The Russian police have opened criminal cases in connection with the activities of a volunteer expedition of the Perm Memorial, “Rivers of Memory.”
The expedition took place from August 5 to 11 of this year in the Kudymkarsky District of Perm Krai (RF). Its participants came to the village of Galyashor to tidy up a cemetery of Lithuanian and Polish special settlers, and also to install memorial signs in the village of Velva-Baza and in the nearby village of Sharvol on August 9.
The memorial sign (a cross with an informational plaque) in Velva-Baza could not be installed—a representative of the local administration cited the lack of permission from the head of the district.
On the evening of August 10, police officers came to Galyashor and interrogated the expedition participants until two o’clock in the morning.
“They are threatening a criminal case, supposedly for illegal logging. Although we didn’t cut down any forest,” said Aleksandr Chernyshov from the Perm Memorial.
On August 11, the police came again and questioned the Lithuanian participants of the expedition. The Lithuanian initiative group has appealed to the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the RF.
On August 13, the Perm Memorial reported that officers of the MVD for Perm Krai had opened a criminal case under the article on illegal logging of forest plantations. According to the head of the Perm branch of “Memorial,” Robert Latypov, there were indeed a few stumps there, but they “were clearly cut down a long time ago, and an employee of the Ministry of Forestry confirmed this.” There are no defendants in the case yet.
On August 14, a resident of Velva-Baza, Leonid Ladanov, was summoned to the police—officers have opened a criminal case against him under the article “fictitious registration of foreign citizens.”
“The fact is that Leonid Ladanov registered foreign citizens at his house in the village. And part of the expedition—the Russians—spent the night in the neighboring house of his mother. As it turned out, our law considers this a violation sufficient to open a case,” R. Latypov told the publication “Kommersant.”
The head of the Perm Memorial denies any violation of the law during the expedition.
The Commissioner for Human Rights in Perm Krai, Pavel Mikov, has sent an inquiry to the Main Directorate of the MVD and the regional prosecutor’s office. He intends to find out on what grounds the expedition participants were interrogated.
“Work to perpetuate the memory of victims of political repression cannot be criminally punishable. This needs to be sorted out,” stated P. Mikov.
Reference. “Rivers of Memory” is an annual traditional program of the Youth Memorial, conducted in the form of short-term local history research expeditions in Perm Krai. The main tasks of these expeditions are to collect materials on the history of political repressions of the Soviet period, primarily in the form of recording the “oral history” of the repressed, visiting the sites of former special settlements and GULAG camps, and installing memorial signs there. Since 2000, the Youth Memorial has carried out about forty such volunteer expeditions.
Based on materials from the International Memorial, the Perm Memorial, and the publication “Kommersant”