Press Release, 14.12.2016

YABLOKO Chair Emilia Slabunova asks Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to take action of prosecutorial response in connection with the situation on the Valaam Island, Karelia. The state unlawfully transferred to the church a building with residential apartments, virtually depriving people of their lodgings. An initiative group of residents applied to YABLOKO for help.

The building of The Winter Hotel – a residential building with 55 flats – was transferred by the state to ownership of the Holy-Transfiguration Valaam Monastery in 2006. At that moment 122 people, including 33 juvenile and minors, were renting flats from the state in the building.

Video. The initiative group of residents tells about the situation on Valaam.

In violation of the law of the residents were not offered other comfortable housing their eviction from the flats. The residents learned about their forced eviction only from notices from the judiciary. No proposals for alternative accommodation were made to them, neither did they give their consent to voluntary resettlement (or their refusal) to anyone.

Virtually, the state deprived them of the place of residence without offering any other lodgings in return.

The residents appealed to various control, supervisory and law enforcement bodies, but it brought no results.

“I am asking you to take the action of prosecutorial response on the facts stated in the complaint and prevent violations of the rights and freedoms guaranteed to citizens by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and other regulatory legal acts,” runs the letter by Emilia Slabunova.