MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2019) The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) adopted a non-binding resolution on Tuesday urging member states to enact instruments that would allow targeting people suspected of serious human rights violations and corruption.
The measure bears the name of Sergei Magnitsy, a lawyer who died in custody in Russia. The United States was the first to adopt a Magnitsky Act, imposing entry bans and assets freezes on Russian officials it implicated in his death. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and Canada followed suit.
"The Assembly... calls on all member States of the Council of Europe, the European Union and States having observer or any other co-operative status... [to] consider enacting legislation... to impose targeted sanctions such as visa bans and account freezes on individuals reasonably believed to be personally responsible for serious human rights violations for which they enjoy impunity on political or corrupt grounds," the document reads.
The resolution encourages the states to use the information provided by local, national and international non-governmental human rights organizations in identifying human rights violators and work together, including within the European Union, in sharing data on sanctioned people.
The United States adopted the Magnitsky Act in 2012 following the death of Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, whose death was ruled as a death from natural causes due to complications of diabetes and a heart problem. In 2016, Washington adopted the Global Magnitsky Act that allows the US government to impose sanctions on any entity or individual � regardless of nationality � implicated in human rights abuses.
