Appeal to Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen

This appeal is closed! Thank you to all participants!

Text of original appeal:

Dear Prime Minister

There are number of human rights problems in Russia that Amnesty International is following closely and has serious concerns about. Among them: arbitrary detention, “disappearances”, and torture as part of the conflict in and around Chechnya, violence against women in the family, racist violence and the new law on NGOs.

Welcoming the fact that you raised the human rights problems in China in your discussions with the Chinese Prime Minister in Helsinki in September, I’m now asking you to do the same at the upcoming EU-Russia summit.

In its program for the EU-presidency, the Finnish government has stated that one of its priorities is the enhanced implementation of the human rights guidelines, which the EU has created for itself to deal with different pressing human rights questions. This also means raising human rights issues at high level summits.

Human rights are too important not to be discussed at heads of state and government level. The EU would be betraying its own core values, if it failed, when it has the chance, to raise serious and urgent human rights issues with its partners. If Russia wants to be a leading player on the international scene, then it has to accept scrutiny and constructive criticism of its human rights record.

This autumn you as president of the EU have a number of opportunities to directly address these problems with President Putin. I hope that human rights issues will be raised at all these opportunities and, in particular, at the EU-Russia summit on the 24.11.

Yours sincerely,