Rights in Russia - Rights in Russia

Welcome to Rights in Russia

“[…] the striving for freedom never died out in Russia, and over the centuries in each generation there have been people who devoted their lives to the struggle for freedom, and sacrificed their lives for freedom’s sake.” – Liudmila Alekseeva (1927-2018)

“[…] We are not civil society. But we prepared the ground to enable civil society to emerge, and it has emerged.” – Arseny Roginsky (1946-2017)

Here is the link to our publications of the past week: Weekly Update.

Our review of this week’s news looks at:
– a report by Russian human rights activists on Russia’s involvement in Syria;
– the case of Aleksei Navalny who has declared a hunger strike;
– continued prosecutions of Jehovah’s Witnesses;
– the conviction of Grigory Vintner, former head of For Human Rights in Cherepovets;
– further restrictions on freedom of information;
– the latest decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

Our latest English-language video interview is with Anna Sevortian, Executive Director of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum.

Our guests on the Russian-language podcast this week are the authors and investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov.

Answering Bill Bowring’s 25 questions is Nikolai Shchur, a human rights defender from Snezhinsk in Chelyabinsk region.

Our translations this week are:
– weekly updates by OVD-Info and Team 29;
– an open letter calling for an end to torture of Aleksei Navalny;
– Ilya Shablinsky on the torture by sleep deprivation of Aleksei Navalny;
– Olga Romanova on torture in Russia’s penal colonies;
– Anton Orekh on the persecution of Gulag researcher Denis Karagodin;
– Lev Ponomarev on his court challenge against his designation as a ‘media-foreign agent’;
– Vyacheslav Bakhmin and others in conversation about freedom in a repressive society.