Court Turns Down Pussy Riot Band Member Appeal

By Madeline Schiesser
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BEREZNIKI, Russia – Maria Alyokhina’s 5-year-old son, Filipp, will likely not see his mother for nearly two years.  The 24-year-old member of the punk rock band Pussy Riot lost her appeal yesterday requesting a deferral of her prison sentence until her son was older.  Instead, Alyokhina, convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” over a “punk prayer” aimed at Russian President Vladimir Putin last winter, will serve out the remainder of her incarceration until 2014.

Maria Alyokhina’s request to serve her sentence when her son is older was denied by a Russian court. (Photo Courtesy of BBC News)

In her plea, Alyokhina reasoned that Filipp, in his formative years, would suffer irreparable psychological damage from long-term separation from his mother.  “I’m in a situation where I have to prove here that my son needs me, which is obvious,” she said.  Instead, she asked to be allowed to serve her sentence when her son is 14.

However, the Berezniki court in the Perm region of the Urals Mountains near where she is jail, determined that the length of Alyokhina’s sentence already reflected her role as a mother.  In rejecting the petition, Judge Galina Yefremova stated that “the fact that Alyokhina has a young child was taken into account by Moscow’s Khamovnichesky court.”  Because Alyokhina had showed “[n]o new circumstances,” she will remain in prison at Corrective Labor Colony No. 28, 750 miles north-east of her family in Moscow.

Unfortunately, sentence deferrals are uncommon.  In several prison colonies, female prisoners raise their children in jail.

Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich were convicted in August of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for a “punk prayer” protesting the Putin presidency.  Samutsevich was later released on a suspended sentence.  (See Conviction Upheld for 2 Pussy Riot Members, 1 Released for more information.)  All three have refused to admit any wrongdoing.

“No-one will force me to say I’m guilty – I have nothing to repent for,” Alyokhina said earlier in court.

Tolokonnikova launched a similar deferral appeal in October.

Amnesty International has characterized the denied appeal as a “travesty of justice.”  The organization considers Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova to be prisoners of conscience and believes that their sentences were politically motivated.  David Diaz-Jogeix, Deputy Program Director for Europe and Central Asia says that the decision shows “the Russian authorities are uncompromising in their suppression of freedom of expression” and that the verdict was “in line with the suppressive policies of the Russian authorities, stifling dissent in any form.”

Alyokhina has described her existence at the prison colony as “an anti-life.”  “Everything around is grey. Even if something is another color, all the same it has an element of grey. Everything: the buildings, food, the sky, words,” she says.

In addition to the monotony, life at the prison colony consists of adjusting to a strict set of rules and few resources.  The women must rise at 5:30 am, and forty prisoners share a bathroom with three basins and two toilets.  They have learned the prison rules by rote in a special room with a security camera.  Activities include stringing together cigarettes, and sewing nametags onto their uniforms.  In a workshop, female prisoners sew for 12 hours a day and receive a maximum pay of 1,000 rubles ($32.57) a month.

Alyokhina explained that one’s entire mindset is focused on following the rules in order to receive early parole.  Points are awarded for visiting the library and the psychologist, contacting relatives, and even going to a prayer room, although Russia is actually a secular state.  “Everything a prisoner does is to get a tick for early parole,” she said.

However, early in her stay at the colony, Alyokhina stated her intent to maintain her autonomy, saying “we make different choices in a hopeless situation.”  This attitude may have brought her into conflict with other prisoners.  In November, Alyokhina was transferred to solitary confinement, at her own request, because other inmates were said to be behaving aggressively towards her after she refused to join them in a hunger strike.

In the meantime, Filipp is staying with his grandmother, but, according to Tolokonnikova’s husband, the boy “is small and misses his mother.”

For further information, please see:

Moscow Times – Court Turns Down Pussy Riot Appeal – 17 January 2013

Amnesty International – Russian Punk Singer Refused Sentence Deferral – 16 January 2013

BBC News – Russia Court Turns Down Pussy Riot Jail Plea Over Child – 16 January 2013

RFE/RL – Russian Court Denies Pussy Riot Member’s Appeal – 16 January 2013

The Journal – Jailed Pussy Riot Member Slams Routine in ‘Grey’ Camp – 18 December 2013

Religious Group Defends Exemptions in New Australian Human Rights Bill

By Mark O’Brien
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

CANBERRA, Australia — As the Australian government tries to overhaul anti-discrimination legislation, the Christian lobby is rejecting any effort to eliminate religious exemptions in the bill.

Australia’s Christian Lobby calls suggestions that a proposed law will allow religious groups to discriminate against sinners is overblown. (Photo Courtesy of the Herald Sun)

The draft of the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill integrates five current discrimination laws into one law, but it allows religious organizations to discriminate against certain groups lawfully when hiring or firing someone.

