Reset or Run-around?

Michael McFaul, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia , National Security Council, Michal Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and an assortment of American NGO leaders including Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch are back from Moscow now, and we can read the Russian media on the meetings, look at the carefully mannered White House press release, and(except I can't find this press statement on whitehouse.gov and only have it in message form, so I've reprinted it below at the end.)

While the delegation accomplished a fair amount, (and the threat of their arrival, like the usual Inspector General phenomenon in Russia, caused some flurries of activity around the passage of amendments to the prison inspection law), and while the American officials met various people who were important to meet on the topic of human rights -- and of course helped Russian officials to understand the American prison system better -- basically, I have to conclude that the U.S. wimped out on a couple of key issues in the face of considerable Russian pressure, for these reasons:

1. the U.S. officials did not attend the trial of jailed businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose case has been emblematic of grave due process violations in the Russian judicial system. The trial  is now in session, as he is being tried on a new set of charges. To be sure, the U.S. officials met with Khodorkovsky's lawyer; for extra credit, they might have asked to visit Khodorkovsky himself, who briefly declared a hunger strike earlier this month to protest conditions in pre-trial detention. Dropping by the trial even briefly and saying something to the press on the courthouse steps would have dramatically raised the profile of the bilateral talks, which were ignored in the U.S. media, and would have send the right serious signal.

2. the U.S. officials did not get certain outspoken Russian NGO leaders into the official bilateral meeting, to sit at the table as equals with American NGOs, and as accepted interlocutors with their own government, but instead only the Russian side invited only a few representatives from more cooperative groups.

3. the U.S. officials did not raise publicly, for the Russian media, and Western media, the most urgent issues in Russian human rights today, namely, the lack of access for inspections by both elected officials and non-governmental groups, although they did raise the death of Sergei Magnitsky in prison. Nor did they raise publicly the beating and murders of human rights activists and journalists themselves -- fundamental issues that explain why Russia is not morally equivalent to the U.S., whatever its sins.

For reasons that she did not explain, the Russian presidential human rights advisor Elena Pamfilova boycotted the U.S-Russian meeting. Vladimir Lukin, the Ombudsman, was going to attend the civil society roundtable, but was unexpectedly called away to the Kremlin to meet with the president in a long-awaited meeting to present his annual report. So the two officials with generally the most credibility on this subject, who operate under constraints but are still accepted as valid interlocutors, were not present in the official and separate civil society meetings.

Of course there was the Potemkin Village visit of Vladimir Prison, but this was thankfully kept short so that the Americans weren't wasting valuable time seeing fresh coats of paint and chocolate in the canteen.

As noted in the Russian press, there was a separate roundtable of civil society activists from the U.S. and Russia held at the Sakharov Center, and McFaul attended this; Surkov did not (and it would be disgraceful if he did).

Let me explain again why. There is no moral equivalency between the human rights problems of the U.S. and the human rights problems of Russia. While they have some similarities here and there due to being large, multi-ethnic superpower countries, the differences are tremendous regarding the scale of abuses, the severity of abuses, and the remedies to stop them. Tremendous. Here's a key difference: no American activist has been murdered for their human rights work, and no journalist has been murdered for their investigative reporting. American Lawyers and journalists are not put in jail for their work, either, with very, very few exceptions, such as one who refused to reveal her sources or another who conveyed messages from her terrorist suspect client. Deaths in confinement occur in the U.S., as does mistreatment; yet you certainly find nothing like the cases of two Russian business people, Sergei Magnitsky and Vera Trifonova, dying in custody recently, put in pre-trial detention in the capital on allegations of non-violent white-collar crimes. 

The reasons for not bringing in experts like Lev Ponomaryov and Valery Borshchev or lawyers knowledgeable about high-profile cases are explained as follows:

A. The structure of the meetings in the Surkov-McFaul Commission is such that each side must bring experts on problems in his own country, and each side gets to pick their own experts, but they can't pick the experts for the other side's country from their country -- that would violate the protocol established by Surkov, to which McFaul conceded

B. Sophisticated sorts say confidentially that if you were to invite some of the outspoken experts on the Russian prison system who work on human rights in non-governmental groups, they would only bark, and the meeting would not be "constructive".

C. If the U.S. were to attempt to insist on terms of reference that enabled independent figures like Ponomaryov or Borshchev to sit at the table, or were even to walk out of the meeting if their demand was not met, and if they were to risk speaking "out of turn" on grave human rights problems in Russia, they would risk so angering the Kremlin that they could jeopardize other strategic advancements in the "reset" of Russian-American relations, such as the (dubious) promise that Russia is going to (finally) place pressure on Iran (see Zakaria and my comment) and concede sanctions and that arms controls talks will continue to yield results.

