Canadian Government Takes Up “The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners” Report as “Ottawa Day of Advocacy” Gets Widespread Media Attention
June 13, 2019
On Monday, June 10, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and the International Coalition to Free the Kremlin’s Political Prisoners joined forces to launch the “The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners” report in Canada.
The launch press conference was held in conjunction with an “Ottawa Day of Advocacy” in support of Russia’s political prisoners and others suffering at the hands of the Kremlin’s regime. Raoul Wallenberg Centre president Irwin Cotler, Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom chair Vladimir Kara-Murza, Perseus Strategies managing partner Jared Genser, and Free Russia Foundation president Natalia Arno were joined by representatives from all political parties represented in the Canadian Parliament.
Aside from shining a light on the more than 230 political prisoners currently held in Russia, the report also identifies 16 individual architects of the Kremlin’s repression and calls for the use of targeted sanctions under Magnitsky legislation.
During the press conference, human rights attorney Jared Genser who serves as legal counsel to many political prisoners, discussed the fate of Alexey Pichugin, Russia’s longest-serving political prisoner, whom he also represents, as a case in point to underscore the repressive nature of the Russian regime.
Genser said:
“The greatest fear of any political prisoner, in my experience (…), is to be forgotten. And this report today is intended to make sure that all of us remember not only who these people are and to see their pictures, and to hear their stories, and to know what it is they’ve gone through, and what they have suffered – torture, arbitrary detention, and even in extreme cases extra-judicial killing – it’s to tell those stories so that the world remembers, and from there, of course, to make sure that we hold the perpetrators to account.
There is no quick and easy solution to free the Kremlin’s political prisoners, but we know that if we do nothing, nothing will happen, and therefore the only thing that we can do, is to speak out loudly and clearly, and in one voice around the world that this must come to an immediate end.”
Watch the press conference, which was televised in its entirety by CPAC, here.
The Ottawa Day of Advocacy was kicked off by a joint op-ed by Messrs. Cotler and Kara-Murza in the Ottawa Citizen, in which they outlined the key points of the report and called for the sanctioning of the perpetrators of the Kremlin’s human rights repression via Magnitsky legislation.
Mr. Cotler, Mr. Kara-Murza, Ms. Arno, and Mr. Genser also testified before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Canadian Parliament on the state of human rights in Russia.
The day’s activities got widespread media coverage ranging from television over print and Internet coverage. Two of Canada’s leading news stations, CTV and GLOBAL, reported about the events in their national evening broadcasts.
Articles discussing the Russia’s Political Prisoners report appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and on CBC’s website. A Canadian Press newswire story was featured in newspapers across the country, and Ipolitics included the committee hearing in its roundup of things to watch on the Hill.
