Human rights defenders discuss situation in Russia with DoS delegation

Russian human rights defenders had a meeting with William Burns, undersecretary of the US Department of State (DoS), and Michael MсFaul, adviser of the US president. Oleg Orlov, head of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial", said that "criticism on the topic of human rights was one of the central issues" of the meeting.

According to Mr Orlov, who took part in the meeting, Messrs Burns and MсFaul promised to give utmost attention to protection of human rights in the Russian-American dialogue.

"The meeting raised the issues of the freedom of assemblies in Russia and about administrative arrest of the human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov," he added.

According to Liudmila Alekseeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, "Russian human rights activists and American officials have discussed the case of the lawyer Sergey Magnitskiy from the Hermitage Capital Fund and dispersals by the militia of the rallies in defence of the freedom of assembly in the Triumph Square.

"The Americans said that they were shocked by these dispersals and that they would discuss the topic with their Russian counterparts," the "Interfax" quotes Ms Alekseeva as saying.

On Tuesday, September 7, Lev Ponomaryov, leader of the movement "For Human Rights", who had also planned to take part in the meeting with the US officials, was arrested in Moscow for four day. The court ruled that the human rights activist had exhibited disobedience to militiamen at the non-sanctioned action "Day of Anger" on August 12.

Russian Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin offered to hold bilateral Russian-American meetings with the aim to discuss not only thorny issues of Russian reality, but also the problems of the American party, for example, the Guantanamo prison. In his opinion, such meeting could contain an additional public aspect, so that to involve broad audience into exchange of opinions.

Grigory Shvedov, editor-in-chief of the "Caucasian Knot", told about violations of human rights in Northern Caucasus, the need of programme dealing with protection of local human rights activists there and about a new strategy of working with the Russian civil society based on changed realities: worsened safety, on the one hand, and new modernized opportunities, on the other.

Thus, for example, in his opinion, the personal blogs of the heads of the NCFD (North-Caucasian Federal District) and SFD (South Federal District), opened after the blog of the Russian president, contribute to elimination, in some regions, of barriers existing between the society and authorities.

Mr McFaul answered to Mr Shvedov that the new cooperation strategy with the Russian society will be promulgated in the near future; it would take into account the earlier made recommendations.

On September 9, Moscow will host a sitting of the working group consisting of Russian and American public figures, which is co-chaired by Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the Kremlin administration, and Michael McFaul, adviser of the US president, the "Gazeta.Ru" reports.