RCFS leader Stanislav Dmitrievsky was convicted for enticing ethnic hatred after publishing peace appeals.

   On January 23 the Supreme Court in Russia will decide on the fate of human rights organisation Russian-Chechen Friendhip Society. It now pleads to European Members of Parliament for help.
   In December a Finnish Green Party MP and former European Parliament deputy, Heidi Hautala, became a member of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. She said:
   - It's a highly symbolic but practical way of expressing concern about the difficult situation for the organization in the hands of the authorities and court system. I also hope that a lot more members of European parliaments will take the same decision. Together we can convince our governments about the urgent need to show Russia that what it above all now needs is a free civil society. I thus apply for supporting membership in NN RCFS.
   The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society are now calling on politicians and public people of the European countries to follow Heidi Hautala and support the organisation with that specific act of solidarity. Read the appeal Read more on the RCFS case Les om saken på norsk
 
SEND APPLICATION ON SUPPORTIVE MEMBERSHIP IN RCFS: E-MAIL FRIEND@SINN:RU OR FAX +7 831 233 7334

Photo: TASS / Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty In Focus Number 2, Volume 1

Turkmenistan’s president Saparmurat Niyazov died from a cardiac arrest this morning, at the age of 66.
   International media, focusing on the bizarre personality cult Niyazov created around himself, paid less attention to the fact that he also created one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) hopes that the tyrant’s death will at last create a window of opportunity for the Turkmen people to freely elect a new leader and create a society where the respect for fundamental human rights is reinstated.
   The NHC resident representative to Bishkek, Ivar Dale, says Niyazov’s death can take Turkmenistan in a number of directions – continued governmental oppression being one of them:
   - The opposition to Niyazov’s rule has over the last years been forced to leave the country. Numerous people have been imprisoned. It is not instantly clear who might be able to take the lead in positive direction now, but it is unlikely that anybody will be able to take a position similar to the deceased dictator’s. We allow ourselves to believe in a positive development from this point, Dale says. Read More

   The Norwegian Helsinki Committee condemns recent attacks on the freedom of expression in Azerbaijan - and encourage Norwegian authorities to do likewise.
   On 25 November the Azadlig newspaper, the TURAN Information Agency, Bizim Yol newspaper as well as the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan and other organisations were forcefully evicted from their offices in central Baku.
   On 24 November, the National Television and Radio Council decided not to renew the broadcasting licence of the private ANS media channel - immediately terminating the last independent TV channel in the country. 
   On 23 November, dozens of Popular Front Party activists were arrested during a protest against the government.
   The Norwegian Helsinki Committee regards these decisions as the last in a string of illegitimate attacks against the freedom of expression. Azerbaijani media is kept under control by the authorities through violence and harassment against journalists, as well as by financial and administrative means. Read the statement

   At the 2006 General Assembly Meeting members of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights decided to devote the 2007 yearly campaign to endangered human rights defenders.
   The IHF expressed concern about the increasing climate of repression in which human rights defenders operate in many countries of Europe and Central Asia, particularly in Russia, Chechnya, Uzbekistan and Belarus. 
   The campaign will include federation-wide activities aimed at supporting and improving the protection of human rights activists who are at risk because of their efforts to promote compliance with international human rights standards.
Read the IHF press relsease

   Regional representative for the NHC Central Asia Office, Ivar Dale, and his assistant Davran Ilahunov, had their first day at work yesterday.
   Our two new staff members will spend some time preparing and getting to know each other and the Oslo secretariat, before they fly off to Kyrgyzstan in late November.
   The regional office will be located in Kyrgyzstan's capitol Bishkek. It will be the Norwegian Helsinki Committee's focal point in the Central Asia region, researching and reporting on human rights developments in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
   Ivar Dale (right) recently quit his job at the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration, to take on the challenging task of establishing and administrating our new office in Central Asia. He is an English and Russian major from the University of Oslo, and an experienced free lance journalist and traveller of Russia and the Caucasus.
   Davran Ilahunov was born and has lived most of his life in Kyrgyzstan. He has a university degree in Social Work. From 2001 onwards he spent a year and a half in Hallingdal, Norway, where he studied Norwegian at an Adult Learning Center and came to master the language fluently. Over the last few years, Davran has been a crucial local contact whenever the Norwegian Helsinki Committee has conducted fact finding missions to Kyrgyzstan.

