Somebody from Freedom House wrote an op/ed in the Moscow Times about Russia’s moves to water down its responsibilities before the European Court of Human Rights.

Georgy Matyushkin, Russia’s representative to the European Court of
Human Rights, believes that cases already submitted to the court would
be retracted and sent back for review by Russian courts. This includes
thousands of cases that deal with counterterrorist operations in the
North Caucasus, particularly in Chechnya. The law could also prevent
any future cases from reaching the European court.

Simply put, the new law has the potential to cut off the world from
knowing about the impunity and lawlessness in the North Caucasus. (…)

According to Memorial, there are up to 5,000 people missing from the
second Chechen war alone. So far, the European Court of Human Rights
has made rulings on only several dozen of these cases because of a
severe backlog.

By passing a law that would keep thousands of cases from potentially
reaching the Strasbourg court, Russia would save millions of dollars in
compensation that it wouldn’t have to pay. More important, however, the
Kremlin is hoping that this law will allow Russia to be dropped from
Council of Europe’s list of the worst human rights offenders.

Last 5 posts by Robert Amsterdam

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