Weekly Update

Read our summary of the past week’s news: Week-ending 28 February 2020

Listen to our latest podcast [in Russian]; our guest this week is Nadezhda Kutepova, a human rights activist from the closed city of Ozersk, who has received political asylum in France: Simon & Sergei: Human rights in Russia week-ending 28 February 2020 with Nadezhda Kutepova
– You can also find these podcasts on iTunes and Spotify

‘Here it looks as though the judge was, in effect, settling scores with these individuals on account of the unfriendly public atmosphere that arose around the case. Really, this is the first time that I have seen so many people disturbed by a verdict.’
– Igor Kalyapin on the verdicts in the Network case. Translated by Mary McAuley and Nina dePalma 

‘The Network case was blatantly fabricated in full confidence that there would be no ramifications.’
– Zoya Svetova on the verdicts in the Network case. Translated by Marian Schwartz, Nathalie Corbett, James Lofthouse and Nicky Brown

‘With our own eyes we saw Anya in a cage during the court hearings, where her detention in a pre-trial detention centre was prolonged time after time, disregarding her tears, medical certificates and the arguments of lawyers.’– Lev Ponomarev on the New Greatness case. Translated by Anna Bowles.

‘At the end of the 1980s, society already sensed that there was something wrong with the army. It was the Afghan war, there were deaths, there were human rights violations. But no-one really knew or understood anything, it was still just some kind of underlying ferment.’
– Ella Polyakova on the creation of the Soldiers’ Mothers organisation in St. Petersburg. Translated by Nathalie Corbett, James Lofthouse and Mary McAuley

‘Both the President and the Russian public are informed about the absolutely absurd accusations, and also that a fully-fledged investigation into the torture is not being carried out, because they are the responsibility of the Federal Security Service (FSB)’ – Members of various regional Public Oversight Commissions (POCs) have signed a statement issued by the Association of Independent Observers demanding an unbiased investigation into the use of torture in the Network [Set’] case. Translated by Alice Lee.

‘Speaking of memory, towards the end of the week, Yandex removed several links from search results relating to Aleksandr Udodov, the former brother-in-law of the new Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin. Not long beforehand, Aleksei Navalny had published an investigation into Udodov’s involvement in tax fraud and the movement of money out of the country. So why would search engines be hiding the links? What about the right of access to information?’ – Team 29 on the removal of search links from the Internet. Translated by Lindsay Munford.‘

Chechen blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, famous for his criticism of Razman Kadyrov, has been attacked in Poland. On 26th February, the attacker entered the flat where Abdurakhmanov was sleeping and hit him over the head with a hammer. However, the blogger woke up and managed to fend off and disarm his attacker.’
– OVD-Info’s weekly bulletin looks, among other things, at the recent assault on a Chechen blogger living in Poland. Translated by Judith Fagelson.