Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime is brutally crushing all dissent and “spewing homophobia and racism” as a way of distracting from his relentless repression of Russian civilians, a shocking new report has warned.
In its World Report 2024, Human Rights Watch says during the second year of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s government stepped up war censorship, imprisonment of critics, and crushed all forms of human rights activism.
Rachel Denber, HRW’s deputy Europe and Central Asia director, said: “As the Kremlin continues its war, it redoubled efforts to eradicate the mere possibility of public criticism of its foreign and domestic policies.
“At the same time, they are spewing homophobic and xenophobic tropes in an apparent attempt to distract public attention from the accumulating domestic social and economic challenges.”
She added: “The Kremlin’s battery of repressive measures apparently aims to leave a barren land where once there was a thriving civil society.
“Concerned governments and international organisations should step up and fortify the resilience of Russia’s civil society.”
In the 740-page World Report 2024, its 34th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries.
In Russia, the analysis suggests the authorities have continued to expand and harshen already extensive and repressive legislation, including laws on ‘foreign agents’ – now dubbed ‘foreign influence’, so-called “undesirables,” war censorship, and other measures to outlaw, silence, and imprison people who publicly oppose the Kremlin’s foreign or domestic policies.
Particular targets have included opposition leaders, independent journalists, and human rights activists.
Russian courts forcibly shut several prominent human rights groups at the request of the Justice Ministry, citing pretexts such as operating and attending events outside of Moscow, where they were registered, as well as non-compliance with “foreign agents” requirements.
At least two people were detained and face imprisonment on “foreign agents”-related charges, the report explains.
After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for both Putin and the children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, in relation to the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas of Ukraine and their unlawful deportation to Russia, authorities adopted a law criminalising assistance to foreign and international bodies “to which Russia is not a party”, says the report.
Simultaneously they are accused of intensifying the use of the charges of “discreditation” and disseminating “false information” about Russia’s armed forces to suppress anti-war speech and prosecute and imprison individuals for their lawful, peaceful expression.
As of November 2023, at least 77 people have been sentenced on “false information” and 52 on “discreditation” charges, according to the human rights group OVD-Info, including prominent opposition figures and people with no background in activism.
A number of opposition figures, aides of Alexei Navalny, as well as Navalny himself, were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences on extremism charges.
In addition, embers of the “Vesna” youth movement face extremism charges for peaceful anti-war activism, the report pointed out.
In November, the Supreme Court ruled to ban the “international LGBT movement” as an extremist organisation following a lawsuit filed by the Justice Ministry, jeopardising all forms of LGBT rights activism in the country.
In Chechnya, Governor Ramzan Kadyrov’s administration had continued to “eviscerate all forms of dissent with impunity”, the report says, targeting critics and retaliating against their family members, including by forcibly mobilising men to fight in Ukraine.
