According to Valery Borshchev, a representative of the Moscow Public Observation Committee (ONK), “the UN committee is interested in this information. Questions regarding Razvozzhayev are going to be given to the official Russian delegation as soon as November 12.”

Borshchev noted in particular that the committee had been informed of physical and psychological torture confirmed by the ONK after visiting Razvozzhayev in Moscow’s Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.

The activist, who is accused by the Russian government of organizing mass riots, says he made a false confession after being tortured for two days and told his children would be killed if he failed to comply.

In what quickly became an international scandal, Razvozzhayev was kidnapped in Ukraine last month after seeking political asylum and sent back to Moscow in a private plane. The identity of the kidnappers is unclear. On October 22, Moscow’s Basmanny Court sentenced him to two months in Lefortovo. His lawyers were not allowed to attend his court session.

The kidnapping came following a heavily criticized film aired on state-controlled television channel NTV called “Anatomy of a Protest 2.” The film accuses Razvozzhayev and two other prominent opposition activists of colluding with a Georgian parliamentarian to change Russia’s state leadership.

Long time human rights advocate Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who heads the organization, told Interfax that it will refuse all foreign funding starting on the day that the law goes into effect. Instead, it will attempt to survive on donations – a dim proposition.

“I don’t think that we’re going to collect much,” Alexeyeva said. “Poor people aren’t accustomed to donating money to non-commercial organizations, and rich people are afraid that they might lose their businesses.”

“We received our first grant in 1993, when we were a respected organization known worldwide. We worked without money then, and we’ll work without money now,” she added.

The new law on NGOs was passed by the Russian State Duma on Friday, and now only needs approval from President Vladimir Putin, who has expressed strong support. Once it goes into effect, NGOs that receive money from abroad will be subject to a number of measures that will make it more difficult for them to function. Organizations that accept such funding will be subject to audits every year, whereas ones that don’t will only be audited every three years. NGOs with international funding will also have to include a phrase identifying themselves as “foreign agents” in all of their announcements, publications, and other media.

Outrage from NGOs and Russian civil society has a whole has been unanimous in decrying the measure as recalling the tone of the Cold War and evoking an image of foreign-funded NGOs as spies.

Organizers of the Strategy 31 campaign received permission for the first time ever on Wednesday to legally hold one of their rallies on Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square on October 31, 2010. However, the authorities stipulated that no more than 200 people would be allowed to participate. On Thursday, organizers said that they would ask the mayor’s office once again to allow at least 1500 people to rally on the square.

The request did not go over well with city officials. “The government of Moscow takes note that it has received a letter from rally organizers that cannot be judged as anything other than a provocation,” said a press release from the mayor’s office on Friday.

The statement goes on to say that the oppositionists’ letter “contains a written rejection of all variants proposed [by the mayor’s office] and a demand to allow a rally to be held on Triumfalnaya Square numbering 1500 people.”

Therefore, the application has been turned down altogether.

Oppositionists plan to rally on the square regardless.

“We’re coming to the rally,” said Eduard Limonov, leader of the Other Russia party and one of the rally’s organizers. “The constitution guarantees us this right.”

In remarks today at the official opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev spoke about his goals for Russia’s economy and how state policy would be shaped to achieve them, Interfax reports.

“Russia,” the president said, “must become an attractive country that people from all over the world will aim for in search of their dreams. In search of the best opportunities for success and self-realization, which Russia can give to everyone ready to heed this call and love Russia as their new or second home.”

“Such are the goals of our modernization – they are realistic and achievable,” Medvedev asserted. He added that favorable conditions for modernization are currently developing in the country’s economy. He also said that state fiscal policy would be shaped with this in mind.

The three-day forum, which began Thursday afternoon, brings together European leaders, representatives from international corporations, economists, and other global policy makers to discuss modernization and development in emerging economies. A range of topics, including energy and security policy, are expected to be covered.

A presidential aid had stated earlier that Medvedev’s speech “will be mainly dedicated to Russia and the way we have changed.”

The Russian president singled out inflation in his opening remarks as one of the primary issues faced by his country’s economy. He also said that the inflation rate has fallen over the course of the year and is now hovering at about 6%.

In his turn, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged that inflation would not rise above 5-7% over the next three years, with the top target for next year set at 6.5%. He stressed that citizen trust in state policy was the key factor for successfully overcoming economic difficulties, and that Russians do indeed trust the ruble and their domestic banking system.

Former Economics Minister and Scientific Director of the Higher School of Economics Yevgeny Yasin said that the figures cited by the prime minister are realistic, but that inflation in Russia must necessarily fall to around 3-4%. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy, he also stipulated that the best time for prices to fall – the crisis period – had already passed.

