A Russian anti-corruption activist has been attacked by a group of men who shot him in the mouth with a stun gun. Albert Pchelintsev is the head of “Against Corruption, Lies and Dishonour,” a group which investigates corruption by officials working in the local government of Khimki. According to colleagues, Pchelintsev has repeatedly received threatening phone calls with promises to “have his tongue cut off” and “his mouth gagged”. Read more here
Andrei Kulagin, a Russian human rights activist, has been found dead in a quarry on the outskirst of Petrozavodsk more than two months after he went missing. Kulagin was the branch head of the rights organisation Spravedlivost (Justice) in Karelia, 600 miles north of Moscow. He was last seen alive on 14 May. “There is no doubt that he was murdered,” said the orgnaisations director.
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The Kremlin have passed a decree allowing security services, including the FSB, Foreign Intelligence service, police and customs to obtain information from reading people’s mail without a warrant. Lev Ponomaryov, a leading human rights activist said to move showed the return of a “totalitarian regime”. Read more here
On 16 July in Grozny, the Chechen capital, a crowd of mourners, mostly women, following a minivan containing the body of murdered human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was dispersed by police.
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