Upon the initiative of the human rights’ organization „Memorial“, the political parties „Yabloko“, „Right Alliance“ and the „Republican Party of Russia“ a commemoration meeting is going to be held on October 30th, 2005, at 12 o’clock noontime, in front of the memorial stone of the victims of political reprisals at the Krasnoyarsk Center of Culture and History.
As per official information more than 25 million Russians became victims of political reprisals. Hundreds of thousands of victims of political reprisals served their sentences in our region.
This memorable day is being celebrated in our country as the Day of political prisoners since 1974. Until 1991 it was considered to be illegal.
Since 1991, upon the decision of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the 30th of October is celebrated as Commemoration Day of the victims of political reprisals.
Apart from this, in Krasnoyarsk, as well as all over the Krasnoyarsk region, various events will be carried out, which are dedicated to this sad day and which many people who live in our region help and participate in.
City of Krasnoyarsk
The representatives of the social, human rights and sociopolitical organizations, as well as the participants of the event, which is dedicated to the commemoration of the victims of political reprisals and which was founded by political prisoners in the USSR in 1974, would like to stress out the following:
Although the practices and policy of the former USSR with regard to political persecutions committed on millions and millions of citizens have meanwhile been acknowledged by our today’s State as crimes, the fact that a criminal regime like that ever existed, was neither confirmed by the government nor was it judged by any official and legally binding decision.
This every now and then leads to attempts of our today’s State and society to rehabilitate the organizers of the mass persecutions (Dzerzhinskiy, Stalin, Andropov, as well as several methods of their repressive policy.
During the past years the active participation of „newcomers“ from the Soviet punitive organs in public administration organizations lead to an intensification of commando methods applied by various authorities on jurisdiction, mass media, human rights’ organizations and society in general.
This is confirmed by the legal proceedings against the scholars Danilov and Sutyagin, who were sentenced to many years of imprisonment during utterly unjust trials. Thus, they were robbed of every possibility to continue their scientific activities for the concrete benefit of our country. Political motives also become manifest in the matter of Khodorkovskiy – Lebedev. Once again political prisoners are appearing in our country.
The historical remembrance of the mass victims of state terror demands joint efforts from all of us to root out every attempt by the state or society to exercise repressive methods against the people in one way or another.
Let us hope to God that we do not lose our capability to remember, in order that we do not have to go through this past once again.
Photos: Sergey Shakhmatov