“Anti-discrimination laws should be about protecting those affected by discrimination, not protecting those who conduct the discrimination themselves,” said New South Wales independent MP Alex Greenwich, who has been a long-term campaigner for gay and lesbian rights.

Greenwich and others urged Prime Minister Julia Gillard to reconsider whether the religious exemptions should be allowed, especially when taxpayer money is involved.

“I hope the government seizes the opportunity of this review,” Greenwich told ABC News, “to make some real change to help those who are affected by discrimination on a daily basis.”

But Jim Wallace, head of the Australian Christian Lobby, said religious groups need to be able to hire people who share and reflect their values and philosophies.

“The church wants to reflect through its staff the philosophy of Christ,” he said to Sky News.

Wallace also downplayed the issue and described the effort to characterize the exemption as a “freedom” to discriminate gays and other people they consider sinners as “a complete beat-up.”

“I’m not aware of any Christian organization that has refused to hire anyone (based on their sexuality,” he told reporters.  “I’ve looked.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Australian Human Rights Commission received nearly two dozen complaints in 2012 from people claiming they were discriminated against at work based on their sexuality.  While the commission kept no record of whether the work was with a religious organization, its president said some of the complaints were against religious groups.

“We can and do receive complaints about discrimination in employment with faith-based organizations on the ground of sexual preference,” Gillian Triggs told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Some critics of the exemption also worry that faith-based groups, including schools and hospitals, will be able to refuse to hire women who are pregnant or potentially pregnant.

Anna Brown, the advocacy and strategic litigation director of the Human Rights Law Centre, called the bill a “missed opportunity” to narrow the broad exemptions available to religious groups.

Still, Triggs called the bill an important first step in creating a coherent federal human rights system.  But she added that more work needs to be done.

“In a secular society such as Australia,” she said, “one does not want to give any sort of particular priority to one freedom above the right of people to non-discriminatory employment.”

For further information, please see:

Sydney Morning Herald — Religious Groups Free to Discriminate Against Pregnant Women — 17 January 2013

Sydney Morning Herald — Review ‘Missed Opportunity’ to Separate Church and State — 17 January 2013

ABC News — Christian Lobby Rejects Push to Remove Religious Exemptions — 16 January 2013

Herald Sun — Sinners Story a Complete Beat-up, Says Australian Christian Lobby — 16 January 2013

Syrian Revolution Digest: Wednesday, 16 January 2013

Tired Baby, Tired!

It’s getting quite hard keeping track of it all: the cluster bombs and sectarian sentiments, the incendiary minds and arid hearts, the shifting red lines in our overloaded brains, the hypocrisy of it all. Yet, chronicling our irrelevance is an important part of the struggle. Tomorrow needs to know who the real heroes were, and who the imposters… and which emperors had no clothes, which emperors betrayed us all. 

Today’s Death Toll:183 (including 18 children and 9 women)

50 martyrs were reported in Damascus and Damascus Suburbs, 37 in Homs, 25 in Aleppo, 23 in Idlib, 15 in Hama, 16 in Daraa, 9 in Raqqah, 5 in Latakia, and 1 in Hasakeh (LCCs).

Points of Random Shelling: 331

including 20 points that were shelled by warplanes, 6 points using cluster bombs, 5 points using TNT barrels, and 2 points with vacuum bombs. Also, 135 points were shelled with heavy caliber artillery, 86 points were shelled with mortar, and 77 points were shelled with rockets (LCCs).

Clashes: FSA rebels clashed with regime forces in 145 locations. Rebels managed to successfully bring down 3 regime fighter planes, 1 in Al-Ramdan near Dumair city, 1 in Damascus suburbs, and 1 Talbeeseh in Homs. The FSA also seized control of Kuwairis military airport in Aleppo, and repelled regime attempts to storm Busr Al-Harir in Daraa, as well as in Daraya and Mouadamieh in Damascus Suburbs (LCCs).

News

U.S. Shoots Down Secret Report That Syria Used a Hallucinogen Weapon State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland has denied the report, saying that the Foreign Policy story ”did not accurately convey the anecdotal information that we had received from a third party regarding an alleged incident in Syria in December.” “At the time we looked into the allegations that were made and the information that we had received, and we found no credible evidence to corroborate or to confirm that chemical weapons were used,” she added. That’s a major deal, because the international community has repeatedly told the Assad Regime in Syria that the use of chemical weapons is beyond unacceptable. The White House issued a statement along similar lines.

The Case of Agent 15: Did Syria Use a Nerve Agent? what happened? Was the mystery gas in fact sarin, or a nerve agent like it? Did its use alter the dynamic of the Syrian conflict in fundamental ways? The brief answer to all of these questions is: so far, hard to say.

