Lida Yusupova / Photo from www.bbc.co.uk

Lida Yusupova / Photo from www.bbc.co.uk
Norwegian HR Foundation Awards Chechen Lawyer Rafto Prize

Created: 22.09.2005 15:24 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:24 MSK > document.write(get_ago(1127388267)); </SCRIPT>

MosNewsh

A Norwegian human rights body, which has anticipated the selection of the Nobel Peace Prize winner four times with its own award, chose a <NOBR>Chechen</NOBR> lawyer on Thursday to receive its annual Rafto prize, Reuters reported.

The Thorolf Rafto Foundation for Human Rights honored Lida Yusupova for “her brave and unrelenting efforts to document human rights violations and act as a spokeswoman for the forgotten victims of the war in Chechnya”, it said.

Yusupova, 44, has been office director in Grozny of Russia’s oldest human rights organization Memorial, it said. In 2004 she was also awarded the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights.

The foundation said it hoped its 50,000 crowns ($7,853) award would help refocus world attention on the conflict in Chechnya where tens ...
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The 65th anniversary of the evil deportation that Soviet Stalin's era had committed against the Chechen and Ingush nations to Siberia and the Central Asian republics in the year 1944.

This year's commemoration and protests will be held in many parts of the world while Chechnya is still occupied and colonized by Russia.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The following article was published by Prague Watchdog for the same event of last year:

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Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead outside her home in Moscow in 2006.

Human rights groups say the case was mishandled and they have called for greater protection for journalists in Russia .

After months of detention, the three men accused of being involved in Ms Politkovskaya's murder were delighted to head out of the Moscow courtroom and into the cold, fresh air as soon as they heard the jury return 'not guilty' verdicts because of insufficient evidence.

Many have felt bitter disappointment about the way the investigation into the murder of ms Politkovskaya has been handled.

Defence lawyers, including Valery Chernikov may have been delighted with the verdicts in this trial, but ...

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Publication: North Caucasus Weekly

The press office of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov reported on February 16 that Bukhari Baraev, brother of the notorious Chechen rebel field commander Arbi Baraev, who was killed in 2001, and father of Movsar Baraev, who led the militants that seized hostages at Moscow’s Dubrovka theater in 2002, had resigned his position as special representative of Chechen rebel leader Dokka Umarov in Europe and returned to Chechnya. According to Interfax, the press office quoted Baraev as calling on members of the republic’s “illegal armed formations” to lay down their weapons and return to peaceful life. It also quoted him as saying that while in Europe, he had learned about the changes that had taken place in Chechnya under Kadyrov only through media reports ...

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February, 23rd 2009

February, 19th 2009.

World Chechnya Day.

Monday marks one of the bloodiest and most brutal pages in the whole history of Russo-Chechen relations. On that day, 65 years ago, the whole Chechen nation of half a million people was exiled from their home land and deported to Central Asia and Kazakhstan - indeed my own family were among them.

As is well documented the pain of the losses that Chechens suffered in that distant past did not become the last pain they were to encounter, and sadly the struggle continues into our tragic present. It is true that the tactics deployed by the Kremlin today are more subtle, but the outcome is the same in that the displacement and persecution of Chechens continues via methods that are less obvious but equally as brutal.

On that day, in a ...

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