Wall Street Journal_Putin Rights Watch (November 1)

01.11.2007

When it comes to protecting human rights, Russia is not the first place most people would look for instruction or example. So jaws dropped when Vladimir Putin announced plans to set up a Moscow-funded institute in the European Union to keep an eye on human rights there. Even so, any opportunity for the West to engage Russians on issues related to freedom can't be bad.

President Putin made his pitch at the recent Russia-EU summit in Portugal. His personal envoy to Brussels, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, told reporters that the outfit would focus on "monitoring the situation in Europe concerning rights of ethnic minorities, immigrants, media and such."

No doubt, Moscow has some experience as a monitor. Since the Soviet Union dissolved, it has been harping on the alleged substandard treatment of ethnic Russian brothers in Estonia and Latvia -- nevermind that they prefer to stay in those booming EU democracies rather than move to the motherland. And the Kremlin has for decades kept very close tabs on all sorts of minorities closer to home, including dissidents and journalists. But that's all the more reason to hope that Moscow's observers in Europe will find the experience enlightening.

In any case, Europe hardly has a choice but to welcome the Russians. The EU would never dream, for instance, of shutting down, limiting or otherwise harassing NGOs -- as the Putin administration has done for years to drive out organizations genuinely interested in helping democracy take root in Russia, to their own peril.

So welcome to the Putin Foundation, or whatever the Kremlin will call its office planned for Brussels or London. We hope the president will turn out to be a quick study in the finer arts of safeguards on rights and political liberty -- though, alas, nothing we've seen in his seven years in office suggests that is the case.

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