Irwin Cotler at Geneva Summit: Each of Us Has Capacity “To Speak and To Act On Behalf Of Political Prisoners”
February 24, 2020
As the United Nations marks the 75th anniversary of its charter this year, Russia is retreating from international legal commitments, and continues to display an “ugly continuity” of imprisoning its citizens for their beliefs and subjecting them to criminal prosecution for what they say.
On the eve of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s main annual session, which kicked off on February 24, 2020, the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy brought together activists, diplomats, journalists and victims of human rights abuses and dissidents to discuss human rights situations that warrant attention on a global scale.
Speaking at the summit’s opening event, Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Minister of Justice and MP and founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, renewed his call on the international community to “stand for the nameless” — those subjected to human rights abuses and imprisoned “based on their fidelity to conscience.”
In Russia, according to the Memorial Human Rights Center, there are at least 314 prisoners of conscience today: 250 in connection with their religious beliefs and 64 for other political reasons – one of them is Alexey Pichugin, who in spite of the fact that he was merely a manager within the company’s security department, was the first victim of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drawn-out and personal campaign to expropriate Yukos Oil Company and destroy the company’s leadership. Pichugin has been imprisoned for more than sixteen years.
In his remarks, Cotler invoked the late Kofi Annan, who served as the seventh Secretary General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006, and famously stated that a “United Nations that does not put human rights on the forefront of its advocacy, is a United Nations that betrays its advocacy and forfeits its future.”
Cotler argues that “We have to collectively take our responsibilities and name and shame violators of human rights. (…) Each of us has the capacity to transform the ledger every day, from evil to good. To speak and to act on behalf of political prisoners. To let them know that we stand with them. To let them know that we will not relent in our advocacy for them.”
Watch his remarks here:
