Human Rights
The Kirov Law at 75
By Sean at 2 December, 2009, 2:07 am
Yesterday, December 1, was 75 years since the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Party Organization, and Stalin ally. It was on the night of December 1, 1934 that a certain Leonid Nikolaev, a disgruntled party worker, shot Kirov in the secretary’s third floor office. Nikolaev was immediately caught and interrogated [...]
Read More >>“The leading fighting brigade of our political system.”
By Sean at 5 October, 2009, 10:49 pm
It looks like Nashi might have crossed a line in their campaign against Alexander Podrabinek. According to Vremya, the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation made an official appeal calling for an investigation of Nashi’s “illegal and amoral” campaign to hunt down the journalist. The appeal reads:
The [...]
South Ossetia’s Documentary Displaced Persons
By Sean at 20 April, 2009, 12:27 pm
In the last few weeks, Georgia has sprung back into the news. Protesters are calling for Saakashvili to resign as more and more people have become disillusioned with the six year old Rose Revolution. Russia is threatening to pull out of a NATO meeting to protest military training exercises outside of Tbilisi, while some are [...]
Read More >>Memorial Vindicated, Again
By Sean at 31 March, 2009, 9:31 am
When the St. Petersburg office of Memorial was raided in December last year, the international media was aghast. Article after article saw the confiscation of Memorial’s database of archival materials and interviews of life under Stalin as proof that Stalinism was back in full force. Why else would police bother to raid the human rights [...]
Read More >>Running from Russia to . . . Poland
By Sean at 26 March, 2009, 8:53 am
Citizens of the Russian Federation comprise of the third highest number of asylum seekers according to statistics complied by the UN Refugee Agency.
The top country of origin of asylum applicants in 2008 was Iraq (40,500, down 10 percent from 45,100 in 2007), followed by Somalia (21,800), the Russian Federation (20,500), Afghanistan (18,500) and China (17,400). [...]
The Steel Pipe Hobbles the Pen
By Sean at 19 March, 2009, 3:46 pm
“I’m typing with one hand. The second doesn’t work. Moreover, I’m very bruised in two places on the thigh of my left leg , in my left kidney, and on the middle of my back, and my face still stings. But I am lucky. I’m very lucky.” These are the words of Maksim Zolotarev, who [...]
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