Vladimir Kara-Murza
Article link: http://www.worldaffairsjournal...
It took six years of work, tireless public advocacy, and overcoming powerful interest groups—both within and without—but a crucial milestone was finally reached in Canada this week. On October 18, the country’s Governor General, Julie Payette, gave royal ascent to Public Bill S-226, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, better known as the Magnitsky Law, making Canada only the third country in the world to enact what should seem like a straightforward principle: that foreign government officials who abuse and steal from their citizens should not be allowed to take advantage of the freedom and opportunities of Western societies.
Following similar measures in the US and Estonia, Canada’s Magnitsky Law—passed unanimously in both chambers of Parliament—provides for asset freezes and travel bans on foreign nationals responsible for “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” and “acts of significant corruption.” “A triumph for human rights and [the] rule of law,” tweeted Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj; his Conservative colleague James Bezan affirmed that human rights abusers will no longer “be able to use Canada as a safe haven.”
For the many similarities between the Soviet regime and Vladimir Putin’s system—political repression, media censorship, fixed elections—there is at least one important difference: unlike their Politburo predecessors, the present-day rulers want to steal in Russia, but spend in the West. They violate the most basic norms of democratic society, but want to use the privileges and opportunities offered by democratic society for themselves and their families. They opt for Western countries to buy real estate; Western schools to educate their children; Western banks to keep their money—the money they are stealing from the Russian people.
When the US Magnitsky Act was enacted in 2012, Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov called it “the most pro-Russian law in the history of any foreign parliament.” That same year, he traveled to Ottawa to urge Canadian lawmakers to adopt a similar measure. “It is time for personal responsibility for those who continue to violate the rights and freedoms—and plunder the resources—of Russian citizens. Targeted sanctions will end impunity for crooks and abusers, and will introduce a measure of accountability otherwise unachievable in today’s Russia,” Nemtsov and the author of this blog wrote in an op-ed for Canada’s National Post. “The task of democratic change in our country is ours and ours alone. But if Canada wants to show solidarity with the Russian people and stand for the universal values of human dignity, the greatest help it could give is to tell Kremlin crooks and abusers that they are no longer welcome.”
This message has now been sent by Canada. It will be sent by other democracies—despite bureaucratic resistance; despite the pressure from Putinversteher and proponents of realpolitik; despite powerful interest groups; despite hysterical reactions from the Kremlin and its mouthpieces. For all the criticism of modern Western politics, it seems that principles and values still mean something.