Feedback A German researcher and activist banned from Russia until his 100th birthday after giving a speech at the UN has filed a complaint, accusing Moscow of violating international human rights law. His case could set a precedent for countries retaliating against their critics at the world body.
In November 2018, Johannes Rohr spoke at a United Nations forum in Geneva, denouncing Russia’s liquid natural gas project in the Yamal peninsula, in the north. He detailed how indigenous peoples’ lands were being militarised and exploited without their free, prior and informed consent, with European and Chinese firms investing billions of dollars in the venture. Access to the area, he noted, was tightly controlled by Russia’s FSB.
Rohr, a veteran German researcher on Indigenous rights in Russia, had spent 25 years documenting abuses. His brief, five-minute speech clearly hit a nerve. Weeks later, Rohr flew to Moscow with his visa on hand, like he had done so many times since he started working on the Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the far east in the mid-1990s. This time, he was detained at passport control and held for several hours. He recalls the FSB handing him a document, branding him “a danger to national security” and banning him from entering the country until 2069 on his 100th birthday. Rohr was immediately deported back to Germany.
“It was truly devastating,” he recalls. His life’s work wiped out in an instant, he couldn’t help but regret his “stupid” and “impulsive” decision. Rohr’s various reports over the years to UN human rights bodies had never caused any issues. The UN gathering he had spoken at was organised by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights tasked with overseeing the application of human rights principles in business activities. At a session focused on eastern Europe, he felt compelled to speak. “I felt like the mood was just so self-congratulatory. And eastern Europe is really the region where the implementation of these kinds of principles is really weakest,” he says.
Rohr challenged Russia’s decision in its national legal system with the support of human rights organisations like the Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial, based in Russia at the time and now exiled in Brussels, while UN rights experts wrote to Moscow, demanding an explanation.
Hopeful at first, Rohr quickly realised the futility.
“When you get charged with anything in the Russian judicial system, you’re certain to get convicted. And if you get in trouble, then there are very few instances where the measures get lifted,” he says.
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