Today, police came with investigative actions to the office of Perm Memorial and to the home of its head, Robert Latypov. The website of International Memorial reports that the searches are being conducted as part of a criminal case on illegal logging of trees, based on a decision of the Kudymkar City Court dated October 25 of this year, with the aim of finding “tools and objects of the crime that are relevant to the criminal case.”
This concerns a criminal case initiated after the August volunteer expedition “Rivers of Memory,” whose participants intended to clean up the cemetery of Lithuanian and Polish special settlers in the village of Galyashor in the Kudymkar district of Perm Krai, as well as to install memorial signs in the villages of Velva-Baza and Sharvol, located nearby.
In the autumn, Perm Memorial received a notice of a fine of 200,000 rubles, and its head, Robert Latypov, a fine of 50,000 rubles—from the Ministry of Natural Resources of Perm Krai.
The Board of International Memorial issued a statement, published today on its official website. Below is its Ukrainian version.
On October 31, 2019, the day after the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions, police officers came to the office of Perm Memorial and the apartment of its head to conduct a search. According to available information, the search is being conducted as part of a criminal case on illegal logging of trees. Allegedly, these trees were cut down by the Perm Memorial expedition—during the clearing of a cemetery for Polish and Lithuanian special settlers near the former village of Galyashor.
The very pretext for the search is perplexing—what are the police looking for: the felled trees, or perhaps the “tools of the crime”?
But the fact of a criminal case being initiated is both surprising and outrageous. It is worth recalling that last week the Ministry of Natural Resources of Perm Krai issued Perm Memorial a warning and two fines totaling 250,000 rubles. The title of Article 7.9 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, under which the fines were issued, gives the story a particular resonance: “Unauthorized occupation of forest plots.”
Today’s officials cannot come to terms with the fact that the special settlers occupied plots of land for their graves, land on which they found themselves not of their own free will, land on which they never thought they would either live or die.
The criminals, through whose fault these people died far from their native lands, have remained unpunished, and today they persecute those who are trying to atone for the state's guilt before the victims and their relatives.
It is hard to find a civilized country where those who care for the graves of the dead—civilians or soldiers—would be persecuted in such a manner.
We demand an immediate end to the outrageous actions of the Perm security forces and the punishment of those guilty of this mockery of the law and the memory of the victims.
Otherwise, it would be more honest to simply abolish the Concept of the state policy for the commemoration of the memory of victims of political repressions.
