According to Agora, Russia was home to 730 rallies, demonstrations, and pickets attended by a total of more than 400 thousand people during 2011. Of those participants, more than four thousand were detained before, during, or immediately after the event.

The group found that 117 civil activists, made up mostly of bloggers, anarchist or antifascists, and members of the banned National Bolshevik Party, were subjected to criminal prosecution in the past year. They were mostly incriminated under Russia’s controversial “extremism” laws, which critics denounce for their broad, vague wording, and also under laws against slandering or insulting government figures. Among the persecuted activists was music critic Artemy Troitsky, Novosibirsk artist Artem Loskutov, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaev of the art group Voina, and Tyumen State University professor Andrei Kutuzov.

Three activists were killed in 2011: in May, editor Yakhya Magomedov of the Avar-language Islamic newspaper As-Salam; in June, Rector Maksud Sadikov of the Institute of Theology and International Relations was shot along with his nephew in Makhachkala; in December, Gadzhimurad Kamalov, a journalist and founder of the independent newspaper Chernovik, was murdered in Dagestan.

Agora also recorded 45 incidents of beatings and other attacks.

The most at-risk groups were ecologists (primarily members of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest and opponents of environmental damage due to Olympic construction in Sochi), LGBT activists, and activists and participants of protests in the North Caucasus.

There were also 42 arrests, most commonly of members of the National Bolsheviks, Khimki Forest activists, and members of the electoral watchdog Golos. Irina Teplinskaya, a vocal critic of Russia’s treatment of drug addicts, was arrested in a Kaliningrad airport in August, and Golos head Liliya Shibanova was arrested in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in December. Noting the arrests of blogger Aleksei Navalny, oppositionist Ilya Yashin, and pianist Fedor Amirov, analysts at Agora said that from December 5-7, Russia for the first time began detaining people en masse and sentencing them to the maximum term of administrative arrest, with more than 100 people turning up in Moscow holding facilities during that time.

Additionally, 2011 saw 25 police searches of NGO offices and activists’ apartments.

The searches included a firm owned by Khimki Forest activist Yevgenia Chirikova and her husband, the office of the opposition movement Solidarity, and the Ulyanovsk branch of the Memorial human rights center.

The 850 cases of persecution recorded by Agora in 2011 followed 603 such cases in 2010, 308 in 2009, and 144 in 2008.

Vladimir Ryzhkov of the People’s Freedom Party said Biden was interested in Russian media censorship and the problems faced by opposition parties in registering to participate in elections.

Ryzhkov and fellow oppositionists Boris Nemtsov and Garry Kasparov told the vice president that sanctions should be imposed against Russian civil servants who have grossly violated human rights, including the people responsible for the death of Hermitage Capital Management lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and those involved in the prosecution of jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Other oppositionists at the meeting included Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky, Right Cause leader Leonid Gozman, Communist Party representative Nina Ostanina and A Just Russia representative Oksana Dmitrieva.

In discussing Russia’s domestic political situation, Yavlinsky pointed out that the most fundamental difficulties have been known for a long time – in particular, the lack of important democratic procedures, Yabloko’s press service told Kasparov.ru.

Yavlinsky said it was of upmost importance to solve the problem of how to replace the system created back in the ’90s – a much more far-reaching and difficult task than simply making personnel changes in the government. Moreover, the problem could only be resolved by Russian society, which needs to rely on its own strength more than anything else in this long and difficult effort, he said.

Biden also met with Russian human rights activists at an earlier meeting.

Memorial human rights center head Oleg Orlov told RIA Novosti that “questions about human rights and democratic development in Russia were seriously raised at the meeting.” Prominent rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, he said, spoke about human rights abuses in Russia’s jails and the problems surrounding the organization of elections in the country.

Civil Assistance committee representative Svetlana Gannushkina “raised the topic of migration, which is a problem for both of our countries, and also talked about the commission represented by [US presidential assistant Michael] McFaul and [Kremlin ideologist Vladislav] Surkov,” Orlov said, referring to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission.

The group also discussed the importance of observing human rights in the midst of the war on terrorism. “I spoke about human rights violations in the war on terrorism by both of our countries… Biden agreed with all of this,” Orlov went on.

