THERE ARE AN ESTIMATED 1,049,700 PEOPLE IN MODERN SLAVERY IN RUSSIA – THIS IS EQUIVALENT TO 0.7315% OF THE ENTIRE POPULATION
Escalating ethnic violence in Russian cities,25 coupled with regional conflict has heightened racial tension, particularly towards migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus.26 Five people disappeared in 2013 after an alleged abduction-style detention by security forces in Ingushetia and another incident occurred in Chechnya in early 2013.27
President Dmitry Medvedev’s call for a new public television platform last December conjured visions of a Russian BBC for the country’s liberals. Yet worries are now growing that the president’s control over the new television station could prevent it from broadcasting opinions critical of the government. Medvedev has maintained that the new station will be the freest television channel in Russia. But like a number of other liberal initiatives that Medvedev has undertaken in the waning days of his presidency, the television station is increasingly being seen as a half-measure meant to mollify the public.
Medvedev signed a decree creating the new public station on Tuesday, saying it would likely be released by next January. Speaking at his “Open Government” initiative, Medvedev said that “measures have been taken to relieve needless government influence on the activities of this public institution.”
Now, controversy is centering on just how independent Russia’s public television will be.
President Dmitry Medvedev’s call for a new public television platform last December conjured visions of a Russian BBC for the country’s liberals. Yet worries are now growing that the president’s control over the new television station could prevent it from broadcasting opinions critical of the government. Medvedev has maintained that the new station will be the freest television channel in Russia. But like a number of other liberal initiatives that Medvedev has undertaken in the waning days of his presidency, the television station is increasingly being seen as a half-measure meant to mollify the public.
Medvedev signed a decree creating the new public station on Tuesday, saying it would likely be released by next January. Speaking at his “Open Government” initiative, Medvedev said that “measures have been taken to relieve needless government influence on the activities of this public institution.”
Now, controversy is centering on just how independent Russia’s public television will be. The decree signed by Medvedev gives the president the right to appoint the general director and the editor-in-chief of the new station. Moreover, the station’s board of directors, entrusted to provide for public oversight of the station’s content, will also have to pass through a presidential filter.
Amnesty International has called for the immediate release of three members of a Russian feminist punk band who face up to seven years in prison for performing in a church.
The global human rights watchdog said it did not know if the detained women were in fact members of the Pussy Riot band because the group performed all its protest songs wearing balaclavas.
“Even if the three arrested women did take part in the protest, the severity of the response of the Russian authorities… would not be a justifiable response to the peaceful — if, to many, offensive — expression of their political beliefs,” Amnesty International said in a statement on Tuesday.
“They would therefore be prisoners of conscience.”
Five members of the radical group climbed on the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral — the country’s central place of worship — on February 21 and sang a song they called a “Punk Prayer” before being seized by guards.
The song’s lyrics called for the Virgin Mary to “drive out (president-elect Vladimir) Putin” and to “become a feminist”.
The three women have been charged with hooliganism committed by an organised group — an unusually harsh charge for protesters.
They are being held in pre-trial detention until late April even though two of them have small children.
Kremlin rights council head Mikhail Fedotov said it was “premature” to label the women prisoners of conscience, but added that he saw no grounds for a conviction.
The United Nations’ top court has dismissed a case filed by Georgia that accuses Russia and separatist rebels of ethnic cleansing.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague said it could not examine Georgia’s complaint because negotiations had not taken place.
Georgia said Russia and the rebels had used ethnic violence against Georgians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russia took control of the two Georgian regions in a brief war in August 2008.
Thousands of ethnic Georgians fled the regions during the conflict and many remain internally displaced in Georgia.
(Via BBC)
Russian military stops issuing soldiers with cigarettes, offers candy instead
Real changes in culture? Or more cosmetic façades?
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Dmitry Bulgakov has announced that the Defense Ministry will no longer purchase cigarettes for soldiers, Russian website Gazeta.ru reports.
“There are no cigarettes in our new military allowance. We have replaced cigarettes for the army with caramel candies and sugar. However, we can’t prohibit smoking completely. If a soldier wants to smoke, he will have to buy cigarettes with his own money at a store during his period of leave,” Bulgakov said.
Bulgakov also announced that all Russian officers will change their footwear by 2013.
“We have developed special office shoes for officers. They are lightweight shoes made of high-quality leather, which let soldier’s feet breathe. Women’s boots will be substituted too. Now we will distribute refined shoes for our beautiful military women. And, of course, the unpleasant naval jacket with a high collar will be replaced by a convenient sweater.” Bulgakov said.
(Via MosNews)
To Lure Foreign Investment, Russian President Calls for Reform
The president of Russia, Dmitri A. Medvedev, on Wednesday proposed a sweeping change to the management of the country’s many state-run companies, saying an overhaul that would remove ministers from the boards of directors is overdue.
After a decade of rolling back the results of its early post-Soviet privatizations, the Russian economy is again top-heavy with government-run companies, particularly in the oil and natural gas industries.
As president, Mr. Putin had appointed loyal officials in his government to crucial positions on the boards of large companies dealing in energy, transportation, military industry and aviation. Igor I. Sechin, a deputy prime minister overseeing the oil industry, is chairman of the state oil company Rosneft, for example.
