Thursday, August 30, 2007

Action of Human Rights First: End Harassment of Human Rights Defenders in Russia!

My dear friends,

On August 29, 2007, police raided the office of the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation to Promote Tolerance, the successor to the Russian Chechen Friendship Society, with an order to seize the organization's computers to investigate alleged "computer related crimes." The police also said that they were carrying out an investigation into the organization's finances.

The raid has resulted in further disruption of the legitimate activities of a non-violent independent human rights organization that has now been the target of sustained repression for over two years. It follows in quick succession the further restrictions imposed on the organization's director, Stanislav Dmitrievsky on August 17, 2007.

Please protest the continuing official harassment directed against the Russian Chechen Friendship Society.....

Click here to take action:

http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Dmitrievsky4?rk=sp20Yd612T9EE

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Join and sign this letter! Anna Politkovskaja. In Memoriam.

(In Russian: http://anna-7ottobre2007.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post_17.html )

It will be one year on the 7th of October from the day Anna Politovskaja was killed on the doorstep of her home in Moscow.

Whoever it was who shot his gun at her four times was not disguised, and yet is still unpunished, and the same can be said of all those who ordered that the bravest journalist of Russia could remember should be killed.

Nobody knew Anna her own country, just as president Putin stated, with a delicate sense of opportunity, only a few hours after her execution. Small wonder: Anna’s books on Chechnya and on the democratic involution of Russia have never been published over there. Freedom of the press is under threat in Russia, ever since the ruler at the Cremlin is an ex Kgb officer.

Yet, notwithstanding threats and deaths by poison, Anna had decided not to leave her own country, Russia.

Her courageous reportages on human rights violations both in Groznyj and in Moscow were widely known in the West.

And yet, no European Union representative has felt it his or her duty to be present at her funerals. No head of state, no world premier, although speaking of exporting liberty, either.

The world of politics, deeply involved in the attempt to pay Russian gas a few cents less, has paid no attention to her case: the world of culture, though, cannot forget Anna Politkovskaja.

We therefore ask that, throughout Europe, newspapers, theatres, phylarmonic orchestras and single artists organize memorial events on 7th October 2007, in Anna’s memory.

It will be a way of saying to whoever ordered her death: we do not forget.

mailto: 7ottobre2007@gmail.com

Source:
http://anna-7ottobre2007.blogspot.com/2007/08/anna-politkovskaja-must-not-be.html

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Take action in defense of Russian human rights' lawyer Stanislav Dmitrievsky!

Lift Restrictions on Russian Activist.

On August 17, 2007, a court in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, imposed more stringent restrictions on Stanislav Dmitrievsky, director of the banned Russian Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS). It is now more likely that Dmitrievsky may be imprisoned and forced to serve out the two-year sentence he received when he was convicted in February 2006.

This court decision is a continuation of the official harassment of Dmitrievsky and the RCFS in recent months, which has included threats, heavy surveillance of the organization's premises, and harassment by law enforcement agencies.

In 2005, Dmitrievsky was the target of a prosecution that appeared designed to disrupt the work of one of the few independent organizations reporting on human rights conditions in the war-torn province of Chechnya.

Despite these official pressures, the organization has re-formed under a new name and is continuing to function. Please call on the Russian authorities to cease interference with the legitimate activities of Stanislav Dmitrievsky............


Read more and take action here:
http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Dmitrievsky3?rk=Sd20Yd61bLkaE