The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in the Russian Federation.

Brief description of the situation:

The Observatory has been informed by the Committee Against Torture about the judicial harassment against its Chairman, Mr. Igor Kalyapin, also Head of the Joint Mobile Group of human rights organisations in Chechnya (JMG).

Election commissions at all the levels, from the Central Election Commission to district election commissions, have discredited themselves and must be abolished. The principles on which election commissions are constituted should be changed.

"The Human Rights Council believes that at the present time the state of electoral institutions in Russia does not conform to the international obligations undertaken by our country, and domestic legislation governing elections is being violated.

Russian human rights defenders have identified 111 incidents of restricted access to the Internet and persecution of Internet users in the period January 2008 – May 2011. While for the whole of 2008 only 12 incidents were recorded, for the first five months of 2011 there have already been 23. For more information and a link to the report (in Russian and English versions) see below.

Today in Dublin Mary Robinson, president of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, presented the annual Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk to the Joint Mobile Group of the Russian Federation for their outstanding work investigating torture and disappearances in Chechnya despite the serious risks.

Further Information

Since 11 December in the two biggest Russian cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, thousands of football fans, members of nationalist groups and ordinary people, went out to the streets with the slogans "Moscow for Russians", "Russians ahead", "Your children will be responsible to what you did", "Kill!". This led to huge clashes with police. Reuters news agency quoted a witness as saying the injured included a number of passers-by, who appeared to be members of ethnic minorities from the Caucasus region, who were attacked by demonstrators.

In St. Petersburg on 8 December the first ‘32 May’ human rights film festival opened. It will run until 12 December. Each day of the festival will be dedicated to an important human rights issue.

As noted by St. Petersburg.ru, on the eve of the film festival the organizers - Youth Human Rights Group and the Russian Social Democratic Youth Union - expressed outrage at the attitude to the event of the Committee on Law, Order and Security of St. Petersburg City Hall.

Among the winners of the 2010 Moscow Helsinki Group awards are writer Viktor Shenderovich, Yury Shmidt, one of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyers, and Evgeniya Chirikova, leader of the Movement to Defend Khimki Forest.

As Kasparov.ru reports, Viktor Shenderovich received the award for defending human rights through culture and art.

Evgeniya Chirikova received her award for defending social rights and the interests of local communities.

Yury Shmidt was awarded for his historical contribution to the protection of human rights and the human rights movement.

Today at 15:00 as part of the film competition hosted by the ‘Profession: Journalist’ Film Festival, the film Love me, Please was shown, directed by Valery Balayan and dedicated to the journalist and anti-fascist Anastasia Baburova, slain by neo-Nazis on 19 January 2009.

Human rights defenders and civic activists have called on President Dmitry Medvedev to dismiss the prosecutor of the Khimki district and the heads of the district’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and FSB - officials who have done nothing to solve the crimes against Konstantin Fetisov and other civic activists in Khimki.
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Dear Mr. President:

To: Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation, 103132 Moscow, Old Square, 4

Dear Dmitry Anatolievich!