From defence to aggression

At Prague Watchdog, Memorial worker Usam Baysayev writes about the Chechen human rights defenders who became supporters of Ramzan Kadyrov.

St Petersburg Memorial office raided by police

HRW reports that the office of the Memorial Research and Information Center in St. Petersburg was raided by masked men armed with batons on the morning of December 4. The raiders cut the phone lines and barred the three staff members present from leaving the office.

The men, who had a warrant signed by the Prosecutor's Office, included police, special forces and members of the investigative committee of the Prosecutor's Office. They conducted a search of the office that lasted more than seven hours and seized the organization's computer hard drives and other materials, including 20 years of archives on Soviet repression and gulags.