Lida Yusupova

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Lida Yusupova (b. 15 September 1961) (Лидия Юсупова) is the coordinator of the small Grozny office of the Moscow-based human rights organization Memorial. She gathers testimony from victims of human rights abuses, and presses their cases with law enforcement and military agencies. Not only does she, to the extent possible, provide the victims with legal assistance, but she also informs the rest of the world on violations of human rights, committed by Russian armed forces and Chechen rebels alike.

For her courageous work, she was awarded the 2005 Professor Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize and the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2004.

[edit] Quotes

"Mass-scale human-rights violations and state-level terror still are the order of the day...Everyone now is endangered, not only those who live in Chechnya, but those who live in Russia as well... Society will respond. Some counterweight to this lunacy must emerge, be it in the shape of a new dissident movement, or other forms we don't yet discern. The authorities will as inevitably seek to suppress this movement cruelly and brutally. But suppression will only promote its growth, all the fears notwithstanding." [1]