Amnesty Urges Russia To Implement UN Rights Council Recommendations

Amnesty International is urging Russian authorities to both accept and implement recommendations adopted by the UN Human Rights Council.

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.