Condemning the practice of politically motivated imprisonment and calling for the immediate release of political prisoners in the Russian Federation and urging action by the United States Government to impose sanctions with respect to persons responsible for that form of human rights abuse.

H. Res. 958 In the House of Representatives, U. S., December 3, 2020. Whereas the right to liberty and security of a person and the protection from arbitrary imprisonment are among the principal human rights guaranteed by Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Ar- ticle 23 of the Concluding Document of the Vienna Meet- ing of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Eu- rope, and Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights; Whereas the Russian Federation, as member of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Council of Europe, is bound by international commitments with regard to human rights and the rule of law; Whereas, on October 3, 2012, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution 1900 (2012) which defined anyone whose ‘‘detention has been imposed in violation of one of the fundamental guarantees set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols’’ and ‘‘is the result of proceedings which were clearly unfair and . . . appears to be connected with po- litical motives of the authorities’’ as a political prisoner; Whereas based on the criteria of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Resolution 1900 (2012), the 2 •HRES 958 EH Memorial Human Rights Center, a Russian nongovern- mental organization, estimates that there are currently more than 300 political prisoners in the Russian Federa- tion, a six-fold increase since 2015; Whereas the Memorial Human Rights Center list of Russian political prisoners includes journalists, civil society activ- ists, human rights advocates, participants of peaceful or- ganizations, and Ukrainian citizens from illegally annexed Crimea; Whereas the Russian Federation’s longest-detained political prisoner, Alexey Pichugin, has been incarcerated since June 19, 2003, in violation of two rulings by the Euro- pean Court of Human Rights and the opinion by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; Whereas investigative journalist and former editor of the independent newspaper Noviye Kolyosa, Igor Rudnikov was held in pretrial detention from November 1, 2017, until June 17, 2019, on alleged extortion charges, which were later dropped by the court; Whereas Igor Rudnikov’s detention and charges were criti- cized by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media and Reporters without Borders, calling them ‘‘clearly trumped-up’’ and ‘‘an act of political revenge’’, respectively; Whereas opposition activist Konstantin Kotov was sentenced to 1.5 years imprisonment on April 20, 2020, for partici- pating in peaceful demonstrations, in a ruling Amnesty International has described as ‘‘a profound injustice’’; Whereas Anastasia Shevchenko, an activist in the Open Rus- sia movement, has been held under house arrest since January 23, 2019, on the charge of belonging to an ‘‘un- 3 •HRES 958 EH desirable’’ organization and has been designated by Am- nesty International as a prisoner of conscience; Whereas Yuri Dmitriev, a leader of Memorial Society’s branch in the Republic of Karelia region of the Russian Federation who has worked to document mass burial sites from Stalin-era executions, has been held in deten- tion since June 28, 2018, on charges of child pornog- raphy that Human Rights Watch has described as ‘‘bogus’’ and part of an ongoing ‘‘smear campaign’’, and was sentenced to 13 years in prison on September 29, 2020; Whereas Dennis Christensen, a Jehovah’s Witness and a Danish citizen, was sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment on February 6, 2019, in a decision condemned by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom as part of the broader pattern of the Russian Government ‘‘engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom’’; Whereas, on February 10, 2020, 7 activists from Russia’s Penza Oblast were sentenced to terms of 6 to 18 years for alleged membership in a terrorist group following a detention marked by torture, ill-treatment to extract con- fessions, and periods held incommunicado; Whereas Human Rights Watch described the case as an ex- ample of the Russian authorities ‘‘abusing counterter- rorism laws to silence critics and deny fundamental human rights’’; Whereas, on August 6, 2020, a court in Moscow sentenced seven activists to between four years suspended and sevem years in prison for participating in an alleged ex- tremist organization, ‘‘The New Greatness’’, after an in- 4 •HRES 958 EH vestigation marked by the use of provocateurs, torture, ill-treatment, and forced confessions, in what the Memo- rial Human Rights Center and the Moscow Helsinki Group have described as a ‘‘politically motivated case’’ aimed at ‘‘suppressing the freedom of expression’’; Whereas, on June 18, 2019, the Department of State af- firmed that ‘‘the United States is deeply concerned by the growing number of individuals . . . identified by credible human rights organizations as political and reli- gious prisoners held by the Government of the Russian Federation’’ and called on the Government of the Rus- sian Federation ‘‘to release all those identified as political or religious prisoners immediately and cease its use of the legal system to suppress dissent and peaceful reli- gious practice’’; Whereas, on January 28, 2020, 43 parliamentarians from 16 European countries introduced a Resolution in the Par- liamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to appoint a rapporteur ‘‘to examine the growing crisis with politi- cally motivated imprisonments in the Russian Federa- tion’’; and Whereas, on June 29, 2020, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Legal Affairs Committee ap- pointed Icelandic lawmaker Thorhildur Sunna Aevarsdottir to serve as the rapporteur on political pris- oners in Russia: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives— (1) condemns the practice of politically motivated imprisonment in the Russian Federation that violates the country’s international obligations on human rights 5 •HRES 958 EH and the rule of law and expresses its solidarity with all those unjustly imprisoned in the Russian Federation; (2) calls on the Government of the Russian Federa- tion to immediately release individuals designated by the Memorial Human Rights Center as political prisoners under the criteria of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Resolution 1900 (2012), including Alexey Pichugin, Konstantin Kotov, Anastasia Shevchenko, Yuri Dmitriev, and Dennis Christensen; (3) urges the United States Government, in all its interactions with the Government of the Russian Federa- tion, to raise individual cases of Russian political pris- oners and advocate for their release; and (4) calls on the Secretary of State and the Sec- retary of the Treasury to use their authority under the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 (title IV of Public Law 112–208), the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (subtitle F of title XII of Public Law 114–328), and other applica- ble United States statutory authorities to designate offi- cials of the Government of the Russian Federation who 6 •HRES 958 EH are responsible for human rights abuses in the form of politically motivated imprisonment. Attest: Clerk.