An important signal for the rights advocates, he said, was when Biden said that advancing democracy, observing human rights and organizing free and fair elections were important to the US in regards to Russia’s chances of joining the World Trade Organization.

“[Biden] said that for Russia to enter the WTO, [the US] Congress would have to vote to annul the Jackson-Vanik amendment,” Orlov said. “Congress’s vote is only going to be positive if Russia advances fair elections and the establishment of democracy.”

The vice president also met with Yevgeniya Chirikova, leader of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest. Chirikov explained the problems with the construction of the planned Moscow-St. Petersburg highway, which would cut through the forest, and Biden promised to raise the issue in talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He also awarded Chirikova with the prestigious International Women of Courage Award, which the US State Department says “recognizes women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for women’s rights and empowerment, often at great personal risk.”

In a resolution issued on February 17, European deputies expressed concern over the guilty sentence in the second case against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, and called upon the Russian government to do everything necessary to establish a judicial system that corresponds with the promises of Russia’s president to create just and transparent courts. The resolution referred to opposition activists, including Solidarity co-leader Boris Nemtsov, who were sentenced to jail after participating in a sanctioned rally in Moscow.

“Several judicial processes and lawsuits of the past several years have cast doubt upon the independence and impartiality of judicial institutions in the Russian Federation,” reads the document.

The deputies also said Russia must respect human rights and the supremacy of law in the North Caucasus.

Russia was called upon to solve the murders of numerous Russian journalists and human rights activists and bring their perpetrators to justice. The deputies cited such victims as Natalya Estemirova, Andrei Kulagin, Zamera Sadulaeva, Alik Dzhabrailov, Maksharip Aushev, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova and Anna Politkovskaya. The resolution also noted the situation with the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow pretrial detention facility.

“It’s a very good, very concrete resolution that shows the European Parliament knows what’s happening in Russia.” Moscow Helsinki Group leader Lyudmila Alexeyeva told Kasparov.ru. “It’s impossible to enumerate all of our problems, but the ones that are included in the resolution are significant.”

According to Yevgeny Ikhlov of the Movement for Human Rights, the resolution shows that Western Europe sees Russia exactly the same way Russia’s liberal opposition does. “This was clear before, thanks to diplomatic correspondence published on Wikileaks, but now they’ve said it officially,” he said.

In contrast to previous resolutions, this one is complex and is dedicated to the complete collapse of the “Medvedev thaw,” said Ikhlov. “Western Europe feels that, after three years of Dmitri Medvedev’s rule, the country still has no rights, is mafia-like, and the exact same persecution of innocent and political opponents that was happening under Putinism is still going on. There hasn’t been any thaw, all of it has been talk. It’s not, of course, Belarus, but it’s next on the list. In terms of a lack of democracy, Russia takes second place for Europe,” he concluded.

Ella Kesaeva, leader of the victim advocacy movement Voice of Beslan, said that the memorial began Wednesday morning at 9:15 am – the moment when Chechen and Ingush militants seized the school, demanding an end to the Second Chechen War.

“There are a lot of people,” said Kesaeva of the memorial. According to Interfax, about 3000 people came to honor the dead, including relatives of the children and teachers killed and the leadership of the republic, headed by President Taymuraz Mamsurov.

Portraits of the victims, including special forces operatives who were killed in the raid that ended the three-day siege, were hung on the walls of the school’s sports arena. Many visitors laid flowers and lit candles in their memory.

The memorial is planned to last until September 3, when a delegation is expected to come from the European Parliament.

A statement published Wednesday from Voice of Beslan issued the latest of many demands for an objective investigation of how the Russian authorities dealt with the hostage crisis. On the third day of the siege, federal security forces controversially used tanks and flamethrowers to raid the school. In the end, at least 334 of the more than 1100 hostages died in the operation, among them 186 children. “We feel that the use of heavy machinery during the raid was a war crime,” said Kesaeva.

The organization believes that the way in which the Russian authorities dealt with the siege violated the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights that guarantees the right to life and freedom from torture.

In an open letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev published on the organization’s website on Wednesday, parents of children killed in the raid asked the head of state to remember “the wounds of the Beslan tragedy.” For more than two years, they said, the president has ignored parents’ requests to hold an objective investigation, forcing them to look to other avenues for help.

