9 September 2021
Pictured: Igor Kalyapin, head of the Committee Against Torture, a civil society group based in Nizhny Novgorod
Source: Moscow Helsinki Group [original source: Socialochka.лайв]
The story of human rights defender Igor Kalyapin, laureate of the Moscow Helsinki Group prize, founder of the Committee against Torture and member of the Presidential Human Rights Council, is presented in a short film by Socialochka.live. The film continues the series of videos on the topic of ‘foreign agents.’
The Committee against Torture was twice designated an NGO performing the functions of a foreign agent. Nowadays the group continues its work without a formally registered legal entity. Igor Kalyapin himself been involved in civic activism since the late 1980s.
“We want to protect people from torture, we want to work in the courts, we want to work in the prosecutor’s office, we have something to say there. […] Until they start putting us in prison ourselves, we will always be ahead of them,” Igor Kalyapin says in the video.
