“Russian judiciary is acting as Putin’s accomplice.”

“In Russia, the most important pillars of a functioning democracy have crumbled away years ago: The majority of the media have aligned their reports to the government’s demands, the parliament adopts laws that are supposed to meet Putin’s expectations – and judges issue rulings according to what the state expects of them. Since the annexation of Crimea, there is an increasing number of cases concerning Ukrainian detainees. A recent example is the pilot Nadiya Savchenko,” said Sarah Reinke, expert on the CIS-states at Head of the office of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) in Berlin.

The trials, which don’t deserve the label “legal proceedings”, can be seen in a long tradition:  We would like to recall the case of Zara Murtazalieva, a young Chechen woman who was sentenced to eight years imprisonment by a Moscow court in 2005. She was completely innocent, but had to serve the entire sentence. Today, she is living in France as a recognized refugee. Another world-famous case is the lawsuit against the members of the punk band “Pussy Riot” in August 2012. The young women became role models for a whole generation of young Russian intellectuals. In 2014, Ruslan Kutaev – a Chechen historian and civil rights activist – was sentenced to four years in prison in proceedings that were based on confessions obtained under torture. The renowned human rights organization “Memorial” has compiled an updated list with the names of political prisoners, and his name is on the list – along with 52 others.

Since the Crimean annexation and the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine, the Russian security forces have arrested 21 Ukrainians. 13 of them were sentenced to inhumane prison sentences and are now imprisoned in Russia. Often, the only possible way out is to contact the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where most of the current cases are against Turkey, immediately followed by Russia. However, the government is in control of the situation again since the summer of 2015: On July 14, 2015, the Russian Constitutional Court ruled that judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) only have to be implemented if they are not against the Russian constitution.

In the scope of his current visit to Moscow, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier should address these cases!

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