Syria to Receive More International Food Aid The World Food Program currently provides food aid to 1.5 million needy people inside Syria.  WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin says the agency has not been able to expand its operation because only the Syrian Arab Red Crescent has been authorized to distribute food. But last week, she says, the Syrian authorities gave the agency a list of 110 non-governmental organizations that can help distribute food.  Out of this list, she says WFP has chosen 44 groups with whom it will work. Cousin says this will enable WFP to scale up its operation to feed an additional one million people.

Iran gives Syria $1bn import credit line While the agreement is not a direct cash transfer to bolster Syria’s depleted foreign exchange reserves, it will allow Syrian importers credit to source consumer supplies from Iran at a time when it is hard for them to do so from many other countries.

 

Special Reports

The gruesome toll of deadly cluster bombs in Syria
Since mid-2012, Human Rights Watch and others have reported several times on civilian casualties caused by Syrian use of air-dropped cluster bombs, but Latamneh and other recent attacks are the first known instances of Syrian use of ground-based cluster munitions. The rockets were apparently launched from the vicinity of nearby Hama airport, which is under government control.

Jordan is Living Dangerously as Syria Burns
The immediate impact of the Syrian conflict on Jordan’s fragile polity is twofold: The influx of refugees into Jordan, and the outflow of jihadists from Jordan into Syria to join the fight.

Referring Syria to the international criminal court is a justified gamble
An international criminal court investigation may split the United Nations – but it would change the civil war’s political dynamics

Obama shows there are no red lines on Syria
Let’s be frank here: There are no red lines for this president when it comes to projecting U.S. military force. And if he won’t act when Syria is at issue, no realistic observer thinks he would act against Iran.

 

Video Highlights

In Anadan, Aleppo, rebels fend off an attack by pro-Assad militias http://youtu.be/2MPHc-ErHKo

The town of Zabadani continues to be pounded http://youtu.be/G33rhMsVzNE Meanwhile, the towns of Eastern Ghouta continue to be pounded by MiGs http://youtu.be/8JsIkMYrpXA

People in the town of Rastan, Homs, rush to save the injured in the aftermath of an aerial raid http://youtu.be/HV4iqlCAsb8 Some of the dead http://youtu.be/2-lKwcsD3RQ

R2P Monitor: January 2013

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect

Pakistan and India Agree to “De-Escalate” Tension in Kashmir After U.N.’s Request

By Karen Diep
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

NEW DELHI, India – On Wednesday, India and Pakistan’s chiefs of operation along the Line of Control reached an agreement to “de-escalate” military tensions in Kashmir.  Tensions arose between Pakistan and India after the deaths of two Indian and Pakistani soldiers last week.

Soldiers paying respect to those who have been killed in the dispute. (Photo Courtesy of Aljazeera)

“An understanding has been arrived at between the two director-generals of military operations to de-escalate the situation along the Line of Control,” shared spokesperson Jagdeep Dahiya.

According to BBC News, the military operations’ director of the Pakistani army agreed to the de-escalation after calling his Indian equivalent to “protest strongly” a “ceasefire violation” by Indian soldiers that killed a Pakistani soldier along the Line of Control Tuesday night.

On January 10th, the U.N. urged both countries to ceasefire and initiate dialogue.  The United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) made the request even as it received a complaint from Pakistan.  In the complaint, Pakistan claimed that Indian troops had purportedly crossed the Line of Control and “raided” a border post on January 6th. In response, India denied the allegation.

For the past 60 years, Kashmir has been a territory in distress and therefore, violent exchanges are not uncommon. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their separation in 1947, two of which were over the region of Kashmir.

On Tuesday, India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, conveyed that the deaths of Indian soldiers last week, one of which included a beheading, were “unacceptable.”

In response, Pakistani’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, stated that India was “war-mongering” and this was “detrimental to the peace process between the two countries.”

According to The Tribune, on Monday, the Indian army’s chief of staff instructed his commanders to give an “aggressive” response to any shots fired by Pakistani forces along the Line of Control.

“We expect our commanders to be aggressive,” General Bikram Singh said prior to a meeting between Indian and Pakistani commanders.  “The orders are very clear: when provoked, I expect my unit commanders should fire back,” continued the general.

Nonetheless, an Indian military source conveyed to AFP that there has been no cross-border firing since the two director-generals spoke.

For more information, please see:

Aljazeera – India and Pakistan ‘to ease’ Kashmir tensions – 16 January 2013

BBC News – Kashmir crisis: Indian and Pakistan agree ‘de-escalation’ – 16 January 2013

The Tribune – Pakistan, India agree to ‘de-escalate’ border tensions – 16 January 2013

The Hindu – U.N. urges India, Pakistan to de-escalate tensions through dialogue – 16 January 2013