Russia must do more to stop violence against minorities, torture by the police and army, murders of journalists and, recently, the killing of a human rights lawyer, delegates to a UN rights body said on Wednesday.
“We are concerned at the trend of racism and xenophobia which is resulting in a continuing rise in racial attacks,” a delegate from South Africa, which often backs Russia, said during a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).
Other issues raised at the first Russian appearance for a review process of the 47-nation council included political abductions in Chechnya and the northern Caucasus, Internet child pornography and limits on independent civil society bodies.
Russian officials agreed racism was a problem but said they were tackling it through education and monitoring of extremist groups, and noted that such violence was not always fatal.
Russia was a democratic state “based on the rule of law,” and its people enjoyed equal rights, a report presented to the HRC by Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said.
Every effort was being made to combat extremism and ethnic violence, Konovalov said, and a special police unit had been set up to track activities of such groups under a law on fighting extremism and terrorism.
But this was contested at a briefing by independent Russian human rights groups — including the widely respected Memorial set up just before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — who said the law was being used to limit their activities.
All UN members are expected to undergo such a review every four years, though the process has been criticized by rights groups for being superficial and tainted by politics.
China faces a review today, and the US — which is not a member of the council — comes later. A new review process has been billed as a key change in the nearly three-year-old council, which replaced a discredited predecessor in 2006.
But true to form, many Asian and African countries that rely on Russian support to fend off criticism of their own policies generally had little but praise for Russia’s record.
EU countries, backed by New Zealand, urged Moscow to come down hard on racists.
The issue of legal and media freedom — highlighted by the daylight street killing in Moscow two weeks ago of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasiya Baburova — was raised by Australia, Japan and Britain, among others.
Konovalov said interference with the media was barred by law but investigation was hindered “by a lack of witnesses.”
In Moscow meanwhile, two people were gunned down on the street overnight Thursday in what appeared the latest in a spate of contract murders in the capital, Russian news agencies reported.
A former deputy mayor of the Chechen capital Grozny was shot three times in the head outside his home, Interfax quoted a police source as saying.
The man, 36-year-old Gilani Shepiyeva, had survived an assassination attempt in 2006.
Separately, an oil trader of Georgian origin was also shot while walking his dog.
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