Amnesty Urges Russia To Implement UN Rights Council Recommendations

The council, in a working-group review of Russia's human rights record, asked Moscow to:

-- Take further measures to ensure the security of journalists and human rights defenders and to bring and perpetrators of crimes against them to justice; 

-- To provide access to Ingushetia and the North Caucasus for the UN Working Group on enforced disappearances and the special rapporteurs on torture and on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions; 

-- To abolish the death penalty;

-- To create an environment to promote the right to freedom of assembly and to encourage citizens to freely express their views;

-- To take measures to ensure the rights of ethnic minorities.

“If implemented, these recommendations would ensure a thriving civil society where the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association can be freely enjoyed and where there is accountability for all acts of racism, torture, or other ill-treatment and other human rights abuses” said Amnesty's Martin Macpherson.

During the February 4 review, states also called on Russia to conduct thorough investigations into the murders in late January of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in Moscow.