This is why the policy is called "constructive engagement". It's because it's about...engagement, constructively. However, you do have to concede that the operation, even if a success, still involves dead patients. You can easily feel as if you have accomplished a lot in the human rights "constructive engagement" dialogue mode, if you had a meeting, went to a prison, ran around Moscow individually meeting various figures (and I understand McFaul also met while in Moscow with people like Boris Nemtsov, Gary Kasparov, Magnitsky's mother, the economist Yasin and others).

But the essence of the job is left undone: Russian human rights activists are not recognized as valid interlocutors by their government, and the U.S. has not moved the ball down the court on gaining them that full recognition by getting the people they meet with separately, outside of government palaces, into the room.And the perpetrators of outrageous beatings and murders are not brought to account.

To be sure, *some* groups with *some* figures who are in a very much constrained Russian presidential human rights commission, which some view as coopted and even compromised, got to participate, although it was telling they tended to come from the groups working on migration rather than those working on prisons.

The McFaul-Surkov Commission should never have been formed at all. Forming it, with the "managed democracy" tsar of the Kremlin, Vladislav Surkov, is making common cause with a figure busy apologizing for and participating in the suppression of civil society in Russia. If Lukin had been made the counterpart, that would have been more credible; but he wasn't, because it's not.

Once you have an apparatchik's apparatus like this, a vehicle whose chief purpose on the Kremlin side is to engage in propaganda to distract from real problems, it's hard to keep it on the straight and narrow, and to give it validity even by having valid interlocutors. I cannot stress enough: the chief rebuttal of my criticism I have had all year (and this isn't the first time I've criticized this commission or this approach) is that "Russian human rights activists themselves want this and don't think it's useful to lecture their government."

I don't care. I'm not a Russian human rights activist facing death threats, coopting myself into a presidential commission to buy myself some protection, fearing to seem irrelevant in the public eye if I set too high a standard for government sincerity. And while an Obama voter, I fail to see why at home I'd need to behave as if I were a Russian activist facing death threats and coopt myself into a presidential commission, either. I think it's extremely important that more people stay out outside of this coopted process and criticize it. Furthermore, the Russian community is split about this process, and we don't hear an awful lot about that, and U.S. officials are split about this process, and we don't hear an awful lot about that, either. So it's good to keep pointing out: this is a deeply flawed and compromised process whose chief result so far has been legitimizing Surkov -- we haven't even gotten one case solved, which is usually what you can get out of the Kremlin's hostage politique tendencies with these sorts of human rights talks.

RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER CALLED AWAY TO MEETING WITH MEDVEDEV

Vladimir Lukin, the ombudsman, a respected "perestroika liberal" who first became prominent in the Gorbachev era and was also U.S. ambassador during the Yeltsin Administration, had this to say about our American team in Moscow:

Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin told reporters during a break that the Americans had openly addressed problems in the U.S. prison services. "They surely have strengths but also difficulties, and they talked quite frankly about that," he told Interfax.

Lukin will not face from his own press and public the kind of admonitions that his counterpart, Michael Posner faced for raising the Arizona law with China.

So I'll ask the question, then, since nobody else is:  Did those Americans openly address problems in the *Russian* system? Because the whole point of even involving Americans and having this bilateral pas-de-deux is to strengthen the hand of reformers in Russia, such as they are, particularly in NGOs that are under fire, to be able to address their considerably more difficult problems with far less remedies.

It doesn't seem so, but it was a closed meeting that produced no concrete result (and that's fine, a negotiated joint statement under these heavily spun circumstances was rightly avoided).

Of course, Lukin didn't need the Americans to speak about the problems in Russian prisons, which is his job as ombudsman. As Moscow Times noted:

Critics have pointed to appalling conditions in Russian prisons after the recent deaths of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and businesswoman Vera Trifonova in Moscow detention centers. Their supporters say they were denied proper medical care.

Lukin on Wednesday handed Medvedev a list of those prisons where the rights of inmates are violated most often, the Kremlin said on its web site.

But...Lukin doesn't get a lot of attention from Medvedev and Putin although he does have occasional meetings and he evidently had his annual meeting to give his report on human rights issues, which interestingly, after being postponed for months, suddenly coincided with McFaul's trip. The Kremin reported it.

