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On February 6, 2008 New York University School of Law welcomed Lev Ponomarev, a former member of Parliament and Executive Director of the All-Russian Movement for Human Right to give a lecture to an audience of distinguished guests, NYU faculty, international fellows, scholars and students of NYU, amongst others.
Lecture Presentation
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Lev Ponomarev
All-Russian Movement for Human Rights, Executive Director
Lev Ponomarev is one of Russias leading human rights advocates, currently serving as executive director of the All-Russian Movement for Human Rights as well as on the executive committee of Russias most important pro-democracy movement, A Different Russia. In September 2006, he was detained by the Russian authorities for his participation in a peaceful pro democracy rally and was released only after Amnesty International officially recognized him to be a prisoner of conscience.
Ponomarev first became actively involved in Russias incipient human rights movement in 1988, when he co-founded Memorial, the All-Russia society for the perpetuation of the memory of victims of political repression. In 1989, he served as a trusted aide to Andrei Sakharov during elections for Peoples Deputies of the USSR and was a founder of Democratic Russia, the first pro democracy political movement to openly challenge the Communist Party since the consolidation of the Russian Revolution 60 years before.
Ponomarev was twice elected to Russian parliaments; in 1990, to the Supreme Soviet and in 1991 to the State Duma. From 1990-1995 he headed an official government commission which investigated the failed coup detat of 1991. In 1997, Ponomarev founded the human rights group Hot Line as well as the All-Russia Movement For Human Rights, which he continues to head.
Ponomarev was also the founder, and remains one of the most active members, of the Common Action initiative group, which unites high-profile representatives of the Russian human rights community. In January 2001, he was one of the main organizers of the All-Russia Emergency Congress for the Defence of Human Rights, as well as the Russian National Committee For an end to the war and establishing peace in the Chechen Republic.
In 2006, Ponomarev became one of the leaders (Deputy Chairman of the Management Board) of the Foundation In Defense of the Rights of Prisoners, which brings together key Russian human rights groups active in the area of prisoners rights. Through the Foundation, Ponomarev has organized several public hearings into major incidents of prisoner abuse in Russias correctional system. More recently, he generated the idea for and helped organize a new International Committee in Support of Russian Political Prisoners.
Ponomarev also worked with Anna Politkovskaya to initiate and organize public investigations into the most egregious violations of human rights in recent years, including police battery of hundreds of peaceful civilians in Blagoveschensk, the Republic of Bashkortostan (December 2004); manhandling of inmates at a penitentiary facility in Lgov, Kursk region (June-July 2005); the shooting of participants in a peaceful rally in the Doguzparinsky District, Republic of Daghestan (April 2006); and the use of force to disperse peaceful demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg (April 14-15, 2007)
In 2007, alongside Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov, Ponomarev joined the executive committee of the coalition A Different Russia. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper For Human Rights and of the magazine Bulletin of the Foundation in Defense of the Rights of Prisoners.
Lev Ponomarev was born on September 2, 1941 in Tomsk. He earned a Ph.D. in physics from the Moscow Physics and Technology Institute in 1965. Prior to his election to the Russian parliament in 1990, he was a research fellow at the Moscow Institute of Theoretical Physics.