“For six years, the official agencies have demonstrated their unwillingness to hold an objective investigation,” reads the letter, “so we are forced to appeal to competent international associations to carry out an objective investigation.”

The Beslan hostage crisis became the basis for a variety of measures to consolidate power within the Russian federal government. Under President Vladimir Putin, law enforcement agencies were given a broader range of authority, and the direct election of the heads of federal regions was abolished; these leaders are now nominated by the president and voted on by local legislatures. Critics argue that the government took advantage of the tragedy to pull through these and other similar measures, which they say are detrimental for democracy in the country.

The video was created by the French branch of Amnesty International, a human rights organization that has reported on rights violations in Russia numerous times. The Belarusian human rights group Charter’97 reported today that 30 members of the organization had also attempted to project the video onto the facade of the Russian embassy. Upon arriving, however, they were met by police and told not to bother nearby residents by playing the clip. The group was then forced to disperse.

Amnesty International France has also set up an online petition calling for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to respond to a variety of rights abuses in his country, including problems involving racism, the persecution of journalists, restrictions on the freedom of expression, the volatile situation in the North Caucasus, and torture, among others.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sums up the primary controversies over the bill:

Russian media sources say the law would allow the FSB to warn citizens that their behavior could create conditions that could lead to a crime — even in cases where there are no legal grounds to hold them criminally responsible. It also provides for fines against citizens who disobey FSB officials or in any way hinder their work.

According to an explanatory note posted on the State Duma’s website, the law is necessary due to a sharp rise in extremist activity. The note cites figures from the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor-General’s Office claiming that extremist crimes rose by 30 percent from 2007 to 2008.

The note also criticized the media for propagating “individualism, violence, and mistrust of the state’s capacity to protect its citizens, effectively drawing young people to extremist activities.”

Ilya Ponomarev, a lawmaker from the Duma faction of A Just Russia, calls this hyperbole, saying that the government’s figures on extremist activity are inflated.

“They often label absolutely normal social activists as extremists,” Ponomarev says. “And when the authorities are faced with a real threat to public safety they are helpless. Neither preemptive warnings nor fines will solve this problem.”

There is no shortage of examples of the Russian authorities using accusations of extremism as an excuse to stifle dissent. Federal officials routinely harass protesters, conduct raids of homes and offices, hinder legal forms of protest, and in some cases will block opposition websites, not to mention the torture accusations from Amnesty International.

Speaking to the newspaper Kommersant, Lev Levinson of the Russian non-governmental Institute for Human Rights said that the bill would shift responsibilities currently held by state prosecutors to the police, a move he said was both unnecessary and dangerous. “This is precisely what the fight against dissent is apparently turning into,” he said. “That today the chekisti (referring to the FSB) don’t have the authority to issue warnings doesn’t mean in the least that there aren’t feasible ways to prevent crime.” Levinson added that while prosecutors act as a sieve to prevent abuses when issuing warnings about extremism, the FSB would not.

All in all, said Levinson, the initiative would “untie the hands of FSB officers,” and abuses by the agency can consequently be expected to grow.

In a statement responding to the Moscow metro bombings, Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front reminded readers of the steps taken over the past ten years by the Russian government in the name of fighting terrorism and extremism, pointing out that, given the bombings, they have not been ideally effective.

The tragic events that occurred in Moscow on March 29, 2010, could be appropriated by the current government for an even larger infringement of the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation. The apartment bombings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk in the fall of 1999 triggered the beginning of a second military campaign in Chechnya and immediately provided Vladimir Putin with the necessary ratings for victory in the 2000 presidential elections. As a result of the terrorist attacks in the Dubrovka Theater in October 2002 and in Beslan in September 2004, elections for governors and regional leaders in Russia were abolished. And today, after the events of March 29 in Moscow, it is obvious that these measures did not increase the safety of Russia’s citizens in the least.

No matter how much this new bill might look like a continuation down that same path, any opposition to the bill is unlikely to keep it from passing given that United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party lead by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, holds an overwhelming majority in the State Duma,.

