Posthumous Polish honour for prominent Russian rights activist
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
11.12.2018 13:13
Polish President Andrzej Duda has posthumously awarded Russia’s most famous human rights activist with the Order of Merit, an official has said.
Mourning ceremony for Lyudmila Alexeyeva at the Moscow Journalist House on Tuesday. Photo: EPA/YURI KOCHETKOV
Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who challenged the Soviet and then the Russian authorities during decades of campaigning for human rights, died on Saturday in Moscow at the age of 91.
Michał Dworczyk, the head of the Polish Prime Minister’s Office, flew out to the Russian capital and was on Tuesday scheduled to take part in ceremonies to bid a final farewell to Alexeyeva.
Dworczyk told public broadcaster Polish Radio: "She was a person who fought for the kind of Russia with which Poland would like to strengthen its relations."
He added: "It was said of her that she was a teacher of generations of people fighting for human rights and for Russia to be a country that respects the lives of its citizens and respectful of its neighbours.”
Alexeyeva was the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights organisation in Russia.
(pk/gs)
Source: IAR