Press Release, July 17, 2009

A rally in memory of slain human rights activist Natalya Estemirova took place in Novopuskinskii Skver in Moscow. The participants held Natalya Estemirova portraits and placards demanding to find and punish those guilty of her murder.

The participants of the rally lit candles and put flowers by Natalya’s portrait.

Renown human rights activists, journalists and public figures participated in the rally. YABLOKO’s leader Sergei Mitrokhin also came to pay tribute to the memory of Natalya.

In its statement the YABLOKO party called the murder of Natalya Estemirova a “direct consequence of governmental policies in the Northern Caucasus and in Russia in general”.
“These policies are reduced to imitation instead of real work and active resentment of those who in contrary to the policies of the authorities have had the courage to open the truth. Such imitation is seen in the statements and television broadcasts on normalisation of the situation in Chechnya”, runs the document.

YABLOKO members expressed their readiness to do everything they can “to make the authorities to open the truth on the murders of human rights activists and to punish those who ordered, organized and implemented these crimes”. YABLOKO is certain that “we can qualitatively change the situation only by means of fundamentally changing the Russian state and its attitude to its people”.

Natalya Estemirova, member of the Memorial Society and winner of many prizes for protection of human rights, was kidnapped by her house in Grozni. She was seized by several people, bundled into a white Zhiguli car and driven off in an unknown direction. In the evening her body was discovered with two bullet wounds in Nazran, Ingushetia.