“SYSTEMATIC CRACKDOWN”
Katzarova mentioned she had been granted no entry to Russia, including that Moscow tried to “impede” her work.
Her findings had been primarily based on consultations with greater than 60 Russian and worldwide rights teams and people, in particular person, by cellphone or on-line, and practically 100 written submissions.
Katzarova, who is because of current her report back to the Human Rights Council later this week, mentioned she had documented how latest legislative restrictions had been getting used to “muzzle civil society”.
“The usually-violent enforcement of those legal guidelines and rules has resulted in a scientific crackdown on civil society organisations,” she wrote.
“It has led to mass arbitrary arrests, detentions and harassment of human rights defenders, peaceable anti-war activists, journalists, cultural figures, minorities and anybody talking out in opposition to the conflict.”
She urged Russia to repeal problematic articles of its legal code, and to “instantly launch these detained beneath the provisions, quash their convictions and expunge their legal data”.
TORTURE, SEXUAL VIOLENCE
She additionally demanded the discharge of all arbitrarily detained political opposition activists, together with opposition chief Alexei Navalny and dissidents Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin.
Katzarova mentioned ladies, particularly rights defenders, activists or journalists, had “suffered specific gender-based violence, humiliations and intimidation”.
“The persistent use of torture and ill-treatment, together with of sexual and gender-based violence, places in danger the life of individuals in detention,” she mentioned.
Katzarova mentioned “the setting of impunity, the unpredictability of modifications to the regulation, along with their ambiguity”, had compelled many Russians into exile.
She known as for “an efficient, neutral and impartial investigation into all situations of use of power, arbitrary detention and different types of stress”.
Russia must also “guarantee immediate, clear and efficient investigation … of all allegations of torture and ill-treatment in custody,” she mentioned, demanding that each one perpetrators be held to account.
Katzarova’s mandate is because of expire subsequent month until the UN Rights Council votes to increase it – one thing Moscow vehemently opposes.
The Russian international ministry has described efforts to increase her “illegitimate” mandate as “politicised and intensely confrontational”.