(These televised meetings are all very precooked and choreographed, and there was a little fake dance where Medvedev acted as if he was expecting to hear some sharp reports about worker's rights, given intensive labor unrest in Russia, and oddly, Lukin, who should know better, presents "the rise by only 2.6 percent" of workers' complaints in 2009 as somehow a good sign. Obviously they got worse in 2010!)

Medvedev, who is famous for raising the issue of "legal nihilism" (a phrase I often have to explain to Americans, even lawyers), comments sagely on the high number of complaints that come into the ombudsman's office instead of going into courts, and concludes that lawsuits are difficult and expensive (and, I might add, in a country where the judges are murdered for their work, even more risky for a plaintiff).

As we can see from the Kremlin.ru report, Lukin raised several other issues regarding prisons: he presented the list of prisons where rights were most violated; he noted that there were innocent people kept in pretrial detention who shouldn't be; and that while people ill with certain diseases could be released from labor colonies or prison, those in pre-trial lock-up did not enjoy this privilege.

The entire meeting is choreographed to produce a certain result: the impression that Russia's president is a thoughtful man concerned about his subjects and that the ombudsman, the chief human rights official, enjoys access to him and can present him even critical reports. Nobody needs meddling Americans in commissions to raise these issues; Russians can handle it themselves.

So what is wrong with this picture? Well, tune in 3 months or 6 months or 12 months from know to see if anything changed; such reports have been delivered before, and such high-level conversations have been had before (and Lukin had waited months for this one to be scheduled).

TWO RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS APPEAL FOR INSPECTIONS

But to understand better what the problem is, go over to another statement, made by two human rights leaders during the week the American delegation was in Moscow -- two people who were not at the table in the official meeting (as far as I can tell), who had to be seen separately, and who had to make their appeal separately. They were Ludmila Alexeyeva, a veteran activist and chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, sometimes described as the "grandmother of the Russian human rights movement" recently famous for demonstrating dressed as Snow Maiden in defense of the Constitutional right to assemble in a public square, and getting detained by police; and Valery Borshchev, a former member of parliament and long-time human rights and religious freedom advocate.

Earlier, on April 22, both Alexeyeva and Borshchev had stated that despite personal attention from President Medvedev (that I emphasize, again, creates the illusion of concern), the officials responsible for Magnitsky's death in prison had not been substantively punished (and that's the way it always goes in Russia). As the New York Times reported:

But five months have passed, and no one has yet been charged with a crime. Lyudmila M. Alexeyeva, who sits on Mr. Medvedev’s human rights council, said she would recommend that the body take control of the case, which she said “is not moving.”

“We have a vertical of power,” said Ms. Alexeyeva, who is chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a nongovernmental rights organization. “Our president has constitutional powers no emperor ever had. But did that help punish those who brought Magnitsky to his death? Nothing of the kind. All those people are still working in their positions.”

Borshchev was even more pointed:

Valery V. Borshchev, who heads a watchdog group that monitors prison conditions, said his organization received no response to a scathing report it submitted to prosecutors in December. He said that he believed Mr. Magnitsky was intentionally denied medical care on the orders of the lead investigator in the tax-evasion case, who Mr. Borshchev said was guilty not of negligence but of a far graver crime, “intentionally creating the conditions that led to death.” In response to the outcry, Mr. Medvedev also rewrote the criminal code so that suspects of tax crimes could not be jailed.

“This is not just a matter of the life and death of Sergei Magnitsky, it is a question of our entire system,” said Mr. Borshchev, who heads the Public Oversight Commission, adding that last year 4,600 inmates died in Russian prison colonies, and 540 in pretrial detention centers.

(I'm sure the many American prison experts on the delegation could comment on these figures, or they can be gathered from sites like the Department of Justice, which is required to report under the Deaths in Custody Act. I tend to think we'll find that there are far less deaths in U.S. custody for which prison wardens are guilty of neglect or torture.)

According to an article in Novyye Izvestiya published on Johnson's List, Borshchev and Alexeyeva spoke out again May 28 in Moscow, after their separate meetings with the American officials in a civil society roundtable (although the article does not reference them):

     Lyudmila Alekseyeva and Valery Borschev of the Moscow Helsinki Group and Movement For Human Rights leader Lev Ponomarev made a joint statement in defense of convicts. Human rights
activists announced that reforms in the penitentiary system had been charted and put into motion without the opinion of the domestic human rights community taken into account. "It is
necessary to begin with personnel. Personnel of the Federal Penitentiary Service ought to be screened and examined by psychologists," said the human rights activists.

