The leaders of Yabloko speak in defence of Svetlana Gannushkina, a member of the Yabloko Political Committee

Press Release, 24.12.2022

Photo: Svetlana Gannushkina / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Throughout this year, the Ministry of Justice of Russia, almost without a break, assigned once a week the title of “foreign agent” to people whose activities and civil stance have become a kind of “red rag” for the authorities. At the end of the year, Svetlana Gannushkina, a world-famous human rights defender, was included in this list. The irony is that since February 2022, it was Gannushkina and her colleagues in the Civic Assistance Committee who took over the organistion of assistance to Ukrainian refugees, doing this almost around the clock.

“[I express my] Immeasurable respect and support for Svetlana Alexeyevna Gannushkina. On behalf of Yabloko members and not only them, on behalf of everyone whose rights she selflessly defends. It is a great honour for us to be with her in the same political party and in the same Political Committee. And immeasurable shame on those bureaucrats who stick this label on her,” Boris Vishnevsky, Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, writes.

“The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation has written today one of the most shameful pages in its history. It will be impossible to justify and wash off. But honour, dignity and glory remain with Svetlana Alexeyevna Gannushkina,” Lev Shlosberg, a member of the Yabloko Political Committee, says.

“Not to mention her other merits, I can only say that the state should have award Svetlana Gannushkina  the highest order for the aid to thousands of refugees from Ukraine, which Svetlana Alexeyevna, who celebrated her 80th birthday in the spring, has organised in the past ten months. And here comes the “reward”! Emilia Slabunova, a member of the Yabloko Political Committee, emphasises.

It should be added that the Ministry of Justice dealt another blow to human rights activists on 20 December: the ministry filed a lawsuit in court so that to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group. This organisation was founded in 1976. Its founder was the physicist and dissident Yury Orlov. From 1996 to 2018, the Moscow Helsinki Group was headed by Lyudmila Alexeyeva. Since 2019, Valery Borshchyov, a member of the Yabloko Political Committee , has bee the Co-Chairman of the group.

The Yabloko party spoke in support of the Moscow Helsinki Group, emphasising that the lawsuit of the Ministry of Justice to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group was another step towards turning the Russian state into a dictatorship.

“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,” runs the Yabloko party statement signed by Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov.

“This is the right moment to confess my love and boundless respect to my colleagues on the Yabloko Political Committee, the head of Civic Assistance Committee Svetlana Gannushkina, and the Co-Chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group Valery Borshchyov. The authorities registered Svetlana Alexeyevna as a “foreign agent”, and they “simply” try to close the Moscow Helsinki Group which Valery Borshchyov co-chairs. It won’t work, just as it didn’t work out with the Memorial group. Such people are great political idealists, people of freedom and zealots of our time,” Alexander Gnezdilov, a member of the Yabloko Political Committee, says.

Svetlana Gannushkina

is a member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko Party.

Chairwoman of the Civic Assistance Committee.

Head of the Network “Migration and Law” of the human rights center Memorial