While Russia has reported a decline in inflation each month since August 2009, some analysts say that the government’s reliance on consumer prices to calculate the rate presents a false reading of actual inflation. “Consumer prices,” says political commentator Sergei Shelin, “only make up a part of all prices. All the remaining prices are growing, and seem to know absolutely no shame.”

A panel entitled “Finance after the Crisis” was held in the same room after Medvedev’s remarks. There, according to the newspaper Vedomosti, influential global financial analysts discussed whether or not the presidents’ goals were achievable. The newspaper reported that of those present at the panel, 61% believed that the Russian financial system faces stagnation over the course of the next 2-5 years. About 5% expect another crisis, and the last third are optimistic that Russia will see a speedy rate of growth.

At another panel later in the day, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the task of cutting the budget deficit is harder for Russia than other European countries. This, he explained, has to do with the fact that the state treasury is highly dependent on the oil and gas sector. Kudrin reminded his audience that the current cut in Russia’s deficit is happening as a result of high oil prices – not because of the efforts of the government.

The finance minister also said that a rise in the retirement age would be an unavoidable result of the budget deficit, and confirmed plans for substantial increases in taxes on gasoline, alcohol, and tobacco.

Nikolai Alexeyev, founder of the Gayrussia.ru rights project and one of the event’s organizers, told Interfax on that he was told over the phone by the mayor’s office that the application for Moscow Pride had been turned down. Parades, protests, rallies, and other similar events require government sanction to be legally held in Russia; organizing an unsanctioned rally can lead to jail time.

The city did not appear to attempt to hide its flagrant violation of Russian law in banning Moscow Pride. “Contrary to the demands of acting legislation, the Moscow government did not propose any kind of alternative [locations] for holding the planned event to organizers of the march,” reads a statement on Gayrussia.ru.

Alexeyev said that he and his fellow organizers intend to file a complaint about the city’s decision with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. More immediately, he said they would appeal the decision in Moscow’s Tverskoy Court after receiving written confirmation that the parade has been banned.

“We’re going to try to get the case considered by the court before the date of the event – May 29,” Alexeyev said.

The Strasbourg Court is set to rule this year on three cases filed by Moscow Pride organizers against the city for banning their parades in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Their event was also prohibited in 2009, but 30 participants attempted to march in defiance of the ban. Five minutes after the beginning of the march, all 30 activists were arrested by OMON riot police.

Earlier, Alexeyev stated that if the Moscow city authorities refuse to sanction this year’s Moscow Pride parade, they would try to gain permission to hold it on the territory of an embassy of a Western country.

Moscow Mayor Luzhkov is famous for his vocal homophobia, routinely denouncing gay pride parades a “satanic activity.” In January, he vowed to ban what he called “the display of blasphemy under the guise of creativity and protected by the principle of freedom of speech” in Moscow on a permanent basis.

Russian gay rights advocates have suffered from strong public and governmental opposition dating back to Soviet times. In accordance with a Stalinist decree, homosexuality carried a sentence of up to five years in prison until 1993, when legislators legalized it at the urging of the Council of Europe. It remained on the list of Russian mental illnesses until 1999. While there are no laws explicitly banning homosexuality, government authorities have failed to recognize the need for anti-discrimination legislation. Public opinion remains strongly opposed to such reforms – as of 2005, 43.5 percent of Russians supported the re-criminalization of adult homosexual acts.

The demonstration would be the ninth iteration of the Strategy 31 rallies, named for the 31st article of the Russian constitution that guarantees freedom of assembly. The rallies have been held, despite lacking official sanction, for the past year on the 31st of each month with that date in Moscow and other cities across Russia.

“I received a call from the mayor’s office and was told that there is going to be some kind of big cultural event on Triumfalnaya Square on that day.” said Alexeyeva. “We’re being turned down for the ninth time,” All previous rallies have been turned down for similar reasons, but Strategy 31 organizers insist that the city is working to intentionally deny them access to Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, since its central location gives the rallies relatively high visibility.

Alexeyeva was adamant that rally organizers maintain their constitutional right to hold the rally on the square and would not move it to a different location, as the city has repeatedly proposed. Since these alternative sites would render the rallies virtually invisible to the general population and confuse people who wanted to take part as to where they were going to be held, Strategy 31 organizers have continued to insist that the event be held on Triumfalnaya Square.

“We’ll come to Triumfalnaya Square on May 31 all the same,” said Alexeyeva. “But it won’t be a rally. We’ll come with signs with the number ’31’ in defense of the 31st article of the constitution,” most likely meaning that the oppositionists don’t intend to carry political insignia to the square. In that case, the event would not constitute an actual rally that would require government sanction to be held legally.

