Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Honourable members of the committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before you today.
In 1991, 25 years ago, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, of which both Russia and Canada are full members, adopted the Moscow document, which upheld explicitly that human rights are not internal affairs but are subject to international obligations by member states. Under Vladimir Putin's government, the Russian Federation has made a mockery of these obligations in all the fundamental spheres of the human dimension.
Elections in our country have become a meaningless ritual for confirming the incumbents, with the opposition candidates routinely disqualified from the ballot, and the voting process itself marred by administrative intimidation, overwhelming media bias, and pervasive fraud. For instance, in the most recent parliamentary election, in 2011, up to 14 million votes, according to independent estimates, were stolen in favour of Vladimir Putin's party.
For more than a decade now, the Russian Parliament has been a decorative institution, devoid of any real opposition to the regime, “not a place for discussion”, in the unforgettable words of its own former speaker.
The same applies to Russia's largest media outlets today. Since the early years of Mr. Putin's rule, the state has taken over or shut down every single independent nationwide television channel, and TV channels have become outlets for the official propaganda, used to rail against so-called external enemies, which is mostly western countries and more recently Ukraine, and against Mr. Putin's political opponents inside Russia, us, who are denounced as traitors and foreign agents.
Many of the regime's opponents today are behind bars. According to the Russian human rights centre Memorial, which is probably the most respected human rights organization in our country, there are currently 53 political prisoners in the Russian Federation, and that's using the high standard established by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Resolution 1900.
These include opposition supporters jailed under the infamous Bolotnaya case, for protesting against Mr. Putin's inauguration on the streets of Moscow in May 2012. They include Oleg Navalny, the brother of anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who is basically held as a hostage. They include Alexei Pichugin, the remaining hostage of the Yukos case; Sergei Udaltsov, the leftist politician; and Ildar Dadin, a pro-democracy activist, who was recently sentenced to three years in prison for staging one-man protests on the streets of Moscow. There is a new law that targets street protesters. He was the first one convicted under it. Of course, they now also include citizens of Ukraine seized during Mr. Putin's military aggression against that country, most famously, or I should say most infamously, Nadia Savchenko, whose show trial is currently under way in southern Russia.
Of course, as you well know, disqualification from the ballot, slander in state-run media, and even prison are no longer the biggest dangers that face those who dare to oppose Vladimir Putin's regime. On February 27 last year, the leader of Russia's pro-democracy opposition, former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, was gunned down, killed by five bullets in the back, as he walked home over the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge, just 200 metres from the Kremlin wall, in what is probably the most secure area not just in Moscow but in the whole of Europe. Boris Nemtsov was the strongest, the most prominent, and the most effective leader of the democratic opposition in my country, and his murder left an enormous void in the democratic movement. The tens of thousands of people who came out on the streets of Moscow two Saturdays ago to walk in the memorial march in memory of Boris Nemtsov are testimony to this.
I am very fortunate and very happy to be able to appear before you today. Last May I slipped into a coma, as a result of a severe poisoning of unidentified origins that led to multiple organ failure. Tests showed an abnormal concentration of heavy metals in the blood, and medical experts told my wife the chances of survival were 5%. I am certainly very happy to be here. I have no doubt that this was deliberate poisoning intended to kill, and it was motivated by my political activities in the Russian democratic opposition, likely including my involvement in the global campaign in support of the Magnitsky Act.
As you know, that law, which was passed in the United States in 2012, established a groundbreaking precedent by introducing for the first time ever personal accountability for human rights abuses. These are not sanctions against a country or even a government. These are sanctions against specific individuals responsible for corruption and for abusing human rights. That law introduced visa sanctions and asset freezes against people involved in the arrest, torture, and death of Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered a large tax fraud scheme involving state officials—Bill Browder will speak in more detail about this—and also against people involved in other human rights abuses.
It is an honourable law, and it is a pro-Russian law in my view. It's a law that targets those who abuse the rights of Russian citizens and who steal the money of Russian taxpayers through official corruption.
It is also a very effective law, because for all the many similarities that we can discuss between the Soviet regime and what we have today under Vladimir Putin—and there are many similarities, as I mentioned, such as political prisoners, the lack of free and fair elections, media censorship, and so forth— there's also one very important difference. The difference is that while they were persecuting dissenters, harassing their opponents, and putting them in prison, members of the Soviet politburo did not keep their money in the west, did not educate their children in the west, and did not buy luxury real estate and yachts in the west. People in the current regime like to do that, both officials and Kremlin-connected oligarchs and kleptocrats. This double standard has to be put to an end.
Those people who openly trample on the most basic norms of the free world should not, in my view, be allowed to enjoy the privileges that the free world has to offer.
Back in December 2012, Boris Nemtsov and I published an op-ed here in Canada in the National Post, which Zhanna has already referenced. It was entitled “Standing up for freedom in Russia”. It called on the Canadian Parliament back then to adopt its own version of the Magnitsky law. The article states:
Canada has an opportunity to lead — just as it has led on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – by adopting the Magnitsky legislation.... The task of democratic change in our country is ours and ours alone. But if Canada wants to show solidarity with the Russian people and stand for the universal values of human dignity, the greatest help it could give is to tell Kremlin crooks and abusers that they are no longer welcome.
This is a message I would like to reiterate before you today. I hope our friends and our overseas partners here in Canada will act to stop this impunity for the crooks and the abusers, and will support this legislation in memory of Sergei Magnitsky and also in memory of Boris Nemtsov.
Thank you very much once again for the opportunity to appear before you.