Statement by the Yabloko party, 23.12.2022

Photo: The lecture by Valery Borshchyov, Co-Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, at Yabloko on 21 December, 2022 / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The lawsuit of the Ministry of Justice to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group and ban its activities is another step towards turning the Russian state into a dictatorship.

The liquidation of the oldest human rights organisation in our country will become the same significant event as its emergence in the USSR in the 1970s. In 1976, when the Soviet leadership, after the signing of the Helsinki Agreement, was forced to feign recognition that the citizens of the USSR have the same inalienable rights as all people in the world, the Moscow Helsinki Group emerged.

Exceptionally wise and honest people, including Yury Orlov, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Pyotr Grigorenko, Yelena Bonner, Anatoly Marchenko, Andrei Sakharov, Sergei Kovalyov, and Valery Borshchyov, waged a courageous fight so that the state respect the vital rights of people simply because they are people..

Members of the Moscow Helsinki Group were severely persecuted by the Soviet state. Eight of them were arrested and sentenced to different terms of imprisonment, six were forced to emigrate and deprived of their citizenship. At the end of the communist era, when only three members of the organisation remained free, it ceased its activities in order to resurrect later and become one of the symbols of Perestroika.

Eliminating human rights organisations, squeezing free people out of the country, driving alternative opinion into closed discussions at home and putting its bearers in jail, the Russian authorities are acting in the Soviet-Bolshevik tradition, once again denying the citizens of Russia their fundamental rights.

We resolutely declare our solidarity with all democratic, civil and non-governmental organisations in Russia, with all political prisoners who stand up for freedom, human dignity and peace.

The Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko declares its unconditional adherence to the principles and values introduced into Russian politics by the outstanding members of the Moscow Helsinki Group and members of our Party like Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov and Valery Vasilyevich Borshchyov, the current Co-Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group. The Yabloko party will do everything possible to support the Moscow Helsinki Group.

Nikolai Rybakov,

Yabloko Chairman