I should clarify that I've also had the same conversation with the head of the subcommittee on human rights of the European Parliament, Heidi Hautala, and she supports the idea of a resolution at the European Parliament. We're gathering support from different factions of the European Parliament. Hopefully by the end of the year we'll have a similar parliamentary resolution.
I was in Berlin about three weeks ago and met with the heads of each faction's subcommittee on human rights. They're going to hold hearings, hopefully in January, as we're doing right now, to discuss the idea of visa bans. We're also beginning the process of working with the British Parliament on the same thing.
I've been in touch with the Polish foreign minister, who has publicly stated that if other countries—and he was specifically referring to the U.S.—were to put in place visa bans, Poland would follow. The reason Poland is important is that it's a member of the Schengen region, which means that if the visas are taken away for these officials in Poland, they can no longer travel to any Schengen country, which includes all of Europe. We're working on a few other Schengen countries at the moment as well.
So this is a widespread activity that we're doing with many different countries. The idea is that we want to create essentially a domino effect whereby bad guys won't be able to travel. This scares the hell out of not just the bad guys who did this, but other bad guys, because if other bad guys see that this is a viable weapon against human rights abuses—and there are no weapons at the moment against human rights abuses.... Everybody makes condemnations but does nothing about it. This is the first time I've seen something really tangible that will affect the human rights abusers.
I should say one other thing, which is that all of the community of people who fight human rights abuses in Russia are hugely in favour of this, and they beg every foreign dignitary, every president, every congressman who visits Russia to put in place this type of thing. We have Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who is one of the most important human rights activists in Russia, head of the Helsinki Group in Russia, who met with the German President and asked for this and met with officials from the U.S. state department to ask for this.
This is something they are screaming for. They are screaming for its consequence, for the end of impunity. So if I can collect like-minded people around the world who want to do something to really touch human rights abuses, this is what it would be.
This is starting out with Sergei Magnitsky, but my intention is that this be not just a Sergei Magnitsky law but eventually become an amendment we can apply to other human rights abuse cases and to other countries, so that eventually people who abuse human rights are no longer able to travel and spend their money and would have to think twice before they start torturing people in jail.