European Court of Human Rights: Khodorkovsky Case

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I also commend my noble friend Lord Trimble for bringing this important matter to your Lordships’ House and presenting it with his usual methodical and forensic accuracy. The timing of this debate is important, as he has pointed out, given the legal cases in Russia and those coming up at the European Court of Human Rights. However, the timing of the debate at this hour of the evening means that I do not intend to repeat what he has already said with such clarity about the case itself.

Part of the importance of this case, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, is its significance regarding the deterioration of freedom and democracy in Russia. Since Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s arrest, there has been an extraordinary increase in the number of political prisoners in Russia; by most estimates, there are now more than in Belarus. The arrest of Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev in 2003 on fraud charges was probably the first major such politically motivated case brought against Kremlin opponents under Putin. Khodorkovsky was supporting the liberal opposition Yabloko party of my old friend, Grigory Yavlinsky, and challenging corruption and authoritarianism in Russia under Mr Putin, as my noble friend has said. The Russian leader—not the first to do so—saw the legal process as one that could be used to intimidate dissenters. In the words of one of my Russian colleagues, he almost killed off politics from 2003 until December 2011, when the people, outraged by election fraud, came out en masse to protest. In 2009, as my noble friend has pointed out, additional charges of embezzlement were brought against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev and, now, a third case against the defendants may effectively result in life sentences for them.

Then there was the case of the Yukos executive and former company director, Vasily Aleksanyan, who, according to the European Court of Human Rights, was improperly imprisoned and treated in an inhuman and degrading fashion, resulting in his premature death in 2011, some time after he was released from prison as a result of international pressure. In the Yukos case, Russia abused the European Court of Human Rights by, for example, repeatedly replacing the ad hoc Russian judge five times, so that every time a new judge came in, he or she would have to familiarise themselves with all the papers, thus delaying the whole process.

The Pussy Riot case is another example of manipulation of the court system to silence critics. Here, three young women were convicted in August 2012 of hooliganism, motivated by religious hatred, for an illicit performance by their rock group in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Advised or ill-advised as that may have been, these performance artists were challenging the Kremlin’s increasingly close relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has, sadly, become a central player in Putin’s strategy for national unity. Two of these women are currently serving two-year prison sentences.

The Bolotnaya Square case, brought against 12 defendants for allegedly rioting on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on 6 May, the eve of Putin’s inauguration, was largely viewed as a provocation by police to undermine the protest movement. Those 12 people, many of whom had never before even participated in political demonstrations in their lives, are now defendants in a show trial and face up to 10 years in prison.

Therefore, with Khodorkovsky, Lebedev, the pre-inaugural 6 May case and Pussy Riot, Russia is now host to many political prisoners—and their numbers are rising. For example, there is the recent case of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and that of Yabloko’s Pyotr Ofitserov, whose only crime was knowing Navalny; Magnitsky’s post-mortem conviction has already been mentioned; Yabloko’s activists now in jail such as Maxim Petlin, on a trumped-up bribery charge as he fought with a developer who tried to destroy a public garden; and Ivan Bolshakov and Vasily Popov, who were convicted and given sentences on fake evidence for their political activities. Then there are the suspected murders of journalists and human rights activists. Anna Politkovskaya was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and Yuri Shchekochikhin investigated corruption in the KGB and died mysteriously—like Litvinenko—a couple of months after the first publication of his investigation; and there are many more.

Therefore, the Khodorkovsky case is important not just in itself but because it has paved the way for politically motivated reprisals in Russia. Intimidation and reprisals against political dissenters and opposition have turned into daily practices for the Russian authorities—from intimidation, searches and wiretapping to imprisonment and even, it is clear, extrajudicial killings. In addition to human rights concerns, this increase in political persecution is resulting in increased Russian asylum cases in the European Union, which has a direct impact on the EU economy and society. For example, one young man, Mr Dolmatov, was implicated in the Bolotnaya case, fled, and then committed suicide in a Dutch detention centre after being denied asylum in the Netherlands. Other well known figures such as Garry Kasparov and Sergei Guriev have left Russia for the US and France respectively due to their fear of arrest.

Amid these discouraging highlights, it is important to remember that there are many Russians inside the country who are fighting for democracy and human rights. They need our unwavering political and moral support—from the whole of the international community. Thousands of Russians are working steadily for peaceful democratic change in Russia. Putin’s attempt to use the legal process and other processes to frighten his citizens through the prosecutions we have mentioned will not ultimately work. Dozens of new political parties registered last year and are running candidates in the local elections on 8 September. Thousands of civic activists are preparing to monitor those elections. Those anonymous but courageous Russians want to change their country for the better and they deserve our continuing attention and support.

While my colleague Sergei Mitrokhin maintains that Khodorkovsky is a courageous, inspirational and increasingly symbolic figure for the Russian opposition, Khodorkovsky himself, writing in an opposition newspaper interview just a few weeks ago after his 50th birthday and around 10 years in prison, remains cautious about the prospects. He said:

“The struggle for power with an authoritarian regime always involves serious and mass sacrifices—the loss of a business, a job, or liberty”—

and, he might have added, even your life.

These are serious matters. The least we in this country can do is to give Khodorkovsky and others in the Russian opposition all the support we can in their fight for freedom and democracy in their great country. I welcome the statement by the Prime Minister at the Banqueting Hall and I look to my noble friend to be as robust and strident as she can in condemnation. However, it would be dreadful if our response was only words and we were intimidated, as my noble friend Lord Trimble said, into not taking the kinds of actions that need to be taken to emphasise that we mean what we say. I look to my noble friend to encourage us in that way, too.