On February 4 Yelena Bonner appealed to the PACE urging it to convene an extraordinary session of the Parliamentary Assembly for a thorough study of the situation surrounding the case of journalist Andrei Babitsky. The case has ceased to be an internal affair of Russia which is a member of the PACE.
In the case of Andrei Babitsky the Russian authorities have vividly demonstrated their total neglect of the obligations they have assumed to protect basic human rights and freedoms (including the obligation to do everything to facilitate and protect unobstructed work of journalists, an obligation detailed in the documents of the Council of Europe). Moreover, the Russian authorities are demonstrating that they have succeeded, in present-day Russia, in totally exempting themselves from the law and in turning all the legal institutions into mere docile instruments in their hands. Thereby they have destroyed the fundamental criterion of democratic society, equality of all before the law.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe possesses effective levers to stop this process and - most importantly today - to save the life of journalist Andrei Babitsky.
I call on the PACE to convene in an extraordinary session where it will be possible to persuade or prevail upon Russia to free journalist Babitsky and make public the true circumstances connected with the denial of freedom to that journalist.