Press release, 16.07.2015

The St.Petesburg branch of YABLOKO commemorated the memory of Natalia Estemirova, human rights defender and journalist, who was murdered in Chechnya six years ago. Chair of local YABLOKO branch Mikhail Amosov, deputy Chair Nikolai Rybakov and deputy of St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly Boris Vishnevsky participated in the action.

Activists laid flowers, lit candles, read some articles by Natalya Estemirova aloud and her friends’ memiors.

Six years ago, on July 15, 2009, Natalya Estemirova, human rights activist, journalist and member of the Memorial human rights centre was abducted and murdered in Chechnya.

For many years Estemirova had been writing about abductions and murders of people in Chechnya, she made reports on unlawful actions by the Russian military and Chechen law enforcement, she fought against falsifications of criminal cases, investigated extrajudicial executions and abductions of people in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Natalya Estemirova detected mass-scale and systematic violations of human rights either by or at the negligence of the law enforcement and state bodies of the Chechen Republic and was not only criticized for this, but even received threats.

Estemirova openly stated that President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov was involved in abductions of people. Natalya Estemirova was kidnapped on July 15, 2009. On the same night her corpse was found by the Gazi-Yurt settlement, Ingushetia.

The Investigative Committee under Public Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation filed a criminal case on the murder in accordance with Articles 105 and 222 of the Criminal Code (murder and illegal turnover of weapons and ammunition). The investigation of the murder was taken under special control by then President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, however, the murder case has not been solved yet and those guilty of this crime have not been punished.

The murder of Natalya Estemirova had a broad resonance in the world. The UN experts on human rights addressed the Russian government with a proposal to render assistance in the investigation of the murder, and The Guardian published a letter signed by over 100 renowned public figures from different countries of the world, including the Nobel Prize winners, with the demand to find the murderers of Natalya Estemirova and stop murders of journalists in Russia.

Photographs by Marianna Khanukova