out of the report. Instead we get many states that “sincerely” and “honestly” care about human rights, but just fail to close the gap between rhetoric and reality.

A more forceful conclusion is that human rights violations continue unabated because “human rights” as an international doctrine is an utter sham. Countries like Russia, and also many Western democracies, know how to play the human rights game. No state would ever claim that it is a foe of “human rights.” But they also know that there is no body with any real teeth to enforce their violation. That is except if a powerful state or group of states wants to use it as a political weapon against its adversaries.

However, most democratic and semi-democratic states are much more legalistic when it comes to violating human rights. Through the application of law, the definition of “human” or “citizen” is tightened to narrow the legal field of who can claim “rights”. For example, Russia’s law on extremism still protects a person’s right to protest while at the same time denying those rights to legally defined “extremists.” Or in the United States, a citizen has a right to due process unless they are classified under the legal category of “enemy combatant.” Thus the rights of humans are protected, and even reinforced, by their very denial to those deemed outside of the legal definition of “human” or “citizen.” And sadly, this legalism of human rights allows it to be subsumed into the very climate of fear that the report claims a “myopic and cowardly leadership” is so adept at exploiting. In the end, the violation of human rights of the legally deemed “other” becomes part and parcel to their protection.