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TITLE: Russian Dissident Wants Sanctions Against Moscow over Chechnya |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: Agence France Presse |
DATE: January 25, 2001 |
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A Russian human rights campaigner and former Soviet dissident called on Europe to impose sanctions against Moscow because of the Chechen war in an interview published Thursday. Sergei Kovalyov, a former comrade of Nobel prize-winning dissident Andrei Sakharov, told the Kommersant daily he was "in favor of sanctions against Russia". Sanctions are necessary in order to lift the anti-war debate above "the banal level of slogans," he said in an interview from Strasbourg, where the Council of Europe was due Thursday to debate lifting Russia's voting rights. Last April, Russia became the first country in the Council's 50-year history to be stripped of its voting rights following reports of abuses carried out by federal troops in Chechnya. But Kovalyov, a Russian deputy, denounced "the West's double standards," accusing the Council of Europe of failing to exert real pressure on Russia to improve its human rights record in the North Caucasus. Last week, senior monitors from the Council of Europe, led by Britain's Frank Judd, visited Chechnya to investigate the current situation on the ground. But Kovalyov warned that it was too early to reinstate Russia's voting rights, adding: "Judd noted in his report the cases of mass disappearances of civilians and the use of torture in Chechnya. "Does he not understand that if they ease the pressure on Russia, it will only encourage the kind of excesses that are being committed," Kovalyov said. END |