Posts Tagged ‘Russia’

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Portrait of Stanislav Dmitrievsky prominent Russian human rights defender

January 22, 2013

In the framework of its Sponsorship project ‘Defend the defenders‘, OMCT released in January 2013 a portrait of Stanislav Dmitrievsky, prominent Russian human rights defender and Chairman of the Russian Chechen Friendship Society. Mr. Dmitrievsky, who is sponsored by the Swiss Clown Dimitri, is once again facing judicial harassment. As the court summons him for co-authoring the book “International Tribunal for Chechnya”, it is feared that Stanislav Dmitrievsky will have to face criminal charges if the publication is recognized as “extremist material”. Stanislav Dmitrievsky is sponsored by Swiss clown Dimitri in the framework of the OMCT Project Defend the defenders.

Stanislav is a Russian human rights activist, a writer and an editor. He has devoted his life to actively fight against injustice in Russia and North Caucasus. Former Editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pravozaschita (“Human Rights Defense”), he has then been involved in human rights non-profit organisations. He is also involved in the civil society movement against the reportedly unlawful de-listing and demolition of buildings of cultural significance in Russia. He his currently the chairman of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS), a Finland-based NGO.  The mandate of the RCFS is to monitor the human rights respect in North Caucasus and especially Chechnya. Regrettably, Mr. Dmitrievsky had to move the originally Russia-based RCFS headquarters to Finland when the Court of Justice of Nizhnii Novgorod shut down the NGO in 2006.

Mr. Dmitrievsky is also a consultant for the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation to Support Tolerance, directed by Ms. Oksana Chelysheva. This Foundation has taken over the work of the RCFS after its closure in Russia, and is now one of the three organisations composing the reconstituted RCFS in Finland. Their collaboration led to the publication of “International Tribunal for Chechnya”, the book currently subjected to investigation about its alleged “terrorist” content.

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Russian HRD Vitaly Ponomarev of Memorial Receives Death threats

January 21, 2013

On 12 January 2013, human rights defender Mr Vitaly Ponomarev received several anonymous death threats through electronic mail. Vitaly Ponomarev is the head of the Central Asia programme of Human Rights Centre (HRC) Memorial, which was founded in 1999 and has a major focus on documenting human rights violations in Central Asian states, particularly Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, in close cooperation with local human right defenders.

The messages received on 12 January, in Russian and Uzbek languages and originating from an IP address in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, threatened Vitaly Ponomarev with death if he moved to the south of Kyrgyzstan, and also issued death threats against his family members living in Moscow. HRC Memorial has lodged a complaint to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation and requested an investigation to be launched into the threats. The messages follow

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the publication on web site of Memorial on 27 December 2012, of a report containing information about reported torture by Uzbekistan’s security services against Uzbek citizens on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Front Line Defenders believes that the death threats issued against Vitaly Ponomarev are directly linked to his work.

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Igor Kalyapin, the 2nd OMCT Portrait against Torture and Impunity

December 3, 2012

The second portrait in the series of 10 HRDs against Torture is: Igor Kalyapin, founder and chair of Russian NGO Committee Against Torture (CAT).

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The main obstacle we have is the same to the reason of torture: lack of effective investigation and absolute lack of will to investigate. Every case is a challenge and we never know for how many years we have to commit ourselves to deal with each of them.

Do you feel threatened because of your activities? Do you face any interference in your work? If this is the case, can you kindly precise.

Recently, we have started to face threats: our lawyers are targeted, some of them are approached by state agents, some of them were arrested, some of them were insulted. I myself now am facing a real threat to be accused of a crime that I have never committed (speaking out of investigational secret).

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Public campaigns (as illustrated in the picture), support of the victims of torture, write support letters, can play a very important role in the fight against torture.

 

http://www.omct.org/human-rights-defenders/events/2012/12/d22055/

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HRW’s Moscow Researcher Threatened

October 8, 2012
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According to the NY Times a researcher in Human Rights Watch’s office in Moscow received repeated threats this week of an attack focused on her pregnancy, the rights group said, calling it the latest example of escalating pressure against rights and civic groups in Russia.

Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tanya Lokshina, a senior Human Rights Watch researcher, spoke to reporters in Moscow on Thursday.

 

The anonymous threats were sent to the cellphone of the researcher, Tanya Lokshina, who is also the deputy director of the Moscow bureau. The group said they included details that could have been obtained only by eavesdropping on her telephone conversations.

“These threats demonstrate that the sender clearly was following Tanya’s every move,” said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. “They knew where she lived, what she was doing. They made explicit reference to the fact of her pregnancy. They threatened harm to herself and to her unborn baby.”

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“This is not the first time members of our organization, and the Moscow office, have been threatened,” Ms. Lokshina said. “But the level of cynicism, the ugliness in the threats that came to my phone over those three days was unprecedented.”The threats stopped Monday, the day Human Rights Watch reported them to the Russian police, prosecutors, officials in the federal government and the Federal Security Service, the domestic intelligence agency that is a successor to the K.G.B.

However, on Thursday, another employee of the office received a text, again threatening Ms. Lokshina’s pregnancy and mentioning the group’s news conference scheduled for later in the day.

Human Rights Watch Says Its Moscow Researcher Threatened – NYTimes.com.

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Russian Federation: Harassment of human rights defender Ms Sophia Kropotkina | Front Line

September 24, 2012

Front Line reports succinctly on a case in the Russian Federation, where  human rights defender Ms Sophia Kropotkina is being harassed in and outside hospital:

via Russian Federation: Harassment of human rights defender Ms Sophia Kropotkina | Front Line.

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The NGO ‘Russian Justice Initiative” another example of backdoor repression of HRDs

March 13, 2012

Further example of what I tried to say in my previous post about the indirect way in which governments try to silence HRDs: Scandal with russian justice initiative: Voice of Russia.

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