Guardian's former Moscow correspondent on "Russia’s treatment of its own whistle-blowers" (updated)

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Last edited Thu Aug 1, 2013, 02:21 PM - Edit history (1)

Vladimir Putin’s decision to grant Snowden asylum is a "humiliating, wounding rebuff to America's attempts to 'reset' relations with Russia", writes my colleague Luke Harding, former Moscow correspondent for the Guardian:

In theory Snowden has been allowed to stay for one year. In reality he is learning Russian and ploughing his way through Doystoyevsky. Snowden’s stay in Russia could be indefinite.

Among other things, the Snowden story has exposed the impotence of twenty-first century US power. With no US-Russia extradition treaty there is little the White House can do to winkle Snowden out. It can, of course, express displeasure. Obama is likely to cancel a trip in September to Saint Petersburg for Russia’s forthcoming G20 summit.

The irony, as Senator John McCain was quick to point out, is that Moscow’s record on human rights and freedom of speech is far worse than Washington’s. While Snowden was stuck at the airport, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny got five years in jail. (Navalny was promptly bailed following his provincial show trial, apparently amid Kremlin in-fighting.)

Since returning for a third time as president, Putin has moved to crush mass protests against his rule. They began in late 2011-2012. He has introduced a series of repressive new laws against human rights organisations, selectively arrested leading critics, and jailed the feminist punk combo Pussy Riot.

Russia’s treatment of its own whistle-blowers, meanwhile, is grim and awful. (Think Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in Moscow in 2006, or Natalia Estemirova, kidnapped in Chechnya’s capital Grozny in 2009 and murdered.) Last month (July 11) Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who exposed massive interior ministry fraud, was himself convicted of crimes. Magnitsky was an unusual defendant: he was already dead.

Luke has plenty of experience of the intricacies of being allowed, or not being allowed, into Russia. It's worth reading his full piece, which will be published shortly.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/edward-snowden-leaves-moscow-airport-live#block-51fa8f4be4b09fe7db8e242d

From the link embedded at the original, a 2011 report:

Guardian's Moscow correspondent expelled from Russia

Luke Harding's removal thought to be the first of a British staff journalist from the country since end of cold war

Dan Sabbagh

The Guardian's Moscow correspondent has been expelled from Russia, in what is believed to be the first removal of a British staff journalist from the country since the end of the cold war.

Luke Harding's forced departure comes after the newspaper's reporting of the WikiLeaks cables, where he reported on allegations that Russia under the rule of Vladimir Putin had become a "virtual mafia state".

The journalist flew back to Moscow at the weekend after a two-month stint reporting on the contents of the leaked US diplomatic cables from London, but was refused entry when his passport was checked on his arrival.

After spending 45 minutes in an airport cell, he was sent back to the UK on the first available plane – with his visa annulled and his passport only returned to him after taking his seat. Harding was given no specific reason for the decision, although an airport security official working for the Federal Border Service, an arm of the FSB intelligence agency, told him: "For you Russia is closed."

- more -

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/feb/07/guardian-moscow-correspondent-expelled-from-russia

Updated to add:

<...>

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a veteran of Russia's human rights movement and head of the respected Moscow Helsinki Group, welcomed the news on asylum for Snowden, but added that his quest for freedom of information has landed him in a country that has little respect for that and other freedoms.

"Having fought for the freedom and rights, Snowden has ended up in a country that cracks down on them," Alexeyeva said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch sounded a similar note. "He cannot but be aware of the unprecedented crackdown on human rights that the government has unleashed in the past 15 months," Denber said in an e-mailed comment.

Putin has launched a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent since his inauguration for a third presidential term in May 2012, with the Kremlin-controlled parliament stamping a series of laws that introduced heavy fines for participants in unsanctioned protests, imposed new tough restrictions on non-government organizations.

- more -
http://news.yahoo.com/snowden-leaves-airport-russia-grants-154431899.html

Fugitive Snowden slips out of Moscow airport for 'secure' base (updated)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023384887