12:05, 10 October 2007

President of France meets members of the Human Rights Centre "Memorial"

Today in Moscow, the topics of the meeting of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with the activists of the Human Rights Centre "Memorial" were the freedom of speech and situation with human rights in Northern Caucasus.

"We discussed the issues of the freedom of speech, the status of NGOs and situation on Northern Caucasus, as well as the problem of Russia's historical memory - threat of comeback to Brezhnev's historical concept, which is, in our opinion, linked with the poor situation with human rights," Oleg Orlov, leader of the "Memorial" has told the "Interfax."

According to his story, President Sarkozy has revealed his interest in meeting human rights activists and asked plenty of questions.

Answering the question why Mr Sarkozy has chosen to meet the "Memorial" activists, Mr Orlov said: "Firstly, because his visit organizers wanted, most likely, to choose a small circle of civil society representatives... Besides, we were chosen because last year we were decorated with the French Republic's award for our work on investigating kidnappings in Northern Caucasus."