In light of the revelations that last month’s suicide bombers were both natives of the North Caucasus Republic of Dagestan and young widows of deceased militants, Pamfilova spoke about what she saw as the reasons why such young Caucasians would turn to violence. Noting that she had just returned from a trip to the region, the rights activist said that young people in the Caucasus were confused and lacked direction as a result of unemployment, nonsensical social policy, and a lack of public control in the region. She also blamed Russian special forces for failing to consider the consequences of some of their tactical operations, which can often tear entire families apart and leave the survivors without a place to live.

“This is an intellectual war, and therefore there should be a stress in the region not of a nonsensical nature, but of an intellectual one. This is precisely the way that the intelligence agencies must win the war against terrorist ideologues,” Pamfilova said.

She also stressed that the main source of the region’s social ills was widespread, endemic corruption, which would not be possible, she said, without the support of the federal authorities. “We will never eliminate corruption in the North Caucasus if large amounts of money sent there are being ‘skimmed’ by officials in Moscow,” Pamfilova said at the press conference.

The Civil Society Institution and Human Rights Council was created in 2004 by then-President Vladimir Putin, with the ostensible goals of informing the president of the state of human rights and freedoms in the country and to create proposals to further the development of those same rights. It currently consists of thirty-six representatives from a variety of public organizations, including former Soviet dissident and prominent rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva. The last meeting in November focused on fighting corruption, specifically within Russia’s law enforcement agencies.

Russian prisons have a historically high rate of violence, in part resulting from the rare practice of housing convicts together without regard for the severity of their crimes. While the government has finally decided put that practice to an end, the deputy prosecutor general said that facility reviews ordered by President Dmitri Medvedev exposed a significant number of cases where prison guards have abused both their own authority and the rights of prisoners.

“In facilities in the Omskaya, Orenburgskaya, Sverdlovskaya, and Chelyabinskaya regions, as well as several others, personnel have been using physical force and tactical equipment in ways that are not always lawful or well-founded,” said Zabarchuk.

When asked about conditions regarding prisoners’ health, the deputy painted a grim picture of the situation: In 2009 alone, 4150 prisoners had died in Russian correctional facilities. “What’s worrying is not only the high rate of disease, but the depressing death rate among convicts,” he said. “This is a problem that I would particularly like to single out, since the basic prison contingent is not made up of very old men or young children, but able-bodied people who are, you could say, in the prime of their lives and strength. Nevertheless, many of them do not live out their sentences, or they leave disabled.”

One reason for the mortality rate was the failure of correctional facilities to provide prisoners with proper medical care. And even when they do, said Zabarchuk, medical equipment is outdated and medical personnel often lack the proper education for their jobs.

However, said Zabarchuk, a series of recent prison reforms have succeeded in decreasing the number of prisoners overall. This was a key task for the penal system’s management, as a sharp increase in female prisoners has recently contributed to the already overwhelming overcrowding of Russia’s facilities. A recent decision by the Russian Supreme Court regarding procedures for bail, house arrest, parole, and other lighter forms of punishment has allowed more convicts to carry out their sentences outside of correctional facilities. As a result, the number of prisoners in Russia was 861,687 prisoners as of Spring 2010 – 29 thousand less than a year ago. Zabarchuk said that the decrease can be credited to the fact that, for the first time ever, the problem of abuse in Russian correctional facilities was being dealt with at the highest levels of government, with president Medvedev in particular pushing for reform.

Even so, the situation in Russia’s prisons remains dire, and not all reforms necessarily have any chance of success. Zabarchuk blamed the Federal Penitentiary Service itself for “ineffectively exercising departmental control” over rampant corruption. “Therefore, the negative situation that has developed is not changing,” he concluded.

Russian prisoners themselves have made a number of recent attempts to draw attention to the conditions of their treatment. In January 2010, prisoners in the southern Rostovskaya region announced an indefinite hunger strike in response to what they said were irresponsible medical personnel and other rights abuses. In November 2009, five prisoners in the Chelyabinskaya region wrote a letter to law enforcement agencies alleging continuous beatings and psychological abuse from prison guards, and also went on hunger strike.