Mr. Kudrin is on the board of Alrosa, Russia’s diamond mining company.
Mr. Medvedev, when he served as deputy prime minister before his election as president in 2008, had also served as chairman of Gazprom, the big natural gas company.
Divorce in haste, repent at leisure
Twenty years today the USSR held a referendum on whether to support the proposed New Union Treaty. The new setup would have given much more power to the republics; the word used to describe it then was “confederation”.
This infographic displays data on how people voted during this referendum (click for full size)
(This graphic could be misleading, as it takes numbers not from the whole population of potential voters but from those who actually did vote; in several areas not voting was voting “no”). The three Baltic SSRs, the Moldavian, Georgian and Armenian SSRs did not hold votes, on the grounds that they had not legally been incorporated into the USSR in the first place. But the Abkhaz ASSR voted by a small margin to stay in. The Chechen-Ingush ASSR voted to get out as did the Nakhichevan ASSR
Three quotations are instructive: “The recent dramatic events [ie the coup attempt] showed that our republic is absolutely unprotected… ” (Kravchuk 1991); “if Ukraine really will not be in the Union, I cannot imagine such a Union” (Yeltsin 1991); “I believed that Ukraine is so rich that it provided for the entire [Soviet] Union” (Kuchma 1993).
Divorce in haste, repent at leisure: a recent poll from Ukraine says half the population now regrets the breakup. (See article More than half of Ukrainians regret Soviet breakup [Ria Novosti])
(Via Business Special Report [BSR] Russia)
Fighting terrorism with tourism
The drive from Vladikavkaz airport into the North Ossetian capital passes through the village of Beslan and by the monument to 33 4 victims, – more than half of them children – of the 2004 school siege that won the region global notoriety. “A horrific tragedy; several of my relatives are buried here,” says Oleg Karsanov, the republic’s tourism minister, as we pass by the graves, the nearby mountains obscured by overcast skies.
Mr Karsanov is determined to rebrand his native North Ossetia and turn the mountainous republic into a magnet for tourists. After holding several posts in local government, he was tasked with nurturing regional tourism; he had developed a solid bank of targets four years before the federal model appeared. Oleg Karsanov’s plan is two-pronged: to build up basic infrastructure such as roads, plumbing and electricity via state grants, and to provide incentives for investors to open hotels and other amenities. The minister initially hopes for the support of the large North Ossetian diaspora in Russia and abroad, which includes such names as the former national football coach Valery Gazzaev and the conductor Valery Gergiev.
Rostislav Khortiev, 50, a businessman, has already taken the plunge, returning from Siberia three years ago to build a £1.7m hotel project 75 miles from Vladikavkaz. Employing 35 people, the hotel hosts groups from across Russia on skiing and fishing packages. “It’s a great place to make an ethnic village for tourists,” Mr Karsanov gleams.
The most ambitious element of the plan revolves around Mamison, a $1bn (£615m) ski resort under construction two hours’ journey south-west of Vladikavkaz. “Unfortunately, there are still few – if any – world-class ski resorts in Russia. Mamison will offer our countrymen the opportunity to experience world-class skiing without leaving the country,” Mr Karsanov says.
There is stiff competition across the North Caucasus for a piece of the federal funding pie. The Sochi Olympic Winter Games in 2014 will help, Mr Karsanov believes.
(don’t miss the Photo slideshow and Audio documentary on the page in the link! [Via Russia and India Today])
The first and only national referendum in Soviet history
Twenty years ago, on March 17, 1991, the first and only national referendum in Soviet history was held. Citizens of the Soviet republics were offered the opportunity to express themselves on the matter of the preservation of the union state in “an updated form.” And although six of the union republics refused to participate, the majority of the remaining population voted in favor of the preservation of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, only a few months later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Today, Rossiyskaya Gazeta experts (Gleb Pavlovsky [president of the Effective Politics Foundation], Valery Khomyakov [general director of the National Strategy Council], Dmitry Orlov [general director of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications], Boris Makarenko [first deputy general director of the Center for Political Technologies]) share their assessments of the event.
The referendum did not fail; it was the Soviet Union that failed. Of course, ultimately referendum results were annulled when Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down as president of the Soviet Union. It is also important that the referendum was the last collective expression of the peoples of the Soviet Union, which could have been something to rely on in certain actions. But the actions of the Soviet leadership were destructive.”
Many party members were categorically against this wording – they did not oppose preservation of the Soviet Union, but were against socialist values.
Most people voted ‘yes’ in the referendum. The same people who said ‘yes’ to ‘preserving the Soviet Union based on socialist values’ had forgotten everything and voted for independence.
The situation that happened with the referendum reaffirms the double-sided position of the Soviet leadership. If the Soviet leadership had conducted the referendum more precisely and acted more decisively in accordance with its results, without allowing for a collapse of the Soviet budget, for example, or unconstitutional actions by the Soviet republics, then it could have been a completely different situation. I agree with Vladimir Putin’s assessment that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. Six of the 15 republics boycotted the referendum and unequivocally opposed the union. The referendum was not perfect, because the very wording – ‘Are you for or against the updated Soviet Union?’ – was unclear. A result of the referendum was a new union agreement, into which several union republics tried to enter in August.
(Via The Russia and India Report)