European leaders should use the upcoming EU-Russia summit to convey alarm over deteriorating human rights in Russia and to press for concrete improvements. The summit is scheduled for November 18 and 19, 2009, in Stockholm.

Russian authorities should immediately drop criminal libel charges against Oleg Orlov, the prominent activist who heads Memorial Human Rights Center. The charges stem from Orlov’s statement that Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, was responsible for the murder of Natalia Estemirova, Memorial’s leading researcher in Chechnya.

We believe the deterioration in human rights protections in Russia has reached a critical point that the EU needs to reflect as it assesses Russia’s commitment to the shared values articulated in the EU-Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, currently being renegotiated. The recent spate of murders of human rights defenders and other violations detailed in this memo are unprecedented even in the recent years of Russia’s deteriorating human rights record. They need to be fully factored into a sober assessment of how the EU can formulate its engagement with Russia in a manner consistent with EU values and of how the EU can use the human rights consultations and other engagement with Russia to promote positive change.

In Copenhagen this month, Human Rights Watch presented its proposal for institutional reform to monitor host countries' compliance with international human rights norms. We also believe that the IOC should make host city contracts public.

Human Rights Watch has serious concerns about the safety and well-being of Rashid Abdullaevich Gasanov; Magomed Ilyasovich Sheihov; and Sirazhudin Minatulaevich Shafiev. Our organization has documented several instances in which people subject to unlawful detentions in Dagestan are in grave danger of torture, ill-treatment, and extrajudicial execution.

The European Parliament has awarded its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Memorial, a leading Russian human rights organization and to the prominent human rights activists Ludmilla Alekseeva, Sergei Kovalev, and Oleg Orlov, and other Russian human rights defenders.

(New York, October 9, 2009) – The award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama should encourage him to apply his stated principles to both foreign and domestic human rights policy.