On Friday, the Committee on Human Rights UN published a report stating that Russia is unable to protect journalists, activists of various movements, prisoners and other citizens who are in conflict with the authorities, BBC reports.
Confrontation of this kind threatens to violate their rights, torture and even murder, the authors of the report state.
The document is prepared by expert advice, consisting of 18 persons. They appealed to the Kremlin calling for some changes in Russia's law - in particular, to narrow legal definition of "terrorism" and "extremism", the decriminalization of defamation and give the right to appeal to people sent to psychiatric hospitals by court order.
Additionally, the report puts the onus on Russia's authorities for the assaults of it's troops on civilians in South Ossetia after the August war with Georgia and urged Moscow to thoroughly investigate these cases.
The document also states that political courts against journalists are being manufactured in Russia, in which politically motivated sentences are handed down. This leads to a significant reduction in criticism of the authorities in the press.
Judicial system in occupied Chechnya and other regions of the North Caucasus were the most severely criticized. The authors bring forth numerous reports of torture taking place there, disappearances, arbitrary arrests and killings by the military and security services.
But most importantly, the document says, people who commit these crimes, enjoy absolute impunity.
While the authors do not result in any statistics, they indicate that many of the killings of journalists and human rights activists still remain unsolved. One of the most high-profile cases in document was the murder of journalist of 'Novaya Gazeta' Anna Politkovskaya, committed in 2006 and is still unsolved.
Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center
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