EU-Russia NGO Body Condemns Crackdown
FINROSFORUM // The Finnish-Russian Civic Forum strives to promote cooperation between the peoples of Finland and Russia by supporting civic initiatives for democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech.
However, with the grave situation for defenders of human rights and democracy growing worse in 2009, Nations in Transit findings show that over the past decade, Russia [pdf] has undergone the largest decline of any country in the study. In terms of population, nearly 80 percent of residents of the former Soviet Union - some 221 million people - still live in entrenched authoritarian settings where they are deprived of basic political rights.
A group of 71 US congressmen, mainly Republicans, have sent a letter to President Barack Obama demanding that the administration withdraw from the working group on civil society of the top-level Russian-American Commission until the Kremlin replaces the group's Russian coordinator, first deputy head of Russia's presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov. While supporting the setting up of the Commission, Russian human rights defenders expressed discontent with Surkov's appointment as the coordinator of the working group on civil society, associating him with measures to "curtail the freedom of the press, to stifle free competition within the political system, and to build barriers against the development of civil society."
