Russia rejected most of the concrete and substantial recommendations done at the session of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday, 20 September in Geneva as the result of the second circle of the Universal Periodic Review.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is one of procedures within the UN human rights framework that sees each state presenting a detailed report on its human rights situation for four years. Each country then accepts or rejects recommendations from other states and voluntary commits to actually implement the recommendations it accepted.

Russia keeps adopting repressive laws that further restrict freedom of expression and other fundamental rights of its citizens.

To the President of the Russian Federation, V. V. Putin
11 April 2013

Dear Mr President,

Moscow Helsinki Group has published a report on the law ‘On the protection of children from information causing harm to their health and development,’ a law commonly referred to as the law on the ‘blacklist’ of websites.

On 6 February 2013 eleven Russian NGOs submitted an official application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg against Federal Law No. 121-FZ of 20 June 2012 “On introducing amendments to specific laws of the Russian Federation concerning the regulation of the activity of non-profit organizations acting as foreign agents” (below – the “Law on Foreign Agents”).

US Senator Benjamin Cardin has written to the Nobel Committee nominating the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Ludmila Alekseeva, for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, Voice of America's Russian service, which has a copy of the senator's letter, reports.

Eleven Russian NGOs Submit Application with the European Court of Human Rights against the “Foreign Agents” Law

On January 11, 2013. the Dzerzhinsky District Court in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Region (Oblast) presided by Judge Olga Khaydukova proceeded with the third session.

January 17, 2013 organizers of the picket against the law on amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences (Article 6.13.1) have applied to the center "E" (anti-extremism center), the Investigative Committee and the Administration of Voronezh city on the fact of threats to life and health of the protesters and counteraction to the public event.

On January 12, 2013, the head of the Central Asia programme of the Human Rights Centre “Memorial” Vitaliy Ponomarev received e-mails with death threats. Several messages were sent in both Russian and Uzbek from different e-mail accounts within about two minutes.