     "Wardens prone to violence and mistreatment of convicts must be fired," Ponomarev said. "We've been getting complaints from convicts against harassment prison wardens resort to. The officials that are supposed in theory to help convicts reintegrate into society actually worsen the processes of de-socialization. Finding stoolies among convicts and siccing one bunch of convicts on another are all they are good for." Ponomarev called for an end of the so called humanization of the penitentiary system which he said was anything but humane.

See, this is the difference between a figure like Vladimir Lukin, who plays an important role in at least keeping the shell of a government human rights policy open, but who is only able to speak in generalities, seize on a few issues that the president has already indicated he will do anyway, and basically just keep writing reports and handing them in -- and figures like Borshchev and Alexeyeva, who are in the trenches, and making the hard calls about the Kremlin spin -- it is not humanization, but quite the opposite.

     According to Ponomarev, a good deal of errors have been made already in the course of the allegedly "humane" reforms. The human rights community also insists on confidentiality of meetings with
inmates, collective treaties with inmates, and on the right of all lawmakers at whatever level to visit penitentiary establishments.

This issue of inspections by lawmakers -- a right enjoyed if not practiced by U.S. congressmen in many states -- is really the main issue of human rights activists in Russia speaking out today -- along with the right of non-governmental organizations, including the ICRC, to gain access -- because without that spotlight on the harsh conditions, there is no incentive to change them. Access and inspections naturally become the main issue in a setting like Russia where NGOs are increasingly restricted and the media is suppressed.

U.S. SPEAKS OUT...ABOUT U.S. PRISON CONDITIONS

Yet judging from the White House statement, the Kremlin.ru coverage of the Medvedev-Lukin exchange, and the Russian coverage of the "reset delegation", this issue was not raised publicly, in meetings with officials, by the U.S., even though they knew full well that this was a key issue. Of course, maybe it *was* raised, in a meeting, as an analogy by mainly talking about *U.S.* methods of ensuring inspections, but we can't know that because...it was a closed meeting.

I'm glad the "reset" crew didn't run into the kind of trouble they did in China, where Michael Posner appeared to speak only about the criticism of the Arizona law before the cameras, and not about Chinese human rights issues like mistreatment of Tibetans and Uighurs (and again, we're likely to be told this was raised in "quiet diplomacy" in closed meetings).

But to pull off a human rights mission in these highly warped situations, you have to speak out frequently and loudly, and not just check off the box that you met the symbols of the issues. In my view, the U.S. delegation should have held a press conference and described what was talked about at the meeting, taken questions from Russian reporters, and spoken out about issues like the inspections, the deaths in custody, and the murders of human rights activists who try to report on these issues. They would have lost nothing by doing this; the Russians aren't going to retract their "progress" on Iran or arms control over a press conference. It would have been the morally right thing to do, and would not be "lecturing," or "imposing American values," or refusing to take the log out of their own eye, but would simply be amplifying what beleaguered activists themselves say, and backing them with the power of the U.S. in the name of universal values, so that their important work in Russia under fire has more protection.

RUSSIAN ACTIVIST CONFRONTS MEDVEDEV ON CHECHNYA ATROCITIES

I could note that another important meeting took place with another actor in these Surkov-McFaul meetings, and that is with Svetlana Gannushkina, the Civic Action leader who is an expert on migration, and other human right leaders with Medvedev on May 20, the week before the American-Russian meetings, Gazeta.ru reports

Gannushkina very frankly contrasted Ramzan Kadyrov, believed to be personally responsible for cases of missing and murdered persons in Chechnya, and Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the leader of neighboring Ingushetia, who had taken greater care to observe rights, such as informing relatives of detentions of their family members.  She also noted officials like the Grozny mayor who told the relatives of militants that they would be treated the same way as their children were treating others. Medvedev cautioned her not to put at "loggerheads" the two Caucasian leaders, and claimed not to be informed of opposition to his support for Yevkurov, but Gannushkina calmly noted that at any time, the Russian president could simply remove the head of a federal subject like the Chechen Republic, as such governors are not elected, but appointed.

In a piece aptly called "the International Human Rights Vertikal" (vertikal is what the Kremlin command-system from on high is called, whereby authoritarian leaders like Putin extract obedience from subordinates -- or they replace them), Nezavisimaya gazeta notes:

Meanwhile, the event yesterday in Vladimir did not pass by without scandal:  Ella Pamfilova, the chief of the presidential council on promotion of the development of institutions of civil society and human rights, categorically refused to travel to meet with the Americans. In a conversation with an NG correspondent, she refused to reveal the reasons for her decision, saying only, "I could not attend. I had very weighty reasons for not going."

