Ten years ago, I had the honour of speaking at news conference in Moscow with several of Russia's venerated human rights defenders. We were sounding the alarm that a draft law on "foreign agents," which Russia's parliament had just started debating, would be used to demonise independent voices.
A week later, president Vladimir Putin signed the bill into law and Russia's human rights landscape has become almost unrecognisable since.
The foreign agents' law became the authorities' ...
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Rachel Denber is the deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.