Jill Stein insults Russia’s struggle for human rights and environmental justice

Two of Russia’s fiercest environmental activists have written an open letter to Green Party candidate for president Dr. Jill Stein, criticizing her for insulting Russia’s human rights and environmental justice movements, similar struggles in Russia, with activists treated in the same ruthless manner by the Putin regime. Many have had to flee Russia to avoid persecution.

The criticism comes in response to Jill Stein’s public support and engagement with Vladimir Putin, including her attendance at a conference and gala dinner celebrating the 10th anniversary of Russia’s propaganda arm, media channel “RT” (formerly “Russia Today”). Stein can be seen seated at the head table at the gala, with Vladimir Putin, his then chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov and press spokesman Dmitry Peskov, among other notable Russian officials. Also seated at the same table is former Director of US Defense Intelligence Agency, retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn.

Both Stein and Flynn have been widely criticized in the US and Europe for attending a conference celebrating a propaganda arm of the Russian government.

It is troubling that Stein and Flynn didn’t anticipate how their appearances would be used for propaganda purposes by the Kremlin, legitimizing a criminal regime under Putin that has flouted accepted rules of international law with its seizure of Crimea, and staging and supporting war in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin’s criminal acts have been accomplished with the help of sophisticated state controlled propaganda, the crown jewel of which Stein and Flynn were celebrating along with the perpetrators.

Worse still was Stein’s touting her delight at her perceived achievement of cooperation and collaboration with Putin’s regime on human rights and issues of social and environmental justice, as recorded in this video from Moscow’s Red Square.  Stein suggests we need to “replace a US policy of domination with a way forward based on respect, collaboration, international law and human rights,” adding, “We’ve seen that vision really resonate here,” referring to her dialogue with Putin.

Human rights observers as well as human rights defenders in Russia were horrified at this scene and at Stein’s words. Something I’ve been told over and over again when asked what we in the West can do to support Russians’ struggle for human rights and democracy is: speak the truth about Putin’s Russia, avoid euphemistic language that understates the reality of ever widening repression of dissent, and don’t legitimize the Kremlin’s criminality or corruption by treating Vladimir Putin as if he were a respected player on the world stage.

Of course, Stein did just that and more, and proudly. It’s unfortunate that Progressives even need to respond to Stein’s blatant disregard and/or ignorance of the severity of human rights problems inside Russia. The response in the form of this open letter from these two prominent Russian activists, both dedicated environmentalists, who have risked their lives and livelihoods in ways Jill Stein can probably not even fathom, is eloquent and powerful.

Evgenia Chirikova posted the open letter to Jill Stein on her Facebook page. Chirikova was recognized by Foreign Policy as a Top 100 Global Thinker. She’s received several awards for her work, including the Goldman Prize in 2012, which recognized her courageous and important efforts to mobilize fellow Russian citizens to reroute a major highway that would bisect the old growth Khimki Forest, known as “the green lungs of Moscow” as follows:

“Government officials did everything in their power to stop the movement, including wrongfully arresting and detaining protesters and threatening Chirikova and her family. Unnamed assailants, likely associated with Khimki officials, beat activists and journalists questioning the project. Most notably, the journalist Mikhail Beketov suffered permanent brain damage and lost a leg and four fingers in a failed murder attempt in November 2008. Chirikova herself has been arrested and detained numerous times, faced baseless rumors of being an American spy, and fought false claims of neglect and mistreatment from child protection authorities who threatened to take away her children.

In this atmosphere of violent political and civil repression, Chirikova and her colleagues continue to fight for an alternative route and an absolute halt to the forest destruction. Energized by the erosion of support for Putin’s ruling party, Chirikova is breathing new life into Russian civil society’s appetite for political reform, and with it, the fight to protect Khimki Forest.”

The second author is Nadezhda Kutepova, an environmental activist whose work focuses on the nuclear disaster zone in the Chelyabinsk region, many of whose surrounding villages remain devastated as a result of the USSR’s nuclear industry in the Ural Mountains.

[Read more on nuclear Chelyabinsk and the Soviet disregard for human life]

Kutepova founded an NGO in the late 90s called Planeta Nadezhd (The Planet of Hopes) in the town of Ozyorsk which was built around the Mayak nuclear plant. It remains classified as a “strategic site” and is closed to visitors.

Mayak, one of the biggest nuclear facilities in Russia, continues to make plutonium components for nuclear weapons as well as storing and converting spent nuclear fuel. It was in 1957 that one of the storage facilities exploded and radioactive materials poisoned the surrounding area, including the River Techa. Some residents were moved out, but most remained and continued to drink the water and use the soil to grow food. Nobody was told what had happened or how dangerous the situation was. Countless people died from various cancers, and those who survived suffered very serious health consequences.

This documentary film entitled Chelyabinsk, the Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet was made in 1996 detailing the devastated communities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYmGCIg9O6Y

While other nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl have received widespread coverage in the media, relatively little has been published on Mayak, too distant perhaps for Europeans to worry about. But for families like Kutepova’s and my own who have suffered from the environmental degradation of Chelyabinsk, Kutepova’s work is important to understanding and preventing further adverse health effects of radiation.

Kutepova has been fighting for the rights of people in the Chelyabinsk Mayak area to get needed medical treatment as well as death benefits related to the 1957 nuclear accident. Last year Kutepova’s NGO was declared a “Foreign Agent,” the Russian regime’s way of silencing voices who are critical of the Kremlin by burdening them with regulations and fines, as well as removing any non-Russian source of funding. In addition to “unscheduled” interrogations and raids, the law is so vague that virtually anyone troublesome critic or undesirable can be branded a “foreign agent,” after which their activity ceases.

Since the NGO law enactment in 2012,  141 NGOs have been branded foreign agents, including preeminent human rights, educational and charitable organizations, such as the MacArthur Foundation, Memorial, GOLOS, Committee Against Torture, Dynasty Science Foundation, Transparency International. Just yesterday–less than two weeks before parliamentary elections–Russia’s only independent polling organization, the Levada Center, which tracks & analyzes public opinion in Russia, was crippled with “foreign agent” designation. Not coincidentally, a few days earlier, Levada published a poll showing Putin’s party “United Russia” fell in popularity from 39% to 31%. Levada’s CEO Lev Gudkov stated his frustration and fury when he said: a cough, a sneeze or a look the wrong way at a government official can be deemed “political” and therefore prohibited under the foreign agent law.

Both Kutepova and Chirikova know from personal experience what the repressive Putin regime has done to human rights, independent voices and those who stand up for environmental causes. They and their families have suffered harassment, intimidation, and have had to flee their own country to avoid prosecution and likely prison if they stayed.

Environmentalists and members of the Green Party should be familiar with Russia’s abysmal record as well. As a professed environmentalist with Progressive values and even a Green Party candidate for president, Jill Stein ought to be aware of conditions in Russia as well, particularly if she is meeting the head of state and recording campaign videos from Moscow. Chirikova and Kutepova’s open letter charges Stein with having forgotten the meaning of international solidarity by embracing Putin while disregarding that his criminal regime has been devastating to Russia’s struggle for human rights, democracy and environmental justice.

Here’s the full text of Evgenia Chirikova & Nadezhda Kutepova’s letter to Jill Stein:

Related:

• Ukraine’s Chornobyl, like Russia’s Chelyabinsk before it: Symbols of untenable Soviet moral decay
• Soviet-era chronicle of human rights violations reanimated in Putin’s Russia
• Putin’s reign of terror: “Cossacks’ attack Navalny, women & children as Russia’s police watch
• Fancy a frack? How the UK Greens got into bed with Putin