Have you ever found yourself walking down a street in New York, Miami, or London and seen someone in designer clothing and expensive jewelry, speaking with a Russian accent, and stepping into a $150,000 car? And have you ever wondered where all their money came from? It may surprise you that some are no more than midlevel Russian government officials whose salaries are less than $20,000 a year. It may also surprise you that some of these elegant-looking people made their money by falsely arresting, torturing, and even killing people.
Since December 2012 the U.S. has attempted to make their lives less comfortable. The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, passed by overwhelming majorities in Congress and signed into law by President Obama, imposes visa sanctions and asset freezes on Russian human-rights abusers…
This raises an obvious question: Why shouldn’t the U.S. do the same thing with an Uzbek, Venezuelan, or Burmese human-rights violator? Last month a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led in the Senate by Maryland Democrat [and Helsinki Commission Ranking Member] Ben Cardin and Arizona Republican John McCain and in the House by Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern and New Jersey Republican [Helsinki Commission Chair] Chris Smith, introduced the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which would authorize the president to identify any foreign national “responsible for significant corruption, extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Such people would be denied entry into the U.S. and barred from the U.S. financial system.