   Human Rights School co-ordinators in the ex-Yugoslavian Helsinki Committees, as well as their Youth Group co-ordinatos are meeting in Macedonia to plan next year's educational activities.
   Among the main upcoming activities, is the launching of the new Internet presentation of the Regional project, www.humanrightsschools.org.
   At the same time, the 8th Regional Human Rights School for Youth in Western Balkan is taking place, involving 26 members of the local Youth Groups (organised under the Helsinki Committees). The aim of this particular School is to strengthen the members' motivation to be human rights Activists, to help them to improve their organisational skills and make their groups more efficient, and to introduce them to different fund-raising mechanisms.
   The Norwegian Helsinki Committee initially took the initiative to start the Human Rights School Project in Western Balkan, which since 1999 has involved several thousand teenagers. The local committees now have the main responsibility for organising the particular schools and the work of their youth groups that were introduced in 2004, while the NHC continues to supervise, advice on and sponsor the projects.

   Delegates from the 56 OSCE signatory states and numerous NGOs started the morning's working session on Fundamental Freedoms by paying their respect to the memory of Anna Politkovskaya.
   After one minute's silence to honour the brave journalist and human rights defender who was shot dead on Saturday, delegates and NGOs at the ODIHR Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw continued to express their concerns about her death, demands of a proper investigation and sympathies with her familiy and colleagues.
   In a joint intervention with the International Helsinki Federation (IHF), the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) addressed the issue:

While it is still too early to draw conclusions about perpetrators and motives, the killing of Anna Politkovskaya links up with the pattern of repression against human rights defenders involved in the Chechen conflict. In 2004 the NHC and the IHF published a report on cases of such persecution in the years from late 1999 to mid 2004. Among the cases were 13 killings, 6 enforced disappearances, 19 instances of torture, and a number of other violations, none of which had been properly investigated. The killing of Politkovskaya confirms the impression that the Russian Federation has utterly failed to protect human rights defenders.

Read the full intervention
Read the IHF statement on the need for Russia to denounce the murder of Politkovskaya

In Oslo at noon, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and other NGOs as well as numerous ordinary Norwegian citizens and national media, paused one minute outside the Russian embassy to honour Politkovskaya's memory, before proceeding to demand that her death will be promptly and properly investigated. Watch video clip

   The Norwegian Helsinki Committee joins the International Helsinki Federation's (IHF) in condemning a Moscow court decision to sentence human rights defender Lev Ponomarev to three days administrative detention.
   Ponomarev was punished for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and assembly when he on 3 September organized an event to commemorate the victims of the Beslan hostage.
   The authorities had been informed about the event in advance, and no explicit permission to stage an assembly is needed under relevant legislation.
Read the IHF statement

    This week Russian authorities have forcefully prevented opposition activists from participating in a conference in Moscow, reports the Norwegian Helsinki Committee's sister organisation Human Rights Watch.
   "The conference was organized by civic and opposition political activists from across the political spectrum and a wide cross-section of civil society groups and grassroots movements. [...]
   In the days before the conference, Russian authorities tried to bar conference attendees from leaving their home cities. Tactics reportedly used included summoning attendees to police departments, coercing from them written promises to stay at home, planting drugs, and threatening them with detention on administrative charges. In some cases, police removed people from trains and airplanes as they were about to depart to Moscow. Some participants were attacked and beaten by unknown assailants just before the conference. [...] Last week, Russian authorities warned representatives of Western governments that their attendance at the conference would be interpreted as an “unfriendly gesture” by Russia. [...]
   'It’s ironic that the summit of industrialized democracies is taking place against a starkly undemocratic backdrop,' says Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director for Human Rights Watch."
   Human rights organisations across the world are now pressuring the G-8 leaders to make the human rights situation in Russia top priority at the July 15-17th summit in St. Petersburg.
Read the full Human Rights Watch' press release
Read the article Russia and NGO's in International Herald Tribune
Read Russia: Six points for the G7 by Moscow Helsinki Group and the International Helsinki Federation