In a move that was both practical and symbolic, activists had prepared 50 thousand copies of the Russian constitution to hand out to police charged with manning the event. Renowned rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who was detained in a New Year’s Eve protest despite being 82 years old, had signed each copy with the phrase “in kind remembrance.”

None of the officers present turned down their copy of the document.

A wide variety of opposition movements were represented at Saturday’s rally, and many made speeches chronicling their clashes with police violence and abuse of authority.

“I very much love the police that protect me, but I rarely see them,” said writer Viktor Shenderovich. “More often, I see the cops that beat and murder.” He stressed that the necessity for drastic police reform is a result of Russia lacking free elections, a free press, and free courts.

Referring to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s stated goal of wiping out corruption, White Ribbon movement representative Lyubov Polyakova pointed out that whistleblowing officers, such as Aleksei Dymovsky, had been poorly received when responding to the president’s call. “Look what they’ve done to them!” she said. “You don’t want to get rid of corruption; you say that we’re rocking the boat.”

“Yes, we’re rocking your rotten boat, which you, like beetles, have already completely eaten through,” Polyakova concluded.

Major Dymovsky was detained not long after posting two videos on YouTube in November that detail corruption in the Novorossiysk police department.

Sergei Davidis, coordinator of the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners, appealed to the officers themselves. Remarking that the rally was calling for rights for the officers, he asked whether they really wanted to work for such paltry salaries and extort bribes to get by, and whether they really, after all, wanted people to hate them.

Solidarity movement member Anastasia Rybachenko stressed the importance of new methods for hiring law enforcement officers. “People who enter the police force intend to get police batons and power,” while others join simply to avoid Russia’s mandatory draft, she said. With the Internal Ministry scraping the bottom of society’s barrel and paying officers next to nothing, it follows that the resulting police force is less than ideal.

Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s federal designate on human rights issues, was noted among those present at the rally.

A resolution taken at the end of the demonstration called for the management of the Internal Ministry to be fired, that political persecution of whistleblowing officers be put to a stop, and that police force not be used in political investigations.

Two groups of counter-protesters attempted to disrupt the rally. Some cast leaflets into the crowd that were printed to look like hundred dollar bills, reading “these dollars are payment for the collapse of the police in Russia.” Members from one group were detained.

While the Russian police have long been notorious for their violent abuse of authority, they came under particularly harsh criticism after Major Denis Yevsyukov killed three and wounded dozens more in a Moscow supermarket while drunk late last April. With the renewed wave of media attention to police abuses that followed, prominent government and public officials began calling for the Internal Ministry to be dissolved. Last December, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered the Ministry to be extensively reformed, and in a January 24 statement said that the number of police personnel “needs to be reduced and wages should be raised.”

In the meantime, scandalous incidents of police brutality show no signs of slowing.

In an article published earlier this week by the Guardian, Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov chastises European leaders for forming increasingly close relationships with Russia and thus enabling the Kremlin’s violent suppression of free speech and human rights. Given the numerous annual murders of Russian journalists and activists and the Kremlin’s unbridled attempts to broadcast its own propaganda abroad, Kasparov calls on Europe to check these relationships at the door and reconsider its stand on human rights.

Don’t cosy up to Russia, Europe
Stifling free media, arresting journalists, bullying its neighbours – Moscow is stamping on freedoms and the EU turns a blind eye

By GARRY KASPAROV
February 23, 2010
The Guardian

In the capitals of European democracies, leaders are hailing a new era of co-operation with Russia. Berlin claims a “special relationship” with Moscow and is moving forward on a series of major energy projects with Russian energy giant Gazprom, one of which is led by the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi traveled to St Petersburg late last year to join in the celebration of his “great friend” Vladimir Putin’s 59th birthday. And in Paris, negotiations are under way for a major arms sale that would allow Russia to acquire one of the most advanced ships in the French navy.

At the same time, democratic dissent inside Russia has been ruthlessly suppressed. On 31 January, the Russian government refused to allow the peaceful assembly of citizens who demonstrated in support of … the right to free assembly, enshrined in article 31 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation: the right “to gather peacefully and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets”.

Likewise, Russian journalists have been increasingly harassed for expressing any criticism of the government. But prosecution is hardly the worst outcome for Russian journalists who fail to report the news in a “patriotic” manner. In 2009, more than dozen of journalists, human rights activists and political opponents were killed.

