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White House urged to punish Russians backing
US adoption ban
Tuesday December 25, 2012 11:16:36 AM,
RIA Novosti
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Washington: The White House has been flooded with tens of thousands of
requests to blacklist Russian officials supporting a ban on US
adoptions of Russian children amid an escalating diplomatic feud.
A petition asking the White House to slap sanctions on Russian
legislators who vote for the adoption ban - which was approved by
Russia's lower house of parliament last week - had collected more
than 52,000 signatures as of Monday morning.
The petition calls for the lawmakers to be punished in accordance
with the Magnitsky Act, a newly enacted US law that denies visas
to Russian officials deemed by Washington to be complicit in human
rights abuses and freezes their American assets.
"We are outraged with the actions of Russian lawmakers, who
breached all imaginable boundaries of humanity, responsibility, or
common sense and chose to jeopardize lives and well-being of
thousands of Russian orphans," reads the petition, which was
launched last Friday.
A similarly worded second petition asking that the Magnitsky Act
sanctions be extended to Russian lawmakers supporting the ban had
collected more than 8,000 signatures as of Monday morning.
The adoption ban is part of a broader bill that targets US
officials accused of violating Russian citizens' rights. The
legislation is Moscow's response to the Magnitsky Act, which
Russia has called a hypocritical attempt by the US to meddle in
its internal affairs.
The Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, is set
to consider the bill Wednesday. If passed there, it will be sent
to Russian President Vladimir Putin for final consideration.
The call to punish Russian officials backing the adoption ban was
submitted as a "We the People" petition, a White House initiative
that allows people to request the US president to take action on
just about any issue imaginable.
The petitions are not legally binding, though the White House has
promised to respond to any petition that gathers 25,000 signatures
within 30 days - a threshold that the petition to punish Russian
lawmakers has already crossed.
The petition has already caught the attention of lawmakers in
Moscow, who warned that imposing Magnitsky Act sanctions on the
parliamentarians could ratchet up the diplomatic row even further.
"If they set limits to the entry of the State Duma or the
Federation Council members, the counter measure will be banning
the Congress members from entering Russia," said Dmitry Vyatkin,
deputy head of the constitution and state affairs committee in the
State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament.
A petition submitted Sunday asks the Obama administration to
punish Putin under the Magnitsky Act should the Russian president
sign Moscow's retaliatory bill into law. That petition had
collected more than 10,000 signatures as of Monday morning.
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