RIC 'Memorial', St Petersburg

[Sarah J Young]

Dear Colleagues, 

I am forwarding a letter from a UK graduate student concerning the
very worrying news of yesterday's raid on the St Petersburg Research
and Information Centre 'Memorial'.  
I also have copies of the search protocol and letter, if anybody
would like to see them.
best wishes,

Sarah

Dr Sarah Young
Lecturer in Russian
SSEES, UCL
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
s.young at ssees.ucl.ac.uk  


---------------------------- Original Message
----------------------------
Subject: RIC Memorial, St Petersburg
From:    "Josephine Vonzitzewitz"
<josephine.vonzitzewitz at SJC.OX.AC.UK>
Date:    Fri, December 5, 2008 11:07 am
To:      BASEES-COMMITTEE at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Dear colleagues, 

I'm sure some of you have heard the news about people from the St
Petersburg prokuratura forcing their way into the office of the
Research and Information Centre "Memorial" yesterday, searching the
premises, intimidating staff, denying the organisation's lawyer
access and confiscating hard drives, CD-discs, documents etc under
the pretext of investigating a case of alleged "extremism" in an
obscure newspaper article published one and a half years ago.
"Memorial" has never had any links to the newspaper in question,
"Novyi Peterburg".

The search was timed to coincide with the absence of the director,
Irina Flige. The confiscated hard drives contain, among other things,
databases with informations on thousands of Leningrad victims of
repression under Stalin and the entire collection of data for the
"Virtual Gulag Museum" (www.gulagmuseum.org). The loss of this data
would be catastrophic, not just for the organisation itself, but also
for generations of researchers into this subject matter, Russian and
foreign. 

I am deeply concerned about this development, not least because I
have been working with "Memorial" since 2003 and am very involved
with the "Virtual Gulag Museum". The people whose work has been
undermined in this way are close friends of mine.   

Irina Flige has sent me copies of the search protocol - which the
secretary of "Memmorial" refused to sign as she had not been allowed
to compile a list of the information that was taken away. I am also
attaching the letter that was sent to the Russian human rights
ombudsman (file no 18), who is, it seems, currently looking into the
matter. Further information, including a copy of the search warrant,
which the man commanding the action seems to have issued to himself,
and a link to the newspaper article in question can be found on 
http://lev-k.livejournal.com/16140.html?mode=reply 
Lev Krylenkov is Irina Flige's son-in-law and IT man at "Memorial".
Information has also been posted on hro.org and polit.ru

Feel free to circulate this information. It might be worth to write a
petition similar to the ones written when the European University was
threatened with closure. I'd be grateful for ideas. 

Best wishes, 

Josie von Zitzewitz

University of Oxford

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