As a result, victims of human rights violations in Chechnya have nowhere to turn.\u00a0 There continue to be reports of\u00a0 human rights abuses such as enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions. Houses of families of alleged fighters are being burnt down. The perpetrators of such crimes continue to enjoy impunity.<\/p>\n
The vacuum of human rights monitoring and reporting in this situation is significant and painful.\u00a0 In December, a letter sent by more than 80 Russian human rights organizations urged Memorial<\/a> to return to Chechnya and pledged to support Memorial in whatever way they could. Several of these organizations have joined together to form a Monitoring Mission in Chechnya<\/a> and recently began to work in Chechnya.<\/p>\n President of the EU Parliament Jerzy Buzek handed over the award and the prize money of 50,000 euros ($73,000) at a ceremony in Strasbourg.<\/p>\n At the ceremony, Kovalev urged the EU to put pressure on Moscow to respect human rights. “Europe’s task is to not remain silent,” he told the parliament, “But to always insist that Russia respects its obligations to human rights. To not call on Russia to do so would be interpreted as indulgence by the Russian authorities. That would be bad for Russia and for Europe as a whole,” the 79-year-old former Soviet prisoner warned.<\/p>\n Oleg Orlov said: “We have made this difficult decision after consultations with our staff in the North Caucasus and a great number of Russian and international human rights organizations.” And he added that Memorial sees the prize as a European Union offer of help that would help strengthen Russian civil society with added energy and credibility.<\/p>\n Sergei Kovalev said: \u201cThis prize is theirs by right. The first is Natalya Estemirova, human rights defender and fellow member of Memorial, shot in Chechnya. Among others I should also mention Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer; Anna Politkovskaya and Anastasia Baburova, journalists, killed in Moscow; Nikolai Girenko, an ethnologist, shot in St-Petersburg; Farid Babaev, killed in Dagestan and many others. Sadly this list could go on. Please rise to honor the memory of these people.\u201d<\/p>\n Let’s remind that in his Nobel Prize speech, Andrei Sakharov had said \u201cToday we must fight for every individual person separately against injustice and the violation of human rights. Much of our future depends on this.\u201d And now, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, FIDH, Memorial, Civil Rights Defenders and Moscow Helsinki group will work jointly with Russian and other international human rights organizations to monitor the situation in Chechnya. They consider monitoring and reporting on human rights violations in Chechnya as their common responsibility. They will continue their work to end human rights violations in the country and ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russian human rights group Memorial has resumed its activities in Chechnya, the director of the group said today at a press conference after the Sakharov Prize ceremony in the Parliament of Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[960,959,115,524,496,744,961],"class_list":["post-4017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-andrei-sakharov","tag-lyudmila-alekseeve","tag-memorial","tag-natalya-estemirova","tag-oleg-orlov","tag-sergei-kovalev","tag-sergei-kovalyev"],"views":1728,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4017"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4022,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017\/revisions\/4022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.waynakh.com\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/EP-Sakhraov-prize-2009-300x200.jpg\")
Today, 16 December 2009,\u00a0 Memorial, represented by Oleg Orlov and Sergei Kovalev, as well as Lyudmila Alekseeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group, received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of thought, awarded by the European Parliament. They said, they can only be saddened that their friend and colleague Natalya Estemirova is no longer alive to receive this honour.<\/p>\n