russia – RightsViews

A Frog in a Slowly Boiling Pot: The Status of Russia’s Judges, Lawyers, and Human Rights Defenders

September 30, 2023September 30, 2023 by Meryem BahadirNo Comments

By Guest Writer Nevin Kamath Photo Attribution: James LeeFormerIP at en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Perhaps an underreported tragedy of Russia’s war in Ukraine is the ongoing evaporation of freedoms within Russia itself. I recently moderated the American Bar Association’s (ABA) “Challenges Facing Judges, Lawyers, and other Human Rights Defenders in Russia - Where are we now?” presented to the ABA and the general public by the ABA’s International Law Section, International Human Rights Committee in June 2023. What we heard from three experts was a grim reminder of why Russia scores at a 16/100 (Not Free) and dropping in Freedom House’s 2023 research. What does the current situation in Russia look like for judges, lawyers, and human rights defenders? We first heard from Daria Korolenko, a lawyer and researcher with OVD-info, which is an NGO that defends the freedom of peaceful assembly and the freedom of speech by “monitoring the detention of activists at rallies and providing politically persecuted citizens with...

Sexual Violence in Ukraine

October 28, 2022October 30, 2022 by Varsha VijayakumarNo Comments

By Staff Writer Sydney Smith Content Warning: sexual violence On March 9, 2022, Russian soldier Mikhail Romanov barged into the home of a mother in the Kyiv region of Ukraine where brutally he took the life of her husband, forcibly undressed her, and gang raped her with a pistol to her head. The raping took place over three separate occasions while her child bore witness. This horrific story is just one account of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) that has been documented thus far in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A report from the OHCHR identifies 108 allegations of CRSV against women, girls, men and boys from February 24 to May 15, 2022 in eleven Ukrainian cities and in a detention facility in the Russian Federation. Although rape and gang rape are the highest reported allegations, at seventy-eight, CRSV takes on many forms and this report alone includes seven attempted rapes, fifteen forced public strippings, and eight other accounts of sexual torture, sexual...

The Lost World of Moldova: Corruption and Human Rights

October 21, 2019October 21, 2019 by Rowena KosherNo Comments

Guest Contributor: Ararat Osipian is the Alexander Mirtchev Visiting Professor and Scholar at the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Fellow of the Institute of International Education, and Fellow of the New University in Exile Consortium, USA. His research interests include corruption, inequalities in access to education, and sexual harassment. Recent events in Moldova, including the political turmoil and the fight against corruption, sometimes become reminiscent of a witch-hunt. For Moldova, the story is not so new, as the pro-European Union Moldovan Parliament has been fighting pro-Russian President Igor Dodon for years. For the world, this is just a storm in a teacup. According to the locals, Moldova’s fight against corruption is mostly for resources and economic assets that may be accessed through the use of state power. Some of the formative results of such a fight are arrests on charges of corruption. Due to the anti-corruption campaign, some individuals prefer to...