Category Archives: Rights

I haven’t done an update on Kyrgyzstan in several days.  While things seemed to have calmed in the southern part of the country, tensions are high, the humanitarian crisis is deep, and the political outcomes are uncertain.

Two questions have been occupying most commentators:  Why the violence, or, specifically why didn’t we see it coming? and What are the international ramifications, particularly for the US and Russia?  I’m personally less interested in the second question, and for the most part discussion on this has ranged from the ludicrous (for how ludicrous see Michael Hancock’s undressing on Registan), the paranoiac and uninformed, the all too typical, to the regurgitated.  Basically, I’ll leave it to the foreign policy wоnks to untangle this mess.  I just hope to hear something new as they do.

The “why” question, however, is the thing that seems ..read more

From Ferghana.ru.

h/t Lyndon.

In Russia, you can’t hold a public gathering or protest without a permit.  Okay, a lot of places have similar laws.  I can understand this even if I don’t agree with it.  But according to Vremya Novosti, the local court in Tver district in Moscow set a “precedent which threatens to turn into new accusations that the Russian government is violating civil freedoms.”  Not only is holding non-permitted gatherings consider illegal, now it’s also verboten for journalists to cover them.  “According to the [court's] ruling, journalists, who enter unsanctioned protests or marches to make their reports are equated with the participants in these protests and violators of the law.”  Nice.

The case involves Andrei Stenin, a photo correspondent for RIA Novosti, who was charged with participating in an “unsanctioned protest” in December in front of the Presidential Administration building.  If by “participating,” you mean entering the crowd to cover it, then ..read more

Yesterday, December 1, was 75 years since the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Party Organization, and Stalin ally.  It was on the night of December 1, 1934 that a certain Leonid Nikolaev, a disgruntled party worker, shot Kirov in the secretary’s third floor office. Nikolaev was immediately caught and interrogated under Stalin’s personal supervision.  He was executed shortly thereafter.

Rumors have been circling for years as to what Nikolaev’s motives were.  Some have suggest that Kirov was having an affair with Nikolaev’s wife.  Others have suggested that he had a personal or work beef with Kirov.  These questions remain mostly unanswered.  Partly it is because they are unanswerable. But also because the majority of historians believe that Nikolaev did not act alone.  For them, Stalin was the main culprit and wanted to get rid of Kirov because of his popularity.  Since Kirov has been held up ..read more

It looks like Nashi might have crossed a line in their campaign against Alexander Podrabinek.  According to Vremya, the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation made an official appeal calling for an investigation of Nashi’s “illegal and amoral” campaign to hunt down the journalist. The appeal reads:

The campaign to hunt the [Podrabinek] clearly violates existing legislation and demonstrates obvious signs of extremism: fomentation of discord and the violation of a citizen’s human rights and freedoms. There presently are signs of the violation of articles 23 and 25 of the Russian Constitution (the inviolability of private life and residence.) The violation of article 24 which prohibits the use and distribution of information about the private life of an individual without his sanction: it is unlikely that A. Podrabinek gave his address to anyone for the organization to picket his home.  Finally, and this ..read more