AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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AAAS Human Rights Action Network

FACTS OF THE CASE:

Alexandr Nikitin, a Russian engineer working for the Norwegian ecological foundation Bellona, remains under investigation and will be put on trial for treason and espionage. He faces the threat of the death penalty, and his passport has been confiscated. He is not permitted to leave St. Petersburg.

Nikitin was arrested on 6 February 1996 and held for ten days as part of what has been referred to as a "Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) offensive against the environmental movement." His arrest is based on secret decrees to which he is not allowed access and stems from his work for the Bellona Foundation. The FSB claims that the report Nikitin helped write, regarding the poor condition of nuclear facilities on the Kola peninsula, forty-five kilometers from the Norwegian border, contains state secrets, but Nikitin and Bellona maintain that the report contains nothing but information already published in the mass media. Ironically, the King of Norway was in Russia recently to sign an agreement to clean up the radioactive waste disposal sites that Nikitin had originally brought to the attention of the Bellona Foundation.

Vice President Al Gore had previously negotiated an agreement on Nikitin's behalf with the former Russian prime minister. However, with the appointment of Sergey Kiriynko to prime minister, everything concerning Nikitin's case must now be renegotiated.

The report, entitled "The Russian North Fleet - Sources of Radioactive Contamination," that led to Nikitin's arrest was released on 18 April 1996. FSB agents have searched the Bellona office in Murmansk on several occasions, and other environmentalists working for Bellona reportedly continue to be harassed and threatened with imprisonment. The report remains banned in Russia.

The arrest of Alexandr Nikitin is in violation of Article 42 of the Russian Constitution, which prohibits secrecy in matters that may constitute hazards towards the environment or the health of human beings. In addition, it is contrary to human rights provisions enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the Russian Federation is a state party. They include:

Under the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

• Everyone has the right to liberty and security of the person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention . . . (Article 9); and
• Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers . . . (Article 19).

Under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile (Article 9);
• Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his own country (Article 13, 2); and
• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression . . . (Article 19).

(Sources of information for this update were provided by The St. Petersburg Times, Tuesday, May 26, 1998, and the American Chemical Society. Other sources of information include the Moscow Human Rights Research Center; The Bellona Foundation, Web site: http: www.Grida.No/ngo/bellona/nikitin.htm; and The Toronto Star, Tuesday, December 17, 1996.)

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Please send telexes, telegrams, faxes, or airmail letters:

• requesting that the charges against Alexandr Nikitin be dropped immediately and unconditionally on the grounds that they stem solely from the legitimate scientific work that he was conducting for the Bellona Foundation;
• calling on the Russian authorities to provide a full and detailed explanation of the charges against Nikitin; and
• indicating that actions against environmental research can only make the environmental cleanup of Russia more difficult.

APPEAL AND INQUIRY MESSAGES SHOULD BE SENT TO:

Mr. Yuriy Skuratov
Procurator General of Russia
Procuratura Rossiyskoy Federatsii
15 a Yl. Dimitrovka
103793 MOSCOW
Russia


Academician Ashot Ar. Sarkissov
Russian Academy of Sciences
Department of Physical and Technical Problems of Energetic
32a, Leninsky ave., V-71, Moscow, GSP - 1, 117993
Russia
President of the Russian Academy of Science
Russian Academy of Science
52, B. Tul'skaya, Moscow, 113191
Russia


Sergey V. Kiriynko
Prime Minister of Russia
Krasnopresnenskaya naberezhnaya, 2 ( the White House of Russia), 103274
Moscow
Russia


Boris Y. Nemtsov
Vice President of the Russian Federation and Head of Interagency Commission on State Secrets
Krasnopresnenskaya naberezhnaya, 2 (the White House of Russia) , 103274,
Moscow
Russia


President Boris Yeltsin
Kreml, 103132, Moscow
Russia


Yumashev B. Valentin
Head of Presidential Administration
Kreml, 103132, Moscow
Russia


The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20006


The Honorable Albert Gore
Vice President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20006


The Honorable Madeleine Albright
Secretary of State
Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20520


The Honorable John Shattuck
Assistant Secretary of State
Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20520

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