USCIRF Urges Obama To Publicly Raise Human Rights Concerns With Russian Leader

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will be in the United States this week to promote Russian-US economic ties. Tomorrow he visits California's Silicon Valley and on Thursday he will meet with President Obama in Washington. (Business Week). Last week, Leonard Leo, recently re-elected chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, wrote President Obama urging him to publicly raise religious freedom and other human rights issues with the Russian leader. (Full text of letter.) The letter urges the President to press for reform of Russia's law on extremism and "to protest the impunity accorded to Russian officials and others who commit gross human rights violations as well as violent hate crimes against members of Russia’s religious and ethnic minorities...." The letter goes on to express concern that "the de facto favored status of the Moscow Patriarchate Russian Orthodox Church results in difficulties for minority religious communities, particularly those officially deemed non-traditional, such as the non-Moscow Patriarchate Russian Orthodox and Protestant communities."