Professor Bill Bowring’s guest this week on “25 Questions” is Igor Kalyapin, a human rights defender from Nizhny Novgorod and chair of the civil society organisation Committee Against Torture [see also Wikipedia]. Igor Kalyapin is also founder and President of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG), which was established by human rights NGOs in November 2009 following the murder of human rights defender Ms Natalya Estemirova in Chechnya. The JMG received the Front Line Defenders Award in April 2011 for their work in investigating torture and disappearances in Chechnya and was also the 2013 recipient of the Martin Ennals Award. Igor Kalyapin is also a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in Russia. He was also singled out by Amnesty International in 2018 as one of Russia’s bravest human rights defenders. The video can be viewed on YouTube and below.
