THE KHARKIV HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION GROUP operated as the human rights group of the Kharkiv “Memorial” Society beginning in 1988 and was registered as a separate legal entity in November 1992. Some of its members participated in the human rights movement of the 1960s–80s (Genrikh ALTUNYAN, Yevhen Zakharov, Inna Zakharova, Sofia Karasyk, Vladyslav Nedobora, Volodymyr Ponomaryov, and Iryna Rapp). The KHPG works in three areas: assisting individuals whose rights have been violated and conducting civic investigations into human rights abuses; legal education and promoting human rights ideas through public events and publishing activities; and analyzing the human rights situation in Ukraine (primarily civil rights and freedoms). The KHPG publishes the bulletin “Human Rights” in Ukrainian and English, the bulletin “Civic Education,” the quarterly “Freedom of Expression and Privacy,” and has published a number of books on the state of human rights in modern Ukraine, as well as memoirs, letters, and documents of former political prisoners and human rights defenders (Yu. Poltavtsev, D. Kaminska, M. HORYN, M. KHEYFETS, the SICHKO family, O. MESHKO, V. OVSIYENKO, I. BROVKO, M. VOLYNETS, B. Chichibabin, and others). It has also published a four-volume collection of documents and materials of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and the study “An Outline of the History of the Dissident Movement in Ukraine, 1956–1987” by B. Zakharov, among other works. The KHPG website http://museum.khpg.org features biographical notes, interviews, and memoirs of former political prisoners and human rights defenders, while the website http://khpg.org provides materials on human rights in present-day Ukraine.
On April 1, 2004, the KHPG joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU) on a federated basis, an association that brought together 15 human rights organizations. Seven more organizations joined in 2006.
Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group