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On the night of 18 November, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee announced via Twitter the dramatic news from HR Center Memorial that one of their employees, Russian citizen Bakhrom Khamroev, had been arrested by the Kyrgyz security services, and later that he had been deported to Moscow.

Dmitry Medvedev met with members of the presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights for the second time during the year. The president said that following the results of the first meeting held in April. Representatives of civil society hope their meeting with the president will be as effective as the previous one.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), has received new information and requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in the Russian Federation.

The Human Rights Committee voiced its concern at the alarming incidence of threats, violent assaults and murders of journalists and human rights defenders in the Russian Federation, in their concluding remarks of the review of the Russian Federation, which were issued on 28 October 2009.

Two of Russia’s most prominent human rights organizations’ work have been thrown into jeopardy by municipal efforts to evict them from their offices.

43-year-old scion of a wealthy, politically influential family and a long-time oppositional figure in the republic of Ingushetia, was recently killed when his car was strafed with gunfire, as he drove along a federal highway, adding another name to the list of activists, who have been killed lately in the Northern Caucasus.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) express their profound concern about the killing of Mr. Maksharip Aushev, a well-known activist from Ingushetia, on
25 October 2009, in the neighbouring Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.

ARTICLE 19 is shocked at the killing of Maksharip Aushev, a well-known activist from Ingushetia. Aushev was killed on 25 October in Kabardino-Balkaria, a neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, when his car came under fire from another passing vehicle. Aushev’s cousin, who was travelling with him, was badly injured in the attack.

The European Parliament’s 2009 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought has been awarded to Russian civil rights defence organization Memorial, and their three representatives Oleg Orlov, Sergei Kovalev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, as well as all other human rights defenders in the Russian Federation.