Putin Must Change Course in Russia

Putin Must Change Course in Russia

The Winter Olympics were Vladimir Putin's opportunity to showcase his Russia. Yet the grandeur of Sochi masked a darker reality. The road to Sochi was littered with human-rights abuses that threaten Russia's progress toward true democracy and even its security. Violations include the sentencing of a political protester to Soviet-era psychiatric treatment and the holding of prisoners of conscience, despite Putin's release of four high-profile prisoners in December. They involve new laws banning blasphemy and limiting freedom of speech. In the volatile North Caucasus next door to Sochi, forces acting on Putin's behalf abuse Muslim civilians in the name of fighting terrorists, and impose collective punishment, which risks driving victims into extremist hands. An extremism law, enacted and expanded under Putin's watch, helps fuel these abuses, while also harming other religious minorities, from Evangelicals and Pentecostals to Jehovah's Witnesses. Consider where Russia was a generation ago - when Moscow became the locus of freedom's newest advance. Then fast forward to 2012, when Russia's human-rights activists asserted that Russia had become a police state.

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