Blacklist Wars

When, in 2010, US Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) proposed a new bill to blacklist Russian officials allegedly involved in the death of 37-year-old lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, few in the Russian establishment took the initiative seriously. They likely now wish they had.

On December 6, by a vote of 92-4, the US Senate passed the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal Act of 2012. When President Obama signs the bill into law, it will graduate Russia from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 and establish permanent normal trade relations between the US and Russia for the first time in four decades.

Yet part of the deal in getting this bill through the US Senate with such a bipartisan vote was the inclusion of the so-called "Magnitsky Act," which will require that the federal government freeze the assets of Russians implicated in human rights abuses and deny them visas.

Sergei Magnitsky died in pre-trial detention in 2009 while in Moscow's prison Matrosskaya Tishina. He died from an array of untreated conditions, in horrible pain. He had been put in jail by investigators whom he had earlier alleged defrauded his employer and the Russian government via a million-dollar tax scheme; the perpetrators allegedly lavishly spent their take on cars and apartments in Moscow and abroad.

Magnitsky has become a martyr for the opposition, which sees the US's human rights act as the only effective way to punish officials who commit crimes but are seemingly immune to punishment from Russia's corrupt justice system. The idea is to make it impossible for corrupt investigators, judges, and prosecutors to enjoy the money they make in Russia in places which have better human rights records.

Once the Magnitsky Act is signed into law, President Obama will have 120 days to issue a list of Russians deemed responsible for human rights abuses, including those implicated in the death of Magnitsky. Yet observers have pointed out that most of the investigators and prosecutors involved in the Magnitsky case do not appear to have any assets in the US and many of them, while allegedly implicated in Magnitsky's plight, were carrying out orders of their superiors.

Nonetheless, the act is a major embarrassment for Russia, and top diplomats have decried it as rude, making already tepid US-Russia relations even more estranged. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the bill is borne of "stereotypes regarding our country," and a top lawmaker, Alexei Pushkov, vowed to pass a "tough US-focused bill" that would similarly punish foreign citizens who have violated the rights of Russians. One unidentified government official told Kommersant that the response would be "entirely symmetrical."

"We will have as many people on our list as they have on theirs. If they add some people later — so will we," the official said.

Cheeky opposition-friendly channel Dozhd made a spoof news report featuring interviews with Americans denied visas for their vacations in Chelyabinsk due to the "Victor Bout" list (Bout is an international arms trader recently extradited to the US). bit.ly/boutlist

In a poll organized by Levada Center, 39% of Russians said the list is a good idea, 14% said no; 48% said they didn't know.

"The response blacklist will be impressive if the executioners of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and CIA secret prisons are on it, and to those one can add the Americans that work without consideration of human rights outside the United States, in the Middle East, for one. And this blacklist will add those who have violated these rights as judged by the international community..."

Duma lawmaker Mikhail Margelov

"There are simply some people... they need an enemy. They need the image of any enemy, someone to struggle against..."

President Vladimir Putin on what was behind

the Magnitsky bill (Russia Today)