Early in the morning of 19 December 2012, police officers from the anti-extremism department and investigators from Moscow began searches at private homes of activists including human rights defender Natalia Zvyagina. The official pretext was the investigation of the case of Sergei Usaltsov, Loenid Razvozzhaev and Konstantin Lebedev who are suspected in plotting mass disorder.

The searches then continued in the office of Solidarnost political movement and later in the Human Rights House Voronezh premises.

The search warrant has been issued for the whole building, not making any difference between various NGOs, commercial organisations and political groups that are located in the building with separate rental agreements. The people conducting the search in the Human Rights House Voronezh refused to identify themselves and to demonstrate search orders. They locked a number of activists in one of the rooms and refused to let an attorney-at-law in. Two private computers, two hard disks and USB-disks were confiscated from one of the offices in the Human Rights House Voronezh, before the unidentified plain-clothed law-enforcement officers left.

The members of Human Rights House-Voronezh include the International Youth Human Rights Movement, a NGO with Council of Europe participatory status, Interregional Human Rights Group, regional representations of Memorial and “Golos”, Civil Initiative “Green Alternative”, Union of Professional Writers, Centre for Civic Initiatives, “Confederation of Free Labour” trade union organizations, Interregional Free Student Union, Lawyers for Labour Rights and other local human rights groups. The building also hosts a public reception office and the regional representation of Transparency International-Russia.

The Human Rights House Voronezh and all its members are respected human rights NGOs regionally, nationally and internationally. The Human Rights House Voronezh is a member of the Human Rights House Network and a close partner of many other international human rights platforms, notably the International Solidarity Platform.

We consider these searches in private homes and in the premises of human rights NGOs as a very concrete intimidation act and harassment of human rights defenders by Russian authorities. This happens after a set of laws was adopted in 2012 which aims at restricting the rights of human rights defenders to carry out their activities. Russian authorities at the same time launched a number of investigations into alleged “mass disorders” on questionable grounds and with many procedural violations.

We therefore call upon Russian authorities to:

  • Stop the harassment of human rights defenders, including the human rights NGOs in Voronezh;
  • Publicly acknowledge that these searches were excessive and unnecessary;
  • Recognise the role in the society, the quality and the professionalism of the work of the searched human rights NGOs and their members, including all members of the Human Rights House Voronezh.
Human Rights House Network


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Human Rights House Voronezh:

The Human Rights House Voronezh is one of the members of the international Human Rights House Network and was formally accepted as member of the Network in October 2012.

The Human Rights House Voronezh and all its members are respected human rights NGOs regionally, nationally and internationally.

Website: http://hrdom.hrworld.ru