12/08/2011 14:42 By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN
A memoir about a brave, doomed refusenik and her courageous American friend.
Photo by: Courtesy of the kitrossky family
Moscow in the 1980s was a grim and dangerous place where talking to an American on the street was enough to attract the unwanted attention of the KGB. This is where Lisa Paul, then a University of Minnesota coed, came to work for two years as a nanny for an American businessman’s children. Read more…
Union of Councils expresses solidarity with democratic forces in Russia who strongly protest against the falsification of parliamentary election results. Today, big rallies in Moscow, Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, and many other cities and towns across Russia showed that Russian civil society not only exists, but is fighting for democratization and political-economic reforms.
We support the demands of human rights organizations to cancel the results of the election and initiate new ones under strong monitoring by local and international organizations and media. We were pleased that the protests have been peaceful and cooperative with police.
UCSJ wishes great success to our Russian human rights friends and partners in developing democratic practice, institutions and traditions. We are ready to help them approach these high goals.
LVIV, UKRAINE – Several young men have beaten up a student from Moroссo in a central city street. The attack happened suddenly. The victim and witness suggest that the attack was motivated by racial hatred. The police refused to accept the statement, because nobody in the nearest police station understood English. Policemen refused the translation of the bystander, because it is forbidden according by protocol to use unofficial translators.
TERNOPIL, UKRAINE – Between November 15-20 more than eight international students have been attacked and beaten just from from the dormitory for students of Ternopil medical University. Police were notified. The students were from Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Cameroon, and Ghana.
Join us in protest against the unfair and politically motivited sentence of leading Belarussian activist Ales Belyatsky.
Ales Belyatsky, president of NGO Viasna (Spring) is a well-known, honest patriot and champion of democratic reform in Belarus.
The money he received from donors was spent soley to promote human rights and help political prisoners and their families. He is accused in non-paying the taxes from his “profit.”
A Minsk court sentenced him on November 25, 2011 to four-and-half-years in a labor camp.
The Belarussian authorities have activists in a bind: they cannot legally register their organizations or receive financial support from abroad.
This sentence proves that Belarussian authorities continue to dupe the public and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) governments by not releasing all political prisoners.
In additon to Belyatsky, the leading opposition presidetial candidate Andrey Sannnikov is still in a labor camp, along with many others. UCSJ demands that Belyatsky’s sentence be overturned and that Belarus accord with its UN and OSCE obligations.
