Kostyushko Ploshchad 3
390000 Ryazan
Russia
Tel: (0912) 77-5-117, 75-40-20
Tel/fax: (0912) 75-53-70
E-mail: [email protected]
URL: http://www.ngo.ryazan.ru/ngo/memorial/mem-r.htm
Contact: Andrey Blinushov, Chairman of the Department

Sponsors Ryazan On-line, dedicated to local NGOs: http://www.ngo.ryazan.ru/

Memorial’s main goals are threefold: to expose information about political and civil human rights abuses in the past and analzye their consequences in the present; to uncover and report current violations of political and civil human rights; and to introduce constructive proposals in government aimed at overcoming the totalitarian legacy and creating guarantees against its restoration. Like the original office in Moscow, the Ryazan regional department of the Historical, Educational, and Charitable Society “Memorial" studies the repressive policies of the former Soviet Union and works to defend human rights in the present. Founded in 1989, the Ryazan branch of Memorial was one of the first NGOs created in the Ryazan region.

Memorial-Ryazan operates a wide array of projects dealing with human rights issues. It has created an “Index of the Repressed,” an Informational Center, and a Gulag Map. Beginning in 1995, three Ryazan-Memorial members served as experts on the Russian Human Rights Commission presided over by Sergei Kovalyov. Members of the organization accompanied seven of Sergei Kovalyov’s expeditions into the conflict zones in Chechnya. In April Memorial-Ryazan exposed to the world the atrocities committed by the MVD troops in the Chechnya village Samshky. The organization has restored the cemetery of the NKVD camp 178-454, where Poles, Germans, Italians, Romanians, and Russians are buried. Ryazan-Memorial organizes and carries out regular delivery of humanitarian aid to former political prisoners.

At present, Memorial is focusing on defending human rights, citizen education, and charitable activities. In the next two years, the Ryazan branch plans to erect memorials at some of the camp cemeteries in Ryazan, to continue its work in Chechnya, to publish a bulletin (Man Has Rights), to prepare public education materials on its work for the Ryazan region, and to create a computer database about repressed people in Ryazan. In collaboration with other NGOs, Ryazan-Memorial plans to teach about human rights issues in secondary schools, and also to create a public center, “Open Society/Ryazan.” With local and foreign organizations, it plans to design a project to teach antiwar movement activists methods of information gathering, mediation and negotiation.

In the last seven years, Ryazan-Memorial’s sponsors have included: “Decor” LTD; “ROKS” LTD; Polish Republic Ministry of Culture and Art; German Public Union for Tending Over War Victim’s Graves; Polish Council for Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Memorials; Small Grant Program of Russian-American Project Group for Human Rights and Ford Foundation; Open Society Institute-Moscow; and the Eurasia Foundation.

Ryazan-Memorial welcomes volunteers with backgrounds in legal analysis and citizen education.

The NIS Third Sector Organization section is based on information found in the print edition of "The Post-Soviet Handbook." For more information on the Handbook and instructions on how to order, see our Post Soviet Handbook Information page.

Sponsored by:
Center for Civil Society International
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