MEMORIAL RECEIVES THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT’S SAKHAROV PRIZE
Author: Rey Kerimoglu Date: 21 Dec 2009 Time: 05:53 am
16 December 2009. The European Parliament has awarded today the Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought to Ludmila Alekseeva, Sergei Kovaliov and Oleg Orlov, from the NGO Memorial Human Rights Centre and other human rights activists in Russia
The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) welcomes the prize as a sign of support for Russian civil society and stresses that NGOs continue to face immense difficulties in their work in the Russian Federation.
“We receive today the Sakharov Prize thinking of all the colleagues and other human rights defenders who have been murdered trying to let the world know about the crimes that are carried out with absolute impunity in Chechnya. We all remember Natalia Estemirova” said Oleg Orlov, the Head of Memorial Human Rights Centre. “The EU’s support towards human rights activists who work from the region and people who come to Europe fleeing this terror is essential”, added Bjarte Vandvik, ECRE Secretary General.
ECRE deplores methods employed in Russia, especially in the North Caucasus, in the name of counter-terrorism, which include extrajudicial killings, kidnapping, disappearances, torture and fabrication of criminal cases, which are not properly investigated (1).
Memorial suspended its activities in Chechnya after Natalia Estemirova’s killing. Her colleagues and other human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists who refuse to remain silent in the face of episodes such as Natalia Estemirova’s murder, are surveilled and threatened in the Russian Federation.
Two months ago, a group calling themselves the “relatives of policemen killed in Dagestan” distributed hundreds of leaflets in Makhachkala, declaring war on “so-called human rights defenders, lawyers and state-controlled journalists”. There were two Memorial employees among the sixteen people targeted.
This Autumn, Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechen President appointed by Kremlin, has accused Oleg Orlov, one of the winners of this year’s Sakharov Prize, of defamation for saying that President Kadyrov had the political responsibility for the murder of Natalia Estemirova. Memorial is appealing against this decision. Now President Ramzan Kadyrov’s barrister has declared their willingness to also charge with defamation Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of Memorial’s Migration Rights Network and a witness in the trial against Oleg Orlov.
Trying to find a safe haven: From the North Caucasus battleground to face the EU asylum lottery
With 18.000 asylum claims, in 2008, citizens of the Russian Federation (most being from Chechnya) were the second largest group of people seeking protection in the EU, where they had to face a dangerous asylum lottery. In 2008, virtually no Chechens were recognised as refugees in Slovakia, while in Lithuania, Austria, Poland and Denmark over 70% of Chechen asylum seekers were given international protection. Under the Dublin system, as a general rule, the first EU Member State that an asylum seeker reaches is the one to examine the application (2).
Note to editors:
1- Report by Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe following his visit to the Russian Federation, (Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia) on 2 -11 September 2009, Strasbourg, 24 November 2009 https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1543437&Site=CommDH
United Nations, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Concluding observations of the Human Rights Committee on Russia, October 2009: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/co/CCPR.C.RUS.CO.6.doc
2- UNHCR Asylum levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, First Half 2009, October 2009: http://www.unhcr.org/4adebca49.html
UNHCR, 2008 Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons,http://www.unhcr.org/4a375c426.html, 16 June 2009
Asylum decisions in 2008, Eurostat: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-09-092/EN/KS-SF-09-092-EN.PDF, December 2009).
3- To know more about the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, please check: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/staticDisplay.do?language=EN&id=42
4- Memorial Human Rights Centre is a Member Agency of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE): http://www.memo.ru/eng/memhrc/index.shtml; www.ecre.org
For further information:
Ana Fontal
Media and Information Officer
European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE)
146 Rue Royale, 1000 Brussels
Tel: +32 2 212 08 12
The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) is a network of 69 refugee-assisting organisations in 30 European countries, working together to protect and respect refugees
