| 28.2.2005 Elena Bonner calls for new Russian political prisoners to be helped USA. Elena Bonner, the famous figure from the Democratic Movement from the USSR and widow of the dissident Andrei Sakharov, has sharply condemned Amnesty International for refusing to help political detainees in Russia. She suggests starting a new system for supporting Russian prisoners of conscience. In an open letter to the American organisation The Gratitude Fund, Elena Bonner writes that “today a group of figures from Russian science and culture have published a letter appealing to international human rights organisations, above all AI, to recognise Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a political prisoner. “In December last year the All-Russia Civil Congress had a resolution on this very matter. Even before this, several Russian human rights organisations appealed to AI, as did other human rights activists including myself. However, there was no reply other than a promise to follow the court case. “During the Soviet era this organisation trusted in us. However, we have not changed, nor have the bulk of Amnesty members, but the organisation’s leadership has. Other people have entered the leadership. Recently my puzzled question as to what was going on in the organisation was answered by an American politician (who asked not to be named): The current General Secretary of this organization (from a family of diplomats and herself once one) hopes to become the first female Secretary General of the UN. And to achieve this she does not need to complicate relations with the Russian authorities. But Amnesty International is not a political organization, but a human rights one, departing from its mission once summed up by three slogans: Freedom to prisoners of conscience!; Abolish the death sentence!; No to torture! “So we probably have to abandon our hopes in Amnesty not only in the case of Khodorkovsky and others accused in the Yukos affair, but in other court cases too. One trusts one’s own choice. And proceeding from this to think about organised regular assistance to the families of today’s prisoners of conscience. “In 1998 The Gratitude Fund was founded and registered in the USA. Its mission is to help the veterans in the battle for human rights in the former Soviet Union, and their families…this fund could take, if the directors take the corresponding decision, trusteeship over the new political prisoners.” Elena Bonner considers it an important advantage that the fund does not have any paid employees, for whose wages a significant part of other organisations’ donations are used. “For the families of political prisoners we used to scrape together money”, Elena Bonner writes in her letter. “Then, Solzhenitsyn started his fund, then a little later there was a fund to help the children of political detainees. And Amnesty International groups from various countries sponsored our prisoners of conscience and their families. Then we grew weak in just fifteen years. But now there are families waiting for our help: those of Danilov, Sutyagin, Trepashkin and Murtazalieva amongst many others. And the families of the Yukos figures, while not at present requiring financial assistance, also deserve our attention and sympathy. In other words, it is time to gather stones. And if our own Maidan (independence square in Kiev) be denied us, we can make ready our computers… as once when “Erika took four copies”. (Reference to dissident song by singer Alexander Galich). PRIMA News Agency [2005-02-23-USA-20] http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/news/2005/2/28/31325.html |