UN: Russia muzzling dissent amid climate of fear, repression

Geneva — As Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine grinds on for a third year, a United Nations report says all dissenting voices in the Russian Federation have been muzzled, civic and political rights have been shut down, and the human rights situation in the country “has significantly worsened.”

“The country is now governed by a state-sponsored system of fear and punishment including the use of torture, with absolute impunity,” Mariana Katzarova, who monitors rights in Russia under a mandate from the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, said Tuesday.

Katzarova said civil and political freedoms in Russia have become further restricted since she submitted her first report to the council more than a year ago.

“The severity of the government’s human rights violations has escalated, and its tools expanded to suppress dissent against its repressive domestic policy and war-driven foreign policy,” she said.

As with last year’s report, Katzarova noted that she was obliged to gather information for this year’s 23-page report from a range of sources inside and outside the Russian Federation.

Despite repeated requests, she said she was not granted access to Russia, “which would have allowed a dialogue with the government and other stakeholders and enabled the reflection of their position in this report.”

The report paints a chilling picture of a dystopian society in which Russian citizens are not free to express their views, state-driven human rights violations are legalized by new or amended legislation, public anti-war expression or dissent of any kind is criminalized, the use of violence by law enforcement is condoned, and “an environment of absolute impunity has been created.”

‘War censorship’

Under Russia’s so-called “war censorship” legislation, Katzarova noted that hundreds of people who “dare to speak the truth” about what is happening in the war against Ukraine have been prosecuted, given long prison sentences and subjected to the “crippling financial punishment” of having property and assets confiscated.

The report says at least 1,372 human rights defenders, journalists and anti-war critics have been detained on politically motivated charges and sentenced “in sham trials to lengthy imprisonment, often with treatment amounting to torture.”

While Russian authorities have intensified their crackdown on these “traditional sources of opposition,” Katzarova said poets, playwrights, artists, religious figures, indigenous groups, migrants, and those who’ve fled abroad are often targeted with “harsh censorship, intimidation and prosecution for any perceived transgression.”

“Of particular concern is the evidence of state-condoned violence and torture against civilians arrested for peacefully exercising their human rights,” she said. “Brutal assaults of detainees by law enforcement officials go unpunished; there is increased use of solitary confinement in prisons and other deliberate ill-treatment amounting to torture.”

The report spells out in searing detail the many human rights violations and state-condoned discriminatory policies used by the state to intimidate, harass and punish vulnerable groups, including women and girls, LGBTQ persons, indigenous peoples, minorities and migrants.

“The risk of severe punishment for any form of public dissent is very high, particularly for individuals and groups vulnerable to discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, political opinion, religion, indigenous status or minority background,” says the report, which devotes a long section to the wide range of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law precipitated by the ongoing war against Ukraine.

Ukraine-related violations

It expresses particular concern about Ukrainian civilians held in arbitrary detention because “Russian authorities do not provide information about their number, fate or whereabouts, and many are subjected to enforced disappearance.”

The report says at least 1,672 Ukrainian civilians are known to have been arbitrarily detained by Russian authorities and kept “in penal colonies, pretrial detention centers and temporary makeshift tent camps” located throughout Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. It also says an estimated 14,000 Ukrainian civilians are missing.

The report documents the plight of captured military and civilian Ukrainians, including children, who have been forcibly transferred or deported to the Russian Federation.

According to the Ukrainian government, 19,546 children were forcibly transferred to Russian-occupied Crimea or deported to Russia or Belarus as of the end of July 2024; 388 have been returned. The whereabouts and fate of the thousands of other children remains unknown, though some are believed to have been given up for adoption by Russian families.

The report notes that some of the returned children who were interviewed said they “were subjected to sexual violence during their time in Russian institutions and some experienced or witnessed physical violence and threats against children by the staff.”

Last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for “the war crimes of unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

Katzarova told council members that “The Russian authorities must bring to justice all those responsible for this torture and ill-treatment and immediately and unconditionally release all Ukrainian detainees, ensuring their safe return, especially of children.

“As special rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Russian Federation, I will continue to call for accountability for these crimes,” she said.

It is a call likely to be ignored by Russia, which boycotted the meeting and did not respond as a concerned country.
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