Having stifled internal criticism of its policies in the Caucasus, the Russian government is now turning its attention to those who criticize them from abroad – and it is being abetted in this project by European businesses and governments. The last victim of Moscow’s censors and their western friends is called Perviy Kavkazskiy (First-Caucasian). This young Russian-language television station was, until the end of January, freely available to people living in Russian-speaking areas. Now, Eutelsat – the leading European satellite provider based in Paris – has taken the channel off the air and refuses to implement the contract negotiated with the TV.

It seems the Russian company Intersputnik made Eutelsat an offer it couldn’t refuse on 15 January, holding out the possibility of millions of dollars in business with the media holdings of Russian gas giant Gazprom on the condition that Eutelsat stop doing business with First-Caucasian. Eutelsat capitulated and sent a disastrous message to the world: no Russian-language television that is not controlled by the Kremlin will be allowed to be aired in the Russian Federation. Even if it is based abroad. Even if it has a contract with a European satellite provider.

The English-language satellite channel, Russia Today, funded and controlled by the Russian government, did not face such problems with European satellites. This channel has recently launched an advertising blitz in the United States and the United Kingdom featuring billboards that show the face of US President Barack Obama morphing into that of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Nobody raised any concerns about Russia Today and western viewers will be allowed to receive the propaganda that is broadcasted in Russia. But the very idea of an alternative channel in Russian language seems too “provocative” to some Europeans.

Eutelsat’s collaboration with these policies is a clear violation of the spirit of the EU laws protecting freedom of the press, and French courts may well find that the firm violated more than just the spirit of the law as the case against Eutelstat unfolds in the coming weeks. Still, this is just the latest example of European complicity in the Kremlin’s consolidation of political power inside the country and its reconstitution of the military used to coerce those nations that lie just across the border.

This is the context in which came recent reports that the French government intends to go forward with the sale to Russia of one or more Mistral-class amphibious assault ships. The Russian military has not concealed its plan for these weapons. In September of last year, the Russian admiral Vladimir Vysotsky triumphantly declared that “a ship like this would have allowed the Black Sea fleet to accomplish its mission [invading Georgia] in 40 minutes and not 26 hours”.

Only a little more than a year ago, as Russian tanks occupied parts of Georgia, NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declared that there could be “no business as usual with Russia under present circumstances”. Russian forces still occupy Georgian territory, in violation of the ceasefire brokered by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and yet NATO, too, is back to business as usual with Putin’s regime.

As Moscow shuts down opposition newspapers, arrests journalists who fail to toe the government line and bullies its democratic neighbors into submission, some European leaders are not silent. Instead they are arguing for closer ties to Moscow, for energy cooperation, for military for arms deals.

European leaders must take a stand for freedom of speech and in defense of the free media that enables it. This starts by making clear to European companies that they are not supposed to be the obedient tools of the Kremlin’s censorship. The same leaders should also show that, at the beginning of the 21st century, one cannot occupy a foreign territory without consequence. It clearly does not imply selling weapons to occupation forces. At stake is not only the freedom of Russian citizens, but also the very meaning and the honor of Europe.

• The following people endorse this article: Elena Bonner-Sakharov; Konstantin Borovoï, chairman of the Party for Economic Freedom; Vladimir Boukovsky, former political prisoner; Natalia Gorbanevskaia, poet, former political prisoner; Andreï Illarionov, former adviser to Vladimir Putin; Garry Kasparov, leader of United Citizens Front; Serguei Kovaliev, former minister to Boris Yeltsin; Andreï Mironov, former political prisoner; Andreï Nekrasov, filmmaker; Valeria Novodvorskaya, leader of Democratic Unity of Russia; Oleg Panfilov, TV presenter; Grigory Pasko, journalist, ecology activist, former political prisoner; Leonid Pliouchtch, essayist, former political prisoner; Alexandre Podrabinek, journalist, former political prisoner; Zoïa Svetova, journalist; Maïrbek Vatchagaev, historian; Tatiana Yankelevitch, archivist, Harvard; Lydia Youssoupova, lawyer