Supported by a group of members of the Berlin branch of YHRM, a Russian team of the Youth Human Rights Movement managed to organise a number of public actions and meetings with partners concerning the common project “Volunteers of Human Rights” while visiting the German capital from the 20th to the 25th of May. The given stay did not only offer the opportunity to carry on discussions and talks with present and future partners and volunteers of the project, but also to make an attempt to understand to which extent the west European youth is interested in human rights and East Europe.

21 may about 3:00 an unknown person fired a shot at the chairman of the Helsinki Association-Armenia Mikael Danielian on Terian Street, Yerevan. According to Danielian's friend they had hardly stopped under a traffic light when Danielian noticed a friend walking along the pavement. He stretched out to salute him.

Just at that moment a BMW began honking continuously from behind. In reply to Danielian’s inquiries a fellow got off the BMW and started railing at the human rights activist and calling him a CIA “agent” who defends the interests of gays. Afterwards, he took out a gun and shot at Danielian’s chest. Fortunately, the wound wasn't serious as according to the preliminary investigation the criminal had shot from a pneumatic gun.

As part of their investigation into yesterday's assault of a leading human rights defender, the Armenian authorities should investigate the extent to which the victim's human
rights work was a motive for the attack, Human Rights Watch said today. Mikael Danielian, the chairman of the Armenian Helsinki Association, was wounded by an air gun on May 21, 2008 in Yerevan, the country's capital. Danielian was not seriously wounded.

"The circumstances of the attack on Mikael Danielian suggest that his prominence as a human rights defender was a motive," said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Given this, the Armenian authorities must consider it as part of a
thorough and objective investigation into the attack."

On May 22, 1998 the first ombudsman of the Russian Federation was designated. In 10 years this institute became one of the most important institutes in the sphere of providing guarantees of state protection of Human Rights in this country.

The law on the Federal Ombudsman was passed on February 26, 1997. But for some time there was no candidate suitable for all the parties involved. The State Duma designated the first ombudsman O. Mironov only on May 22, 1998. Now V. Lukin took up this post.

The Russian anti-Discrimination initiative (RaDi) published an alternative report entitled “On the realization of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the Russian Federation”.

On May 15 at 7 pm in the Novopushkinsky Square a meeting against police arbitrariness was organised. According to different estimates about 400 to 500 people assembled, mainly anarchists, antifascists, human rights activists as well as representatives of opposition parties and movements. The meeting became logical continuation of the “Week against police arbitrariness” on which we reported recently.

The participants held in their hands posters with inscriptions like “Down with this police state!”, “No lawlessness!” or “Are you on the extremists’ list?”. The activists made speeches from a small truck in the middle of the square.

The “Young Europe” international network, the international Youth Human Rights Movement and the Free University with support from the World Youth Movement for Democracy invite you to join the awareness-raising action “Europe as a fact or Europe as a choice” (May 17 – 32, 2008) for European youth.

Why is it important?

Belarusian young activist Andrey Kim was sentenced to 1,5 years of jail by the court on a charge of participation in an unauthorized protest action (on January 10) and assault of the official of the State Auto Inspection (January 21).
On April 18 the independent observer Elena Tonkacheva after studying the materials of the case stated that there were no convincing evidences of his guilt.

On May 16 the results of the survey carried out by the civil movement “Multinational Georgia” to reveal the state of pre-election awareness of the population of the two regions densely populated by ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis were published.

The NGO “Multinational Georgia” is going to submit a letter to the Central Election Commission to support the registration of election observers for Georgian accredited embassies abroad.

By preliminary information, the observers from “Multinational Georgia” will attend more than six Georgian embassies, in particular in the Russian Federation (Moscow), Republic of Armenia (Yerevan), the Azerbaijani Republic (Baku), State of Israel (Tel Aviv), Latvia (Riga), Republic of Ukraine (Kiev), Republic of Uzbekistan (Tashkent), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (London), to monitor the conduct of Parliamentary elections.