Several other facts testify to the lack of complete and unconditional understanding in relations between the state and representatives of civil society. As NG learned, the Civic Chamber, for example, refused, despite a previous agreement, to offer its space for the discussion of the Russian and American human rights activists. And Vladimir Lukin, commissioner for human rights in the office under the president who promised to attend the meeting, was unexpectedly summoned to the Kremlin, to a meeting with the president, which he had been waiting for unsuccessfully for several months. Such a coincidence.

For some reason, despite the recent critical meetings and statements of Alexeyeva, Borshchev, and Gannushkina, NG focused on a statement by Alexeyeva at the round table that praised the law that will enable members of regional observers' councils to visit prisons without prior notification -- a law that went into the second reading in parliament on May 27 -- fortuitously  -- and which got to that second reading as a "present to the [Surkov-McFaul] commission," as Ponomaryov explains. Even if it was passed in fact last week or will be passed soon -- and it appears as if it still has disagreement in parliament about the amendments -- obviously the problem is in enforcing this law, and increasing the level of official able to credibly and independently inspect prisons.

It's hard to know why Pamfilova boycotted the meeting; she's not talking. In the mafia-like atmosphere in Moscow, where people continue to feign cooperation and refrain from criticism because they are threatened, she could have been told she would lose her job, or feared she would lose access, or merely may have grandstanded about some modality and then decided not to back down when she couldn't get her way.

U.S. RAISES A SAFE ISSUE

Before the American delegation went, a number of people had noted that the safe topic to talk to the Russians about, in case they were prickly about hearing criticism of their prison system, was the recent deaths in detention of Sergei Magnitsky. Medvedev himself had raised the case finally because it sparked such outrage at home and got so much international media coverage. McFaul was reported by NG to ask Surkov in the meeting what the reason was for his recent reform and "humanization" of the law. Babushkin quoted Medvedev as saying that that the Magnitsky case could have been dealt with in various ways, the case could have just been halted on the grounds of a technical infraction. But the president employed this tragedy so as to soften the law.

What would really be proof of reform, however, is if this new awareness that businessmen charged with non-violent crimes should not be in prison could translate to releases from detention of such businessmen in reality. And of course there's no reason why only business people should benefit from more humane pre-trial conditions; everybody should.

If this were the end of the story -- a somewhat flawed representation on behalf of the urgent human rights issues of Russia but at least some attention from high U.S. officials and hopefully some modicum of protection for those speaking out against government policies -- then there wouldn't be much to protest.

The problem is that it lurches on. A Russian delegation will be coming to the U.S. and there will be working groups with U.S. officials and "civil society" (which in our case is the recognized human rights groups like the ACLU and Human Rights Watch). The asymmetry continues to harden; it becomes an institutionalized moral equivalence that becomes harder to undo. And outside the gates of these conferences, there will still be people jailed unfairly and even dying not of natural causes in prison, and no perpetrators brought to account.

In a comment to a two-part series on Magnitsky's case by Oliver Carroll, Martin Dewhirst points out that 20 officials being fired for this death is good, but prosecution of officials responsible for death in custody due to deprivation of medical treatment (torture) would be better, and we need to exercise due diligence as to where these 20 are now, i.e. not back at their jobs or similar jobs.

WHY I BOTHER WITH THIS

No doubt more will come out about this week of meetings, but I think we've seen most of it. And here I want to add a few words about why I am bothering to cover this story.

1. I work as an independent contractor, a translator and consultant for a variety of nonprofit organizations, publishers, and news organizations. I don't work on Russia as much as I do other countries these days (and as much as I did in past years), but I still do work on Russian issues occasionally, follow events closely, and frequently meet with visiting Russian human rights activists. I do not represent any organization in my views expressed here, and in fact, a key reason why I *can* express the views that I know some do share in and out of government is because I don't aspire to be a part of this awkward hybrid creature called the McFaul-Surkov Commission; I do not wish to get a job with the Obama Administration; I don't need a foundation grant to engage in Russian-American dialogue; I don't professionally study Russia as a scholar or think-tank staff member and don't need to keep my Russian visa access; and I don't live or work in Russia. A lot of the people involved are constrained by some of these factors, especially in Russia.

