Appeal of Russian human rights organizations: "Dangerous tendencies in the development of the Russian society in view of human rights violations"

On September 26, 2003 a group of Russian human rights activists, including Andrey Babushkin, Svetlana Gannushkina, Lyudmila Grafova, Lev Ponomaryov, Yuri Samodurov, and Ernst Chyorny, promulgated their appeal to the fellow countrymen. Human rights activists declared in their appeal that "a threat to the human rights today is as great as it has never been in all the years that have passed since the beginning of democratic reforms in Russia."

"If the society proves to be inactive in future, the processes that are taking place can become irreversible and threaten the existence of the civil society in Russia," reads the appeal.

The human rights defenders pointed out that "the increasing pressure on the mass media, public organizations, and business was added to the despotism of the law-enforcement agencies, bloody war in Chechnya, which existed in Russia before too."

"The suppression of free speech has been seen the most vividly for the last three years. Due to the imperfection of the Russian legislation, an unexampled campaign for the closing of the independent NTV and TVS TV channels was developed. As a result, all independent national television channels were liquidated, and their collectives were splinted."

"The attack against Yukos, which was of a candidly ordered nature, provoked deep resonance in the world as it clearly displayed an underlying political reason of the actions of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Federal Security Service."

"The big business was demanded to become an obedient element of the total political technology. Whatever economic and political costs do not stop those who are straining with abominable cynicism at the absolute power over the civil society. Again one can not count the breaches of law from the direction of law-enforcement agencies. We consider the policy of human rights violation can continue with a growing force if the authorities refuse to respond to so explicit and rough breaches of human rights."