The United Kingdom announced on Monday that it has imposed sanctions on 49 organizations and individuals, especially Saudis and Russians, as part of a new mechanism it has developed to punish human rights violations.
The British Foreign Office published a blacklist of the names of organizations and people covered by these sanctions. The list includes, in particular, 25 Russians accused of involvement in the death of lawyer Sergey Magnitsky in prison in 2009, who was working in the tax affairs department of the “Armitage Capital” law firm in Moscow.
Among them is Alexander Bastrykin, the influential director of the Russian Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is directly linked to the Kremlin and charged with conducting high-level investigations.
Also on the list are 20 Saudis suspected of playing a role in the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, as announced by the British Foreign Office.
The list also includes two Burmese generals suspected of involvement in violations of the Rohingya Muslim minority, as well as two organizations involved in “forced labor, torture and murder in camps in North Korea.””
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab described to the lawmakers these sanctions as a “means of targeting the perpetrators of (human rights violations) without punishing the people of a country on a wider scale.”
“It is a clear message from the British people to those who have blood on their hands, to the rulers and dictators: You cannot come to this country to buy a house on Kings Road, buy Christmas gifts at Knights Bridge, or wash your dirty money through British banks,” he said, referring to London’s luxurious neighborhoods are a popular destination for wealthy foreigners.
This mechanism allows Britain, which is a financial center through which to transfer or place the largest wealth in the world, to adopt sanctions related specifically to human rights and independently of the United Nations and the European Union.
The imposition of these sanctions is a precedent for the United Kingdom since it left the union last January.
“”This will allow the UK to work independently with allies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and the European Union,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement to The Eastern Herald.
