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desirable’’ organization and has been designated by Am-
nesty International as a prisoner of conscience; 
Whereas Yuri Dmitriev, a leader of Memorial Society’s 
branch in the Republic of Karelia region of the Russian 
Federation who has worked to document mass burial 
sites from Stalin-era executions, has been held in deten-
tion since June 28, 2018, on charges of child pornog-
raphy that Human Rights Watch has described as 
‘‘bogus’’ and part of an ongoing ‘‘smear campaign’’, and 
was sentenced to 13 years in prison on September 29, 
2020; 
Whereas Dennis Christensen, a Jehovah’s Witness and a 
Danish citizen, was sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment 
on February 6, 2019, in a decision condemned by the 
United States Commission on International Religious 
Freedom as part of the broader pattern of the Russian 
Government ‘‘engaging in or tolerating severe violations 
of religious freedom’’; 
Whereas, on February 10, 2020, 7 activists from Russia’s 
Penza Oblast were sentenced to terms of 6 to 18 years 
for alleged membership in a terrorist group following a 
detention marked by torture, ill-treatment to extract con-
fessions, and periods held incommunicado; 
Whereas Human Rights Watch described the case as an ex-
ample of the Russian authorities ‘‘abusing counterter-
rorism laws to silence critics and deny fundamental 
human rights’’; 
Whereas, on August 6, 2020, a court in Moscow sentenced 
seven activists to between four years suspended and 
sevem years in prison for participating in an alleged ex-
tremist organization, ‘‘The New Greatness’’, after an in-
•HRES 958 EH 
vestigation marked by the use of provocateurs, torture, 
ill-treatment, and forced confessions, in what the Memo-
rial Human Rights Center and the Moscow Helsinki 
Group have described as a ‘‘politically motivated case’’ 
aimed at ‘‘suppressing the freedom of expression’’; 
Whereas, on June 18, 2019, the Department of State af-
firmed that ‘‘the United States is deeply concerned by 
the growing number of individuals . . . identified by 
credible human rights organizations as political and reli-
gious prisoners held by the Government of the Russian 
Federation’’ and called on the Government of the Rus-
sian Federation ‘‘to release all those identified as political 
or religious prisoners immediately and cease its use of 
the legal system to suppress dissent and peaceful reli-
gious practice’’; 
Whereas, on January 28, 2020, 43 parliamentarians from 16 
European countries introduced a Resolution in the Par-
liamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to appoint 
a rapporteur ‘‘to examine the growing crisis with politi-
cally motivated imprisonments in the Russian Federa-
tion’’; and 
Whereas, on June 29, 2020, the Parliamentary Assembly of 
the Council of Europe’s Legal Affairs Committee ap-
pointed 
Icelandic 
lawmaker 
Thorhildur 
Sunna 
Aevarsdottir to serve as the rapporteur on political pris-
oners in Russia: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) condemns the practice of politically motivated 
imprisonment in the Russian Federation that violates 
the country’s international obligations on human rights
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and the rule of law and expresses its solidarity with all 
those unjustly imprisoned in the Russian Federation; 
(2) calls on the Government of the Russian Federa-
tion to immediately release individuals designated by the 
Memorial Human Rights Center as political prisoners 
under the criteria of the Parliamentary Assembly of the 
Council of Europe Resolution 1900 (2012), including 
Alexey 
Pichugin, 
Konstantin 
Kotov, 
Anastasia 
Shevchenko, Yuri Dmitriev, and Dennis Christensen; 
(3) urges the United States Government, in all its 
interactions with the Government of the Russian Federa-
tion, to raise individual cases of Russian political pris-
oners and advocate for their release; and 
(4) calls on the Secretary of State and the Sec-
retary of the Treasury to use their authority under the 
Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 
2012 (title IV of Public Law 112–208), the Global 
Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (subtitle F 
of title XII of Public Law 114–328), and other applica-
ble United States statutory authorities to designate offi-
cials of the Government of the Russian Federation who
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are responsible for human rights abuses in the form of 
politically motivated imprisonment. 
Attest: 
Clerk.