Aleksandr Peredruk
Aleksandr Peredruk is a human rights lawyer from Saint Petersburg. He works for the Moscow Helsinki Group, one of Russia’s leading organisations monitoring human rights abuses in the country. He is also a member of the organisation Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg which provides free legal and social assistance to conscripts, soldiers and those undertaking alternative civil service, as well as their family members. Further, the human rights defender is involved in Apologia of Protest, a project defending the right to peaceful protest in Russia.
The environment for the work of human rights defenders (HRDs) in the Russian Federation is difficult, especially for those who defend and promote the rights of LGBTI people, ethnic and religious minorities, refugees, as well as activists of the North Caucasus and the unlawfully annexed Crimean Peninsula. HRDs are often subjected to acts of harassment, surveillance, physical attacks, threat, raids and searches on their offices and homes, slander and smear campaigns, judicial harassment, arbitrary detention, and ill-treatment, as well as violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. There have also been cases where HRDs have been murdered as a result of their work.