Alexeyeva added, however, that she still expects the police and OMON riot forces to beat and detain event participants as they have during all previously Strategy 31 rallies. The 82-year-old Alexeyeva herself was detained during last December’s New Years Eve rally, prompting an outcry from rights groups and federal representatives in Europe and the United States. “They’ll probably start seizing us again,” she said on Wednesday. “I want to discuss the developing situation with the leadership of the Moscow City Police.”

Strategy 31 co-organizer and opposition leader Eduard Limonov added that Moscow city authorities are currently trying to organize a meeting with rally organizers. He said that he does not believe, however, that the city is prepared to make any concessions and is simply trying to save face. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has expressed disdain for the Strategy 31 movement and has given conflicting statements on why his government continually rejects their applications to hold rallies on Triumfalnaya Square.

Saving face may very well be on the minds of the city administration this time around. International pressure has been mounting against both federal and city authorities in Russia and Moscow ever since Alexeyeva’s arrest made global news out of the brutal treatment of opposition protesters by the police. And for the May 31 event, Strategy 31 organizers have invited a delegation from the European Parliament and the editors-in-chief from more than a dozen large Russian media outlets to observe the proceedings.

News also broke on Wednesday that the St. Petersburg authorities have similarly refused to sanction a Strategy 31 protest in that city on May 31, also on the basis that another event had already been planned for the oppositionist’s chosen site. Organizers of the rally, which included the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council, the Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front, the liberal opposition party Yabloko, the opposition movement Solidarity, and a number of youth democratic advocacy groups, also said that they intend to hold the rally anyway.

In a statement on Thursday to the Russian news agencies Interfax and RIA Novosti, law enforcement sources said that the murder had been solved and a killer had been identified. The killer has not, however, been detained, and a search is currently underway. Investigators, the sources said, are also still working to establish the identity of the person who ordered the murder.

Oleg Orlov of the Memorial human rights center, where Estemirova had worked, has already refuted the announcement. Speaking to Gazeta.ru, Orlov said that his colleagues at Memorial have spoken with representatives of the groups investigating Estemirova’s murder, and that these representatives denied that the announcement was true. “They said that they haven’t established the name of the murderer,” said Orlov.

While Gazeta.ru was able to obtain an unofficial confirmation from sources in the Chechen Investigative Committee that the culprit has been identified, all official sources proved to be unreachable on Thursday. The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General of Russia refrained from commenting, and the official representative of the Chechen Investigative Committee was out of the office and did not answer her cell phone throughout the course of the day. The newspaper was also unable to reach the press secretary of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who had promised to monitor the course of the murder investigation.

The 50-year-old Estemirova had been the lead member of Memorial’s office in the Chechen capital of Grozny, and had worked to investigate kidnappings and murders of people in Chechnya. She was kidnapped herself not far from her home in the capital on June 15 of last year, and was later found shot dead in the Nazranovsky district of Ingushetia.

Memorial, which soon after announced that it was shutting down operations in Chechnya, blamed Estemirova’s murder on President Kadyrov, claiming that the volatile situation in the republic was the president’s responsibility. Kadyrov successfully sued Orlov for slander, and a Moscow city court fined Orlov 70 thousand rubles (about $2300). In the beginning of February, after experiencing pressure from public officials and a particularly public dressing-down from his mother for failing to respect his elders, Kadyrov dropped all further suits against other human rights activists, including the prominent 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva.

The news of Estemirova’s murder had a powerful resonation throughout the world. In particular, United States President Barack Obama issued a statement calling on the Russian authorities to investigate the murder and punish those responsible. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said that he did not believe that Kadyrov had participated in the tragedy, and considered the murder to be an act of provocation against the government.

Kadyrov, however, gave several interviews after the murder in which he spoke out harshly against the slain activist. Defending himself on Radio Liberty and saying that he took no part in the killing, the Chechen president said that he “had no reason to kill a woman who nobody needed.” Referring to her place on a public council under the Grozny city administration, he added that “she has never had any honor, dignity, or a conscience, and all the same I named her as a council representative.” He also did admit that he had later dissolved the council.

When asked if he thought the murder would ever be solved, Orlov stated that the politics tied up in the Estemirova’s case made it hard to say. “In naming this or that person as having participated in the murder, or in naming the person who possibly ordered the murder, the investigators and prosecutors are invariably stepping into a type of political realm,” he told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.

Memorial member Aleksandr Cherkasov noted the 2002 murder investigation of an outspoken Chechen village leader, Malika Umazheva, as a cautionary tale. An official investigation blamed the killing on militants who it turned out had long been dead, and also on people who had only issued confessions under torture. Memorial’s own investigation established that Umazheva had been murdered by federal security forces, likely in retaliation for the leader’s fervent criticism of the ongoing Russian federal raids in her village.

