Searches in «Golos» — a Statement of the Human Rights Council

Searches are being carried out at our colleagues' — human rights activists from "Golos" organization for protection of voters' rights. They are held in a deliberately barbaric way: at 7 o'clock in the morning with the excuse of a water leak the apartment of Grigory Melkonyants, the Executive Director of "Golos" organization, is broken into. Then searches were carried out at Tatiana Troinova's, the Executive Director of the Interregional public Foundation "Golos" and Roman Udot, a member of the "Golos" movement.

Searches are being carried out at our colleagues' — human rights activists from "Golos" organization for protection of voters' rights. They are held in a deliberately barbaric way: at 7 o'clock in the morning with the excuse of a water leak the apartment of Grigory Melkonyants, the Executive Director of "Golos" organization, is broken into. Then searches were carried out at Tatiana Troinova's, the Executive Director of the Interregional public Foundation "Golos" and Roman Udot, a member of the "Golos" movement.

At the same time searches started in the Moscow office of the organization. The excuse for searches is a case of tax evasion by one of the members of the organization in Samara.

The case should be dismissed under the amnesty, however, it is used to apply pressure. The searches are held with confiscating computers and documentation. They are clearly intended to derail drafting of a new "Map of violations" before the round of regional elections, which involve representatives of the democratic coalition. It is since 2011 that "Golos" has been arising the anger of the authorities which can't forgive revelations of flagrant violations in the Duma elections.

We consider the actions against "Golos" as a desire to hide the impending large-scale fraud, an example of which was the "bloody election" in Balashikha. We express our solidarity with our persecuted colleagues.

We are convinced that the persecution of "Golos" are clearly politicized. These events cannot be explained in any other way except as preparation of the authorities to violations of both the rights of voters and the opposition electoral associations and candidates.

07 July 2015

L. M. Alexeeva

Vladimir Borschev

Y. I. Vdovin

S. A. Gannushkina

S. A. Kovalev

L. A. Ponomarev

L. V. Shibanova