2. Michael McFaul sent me a message on Facebook (I friended him because I thought he might have press releases on his profile or some comments on these meetings) and said he understood I was a critic of his commission with Surkov, said he wanted to understand my views better, and offered me a phone number. I imagine my American friends and even more so my Russian friends will be surprised to hear that I said "no" to personally call an advisor to the president of the United States, and indicated that I do not want to be spun in a private telephone conversation, and that everything I think on this subject is outlined in copious detail on my blog if anyone wants to understand it. Again, if any U.S. government official has something to say about human rights in Russia and this trip, they need to say it publicly, and not just to me, but the public. I really feel strongly about this. There is too much about this process that is in closed meetings, and doesn't need to be.McFaul came back to me again in surprise that I did not wish to "engage" and offered a public debate to be arranged some time. And yes, that's how it should be done -- in public.

3. Jacobo Timmerman said "quiet diplomacy is quiet; silent diplomacy is surrender." I don't think it's good enough, when our colleagues in Moscow are being killed for their work, and outside and inside of jails, and when people are dying in pretrial detention in Moscow, not to mention Chechnya, to simply ask the president of Russia why he softened a law -- when that law is mainly for show, and no individual case has been resolved under it that we can see, and when no official has been prosecuted for the deaths.

4. I'm acutely aware of that soon it will be the 6th anniversary of my colleague Nikolai Girenko's murder, and his killers have still not been sentenced. I worked with him very closely on the issues of racism in Russia and we took part together in the prep coms and Durban World Conference Against Racism. It was when Girenko was shot in his doorway by neo-Nazis in retaliation for his testimony at a trial of racists and other anti-discrimination work; it was when Anna Politkovskaya was shot, that I began to conclude that doing human rights work in Russia was rather futile *for me*, but of course, Russians bravely go on fighting this good fight in their own country. That is, if for some years I felt Americans weren't really needed so much by Russians except as back-ups and fund-raisers, it then became unsafe to tackle the really hard issues of human rights, especially in armed conflict areas, and it meant that you had to go work on other issues that inevitably were sideshows to the main story. While no doubt some of my long-time colleagues think I'm out of touch, I think they've lost their way in the corridors of power. I don't think commissions like this are the place to be when your colleagues are murdered. I think actions that are far more strenuous and vocal and systematic and not coopted are needed until it stops.

5. There's a curious notion that this two-legged sack race (Lebed', Rak, i Shchuka?) is some kind of major force for improving human rights. It's not. If anything, it is damaging the cause by the false equivalencies and creating an illusion of activity and progress where it does not exist. Other organizations outside this process, like the Committee to Protect Journalists, have shown that it is possible to take a list of murdered colleagues, muster the highest representation you can find, and go to Moscow and raise the cases with the Russian authorities -- without creating any permanent or semi-permanent bilateral structures or agreeing to any absurdities like speaking only about your own country's problems. You don't need a commission to meet with Surkov, and giving this commission to him to propagandize with was wrong.

***

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 28, 2010


Statement by National Security Council Spokesman Mike Hammer
on the Second Meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Commission Civil Society Working Group

On May 27, the United States-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Civil Society Working Group convened in Vladimir, Russia for its second meeting. The Working Group, under Special Assistant to the President and National Security Council Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia Michael McFaul and Russian Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Vladislav Surkov, focused on the ways in which government agencies and non-governmental organizations interact to improve policy regarding prison reform and immigration.

American representatives from non-governmental organizations, including from the Vera Institute of Justice, Southern Poverty Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, and International Rescue Committee, took part in the session with government experts from the National Security Staff, Department of State, and Department of Homeland Security. Russian representatives from non-governmental organizations, including the Committee for Civil Rights, Civil Assistance, Interregional Charitable Prisoners Fund, and Center for Migration Studies participated as well as government representatives from the Presidential Administration, Federal Migration Service, Federal Penitentiaries and Corrections Service, Ministry of Justice, Human Rights Ombudsman, Public Chamber, and Presidential Council for Promoting Civil Society Institutions. During the visit to Vladimir, participants visited a Russian prison and a factory where Vietnamese migrants are employed in Vladimir. In addition, McFaul participated in a civil society roundtable as well as meetings with bloggers and independent new media journalists.

As we noted in our National Security Strategy released yesterday, the Obama Administration seeks to build a stable, substantive, multidimensional relationship with Russia, based on mutual interests. The United States has an interest in a strong, peaceful, and prosperous Russia that respects international norms. We support efforts within Russia to promote the rule of law, accountable government, and universal values. McFaul's visit is consistent with this approach -- that is, engaging Russian government officials as well as Russian civil society leaders--to advance democracy and respect for human rights.