Judge Dmitri Fomin handed down the conviction on Friday for two counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder.

The former police major sparked a national media blitz last April when he walked into a Moscow supermarket around midnight and began randomly shooting people. Three people were killed and many others were injured.

CCTV footage shows the officer, clearly drunk, struggling with patrons and supermarket staff while trying to pull out his weapon. Yevsyukov admitted in court to the murder of one cashier after being shown the incident on tape, but said that he has no memory of what happened that night.

During closing arguments on Tuesday, Yevsyukov stated that “I’m not asking for a light sentence, I’m asking for fairness, if I may ask for it.”

Defense lawyer Tatyana Bushuyeva, who had argued that Yevsyukov was not in a normal state of mind and asked for the court to consider the incident “an act of hooliganism,” said that they plan to contest the ruling.

Moscow City Police Press Secretary Pyotr Biryukov admitted to RIA Novosti that they had expected a life sentence, saying it was “a deserving punishment.”

Survivors injured in the shooting, who were earlier denied compensation by the police because Yevsyukov was off-duty at the time of the incident, are already renewing their appeals.

In addition to life in punishment for the former officer, Judge Fomin issued a separate statement to Russian Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, declaring that the career politics of his agency are “unsatisfactory.”

Investigators had determined that Yevsyukov was under stress due to pressure at work prior to the incident.

Tackling Russia’s notoriously corrupt and violent police force has been a stated goal this year for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Yesterday, the president fired two deputy interior ministers and more than a dozen top law enforcement officers, and issued his second order in less than a month for drastic cuts in law enforcement personnel.

While violence and corruption on the part of the police is nothing new for most Russians, the media attention brought on by Yevsyukov’s killing spree has resulted in increased coverage and criticism of the disturbing number of incidents of brutal police criminality. As reports followed one after another of officers killing pedestrians while driving drunk, fatal beatings, and an increase in police suicides, top governmental officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved altogether.

In a recent example earlier this month, an elderly composer was severely beaten and robbed in the city of Yekaterinburg by a group of police who allegedly swore at the victim, telling him “Nurgaliyev isn’t going to help you.” Local authorities only accepted the composer’s appeal about the incident after he filed it a second time, and no criminal charges were initiated until after the story broke in the Russian media last Tuesday.

During its convention over the weekend in Moscow, Yabloko deputies voted to implement a ban that will force its members to cease participating in political organizations that they have deemed unacceptable: the Other Russia, Solidarity, the United Civil Front, Vanguard of Red Youth, Left Front, the banned National Bolshevik Party, the Russian Communist Workers’ Party/Russian Party of Communists, the Russian People’s Democratic Union, and members of the National Assembly.

According to the decision, “the convention stressed that the task to preserve and develop the party demands a clear and unambiguous approach to interaction with other parties, political and organizations.”

Yabloko members will have three months to quit the aforementioned organizations or face expulsion from the party.

Additionally, deputies at once restored and again stripped party membership from Ilya Yashin, the former leader of Yabloko’s youth branch who was expelled from the party last December for joining the opposition movement Solidarity, a decision judged as “inflicting political damage.”

Yabloko originally made a statement on Sunday that Yashin’s membership had been restored by the party’s arbitration bureau, but the decision went to a vote after fifteen delegates complained.

The decision was then annulled, 62 to 20, with three abstentions.

Yashin said on Monday that he would no longer fight the decision. “Many decent and worthy people remain in Yabloko. I sincerely hope that they will be able to achieve reforms in the party,” he said.

Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the opposition Solidarity movement, decried the decision in his blog on Monday. “What prompted this kind of decision can be understood. Most likely, [Yabloko leader Sergei] Mitrokhin and the party elite got fed up with blushing in front of their colleagues for supporting the corrupt Moscow authorities during the last ‘elections’ of October 11,” among other hypocrisies.

Nemtsov added that another decision made at the convention – a refusal to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – was no less significant: “Putin’s genuine democrats and oppositionists!” he declared.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, Iraq maintained its spot as number one on the list. Russia is trailed by China, Serbia and Pakistan. The Agency reported that some 45.2 thousand Iraqis and 18.8 thousand Russians sought political asylum in 2007. This figure counts the number of applications for asylum to 43 industrialized countries, and does not take other migrations into account. In the case of Iraq, some 2 million persons are estimated to have fled to neighboring Syria and Jordan.

The most common destination countries for refugees were the US, Sweden and France. Some 49.2 thousand persons applied for refugee status to the US, compared with 36.2 thousand to Sweden.