Appeal to OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting participants

Well-known Russian human rights activists Lyudmila Alekseyeva (President of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and Moscow Helsinki Group Chairwoman), Lev Ponomaryov (All-Russian Public Movement "For Human Rights"), and Andrey Babushkin (Public Charitable Committee "For Civil Rights") appealed to the participants of the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, which is taking place in Warsaw on October 6-17, 2003.

Here are some extracts from this appeal:

"This appeal is caused by the unexampled campaign concerned with human rights violation that goes on in the Russian Federation now.

The liquidation of independent mass media in the Russian Federation under conditions of constantly growing influence of special services and security agencies in the Russian society has created prerequisites for the resumption of breaches of the law, human rights and fundamental freedoms, as it was in the Soviet era."

"For the last three years those civil society activists who incurred the authorities' anger for any of several reasons have become a target of state repressions in the form of unconcealed judicial despotism and torture keeping conditions."

"The cases of the persecution of human rights activists and ecologists Nikitin and Pasko gave rise to deep resonance. Many public figures and politicians from different countries took part in the campaigns for their support. But repressions against civil activists and moves to suppress civil society grow more scaled. Human rights organizations are aware of dozens, even not of hundreds of instances when civil activists are persecuted. And these cases are often set aside of public's attention.

We can mark out two examples of persecution among them: the cases of Sergey Brovchenko, a human rights activist and lawyer from Kaluga, and Mikhail Konstantinidi, a human rights activist and ecologist from Novorossiysk. Russian human rights defenders actively speak in their defense today. These cases are very typical as examples of lawlessness from the direction of investigative and judicial bodies. Human rights activist Mikhail Konstantinidi and lawyer Sergey Brovchenko sentenced by concocted charges are still in prison, in spite of the decisions of the Russian Supreme Court, which declared sentences against them illegal."

"Similar methods of illegal pressure from the direction of investigative bodies were used while putting pressure on businessmen who incurred the authorities' anger."

"The activity of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office connected with the pressure on YUKOS oil company is among the most scandalous facts of gross violations of the law, human rights and freedoms of last months."

"Speaking of the situation around YUKOS, Russian press and experts, in spite of the divergence in their appraisals of the things happening, agree in the understanding of the events: not just loyalty has been demanded from big business, it is expected to become an obedient element of the total political technology."

"Today we state that a threat to human rights is as serious as it has never been since the beginning of democratic reforms in Russia. And if the society proves to be inactive in future, the processes that are taking place can become irreversible and threaten the existence of the civil society in Russia.

We ask the Meeting participants:

- to enter the given facts of human rights violations in the Russian Federation on the final records of the Meeting,

- to examine the question of establishing a special OSCE commission to deal with the situation with human rights in Russia and making international examinations of cases of gross breaches of the law."