Posted on 07/30/2009 11:16:28 AM PDT by Cheap_Hessian
Russia's new president is trying to show the world a more liberal face, but the body count of murdered human rights activists keeps rising. Being a political critic in Russia is getting more dangerous by the day, and now one prominent human rights organization in Chechnya has decided to close its office.
Yet another Russian human rights activist has been silenced in yet another brutal attack. This week unknown gunmen shot anti-corruption activist Albert Pchelintsev in the mouth with rubber bullets, in front of his apartment in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. The 38 year old was seriously wounded in the lower face and jaw but survived the attack.
Pchelintsev is the chairman of a regional movement against corruption. During the past year he helped open a community office where citizens could report and document cases of corruption. As a result of this and other work, the activist had recently been threatened: If he didn't stop his work, he would not be able to speak out again, he was warned.
This is the third attack on Russian human rights activists to come to international attention over the past two weeks. In the middle of July, journalist and activist Natalya Estemirova, who was working in Chechnya, was abducted and shot. Shortly afterwards the body of Andrei Kulagin, from the organization Justice, was found in a sand quarry near the city of Petrozavodsk, in northern Russia. Kulagin was an advocate for the humane treatment of prisoners and his disappearance in mid-May was sudden.
Estemirova's murder, in particular, drew a lot of international attention -- mainly because the member of prominent human rights group, Memorial had been documenting abductions and murders in the former Chechnyan war zone.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Killing dissenters is what communists do. I expect they will try it in America sooner or later.
You can bet on it once Obama arms his ACORN truth squads. I wonder if he'' call them his A-teams? Vans full of Mr. T's speeding through the streets responding to a call reporting a location for a white dissenter.
Figures somebody would beat me to it.
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