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By Gregory L. White
September 8, 2010

MOSCOW - Senior U.S. officials visiting Moscow this week got a vivid demonstration of the pressure Russia’s human-rights community faces: an empty seat at the breakfast table.

Undersecretary of State William Burns and White House Russian affairs adviser Michael McFaul had gathered a small group of prominent human-rights activists to get an update on the environment for civil society. But Lev Ponomaryov, the 68-year-old head of For Human Rights and one of the country’s best known campaigners, wasn’t in his chair next to McFaul.

Instead, Ponomaryov was in a jail cell in southern Moscow, serving a four-day sentence handed down by a Moscow court the day before for alleged violations at an opposition demonstration broken up by police in Moscow in August.

Activists in Moscow have stepped up protests in recent months, saying that official refusals to permit the marches are illegal. Police routinely detain participants, who usually face modest fines or short jail terms. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week endorsed the crackdowns, which have been widely criticized in the West. Moscow’s chief of police Tuesday called for dramatically harsher sentences for illegal demonstrators.

In late August, Ponomaryov served three days for waving a Russian flag in a Russian Flag Day protest earlier this summer.

His daughter said he was being held in the same cell this week. “I joke that he needs to put his name on the door and keep slippers and books there,” she said. Her father had been talking to journalists at the demonstration when police arrested him, she said, calling the conviction “illegal.”

Participants said the arrest came up at the breakfast session Wednesday, held at the ornate Spaso House residence of the U.S. ambassador. The Russian activists said they called on the U.S. officials to speak out publicly about human-rights violations in Russia, particularly restrictions on freedom of assembly.

The Obama administration, seeking warmer relations with Moscow, has toned down public criticism of the Kremlin’s record on democracy.

After the session, Burns called Ponomaryov’s absence “regrettable.” In comments to Russian journalists, he added, “Freedom of assembly is very important to the United States and important in any democratic society.”

The arrest was also discussed at the U.S. officials’ meetings with their Russian counterparts later Wednesday.

Burns was in Moscow mainly to discuss international issues such as efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. McFaul, meanwhile, is scheduled to speak Thursday at a Kremlin-sponsored conference on democracy in Yaroslavl, north of Moscow. He plans to give a paper on the relationship between democracy and economic modernization.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is scheduled to speak at the conference Friday.

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