“Absolutely peaceful person”: human rights activists shocked by the arrest of lawyer Melkonyants

Placed in a pre-trial detention center one of the best specialists in electoral law in Russia

On the evening of Friday, August 18, the human rights and expert community tried to “digest” the news about the detention of one of the best, if not the best specialist in electoral law in Russia, Grigory Melkonyants. He is charged with the fact that he … took part in the Round Table of the Central Election Commission a year ago. This, alas, is not a joke. According to the investigation, the Golos movement, created at one time with the participation of Melkonyants (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation and not existing since 2021), had a connection with an organization whose activities, in turn, were recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation.

To begin with, about Melkonyants. Over the past 20 years, he has been organizing an independent election monitoring system in Russia. At the same time, he did not just cooperate with the authorities, he did everything so that the country could be proud of its electoral system.

“He helped the Human Rights Council, he helped the CEC,” says Mikhail Fedotov, ex-head of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights. – And in itself he is a completely peaceful and absolutely law-abiding person. Absolutely not an extremist, not an accomplice of an undesirable organization. He is an expert of what little and a real patriot.

Melkonyants was included in government work as a public figure. He was a member of the expert council under the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, a member of the expert group of public observers under the CEC of Russia. And now he is a member of the Scientific and Expert Council under the Central Election Commission. He constantly spoke at all-Russian civil forums and other discussion platforms. Several times (in 2016 and 2018) he received gratitude from the Chairman of the Central Election Commission for active assistance and significant assistance in organizing and conducting election campaigns in the Russian Federation. Since 2013, he has been the co-chairman of the movement for the protection of voters’ rights “Voice”, which was recognized as a foreign agent, but by no means an extremist or undesirable organization. And in 2021, the Prosecutor General’s Office declared the activities of the European Network of Election Observation Organizations, in which Golos suspended membership, to be undesirable. And when a year ago Grigory acted as an invited expert at a round table at the Central Election Commission, spoke about electronic elections, he, according to investigators, represented the interests of this undesirable organization. Sounds, you know, wild. The most peaceful person, as human rights activists say, is hard to even imagine. He couldn’t even raise his voice.

Nevertheless, he was charged under the article “Carrying out the activities of a non-governmental organization, in respect of which a decision was made to recognize it as undesirable” (part 3 of article 284.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). CEC Chairman Ella Pamfilova reacted to the criminal case with the words: “I really want to hope that they will sort it out objectively. Because his often professional criticism sometimes helped us a lot.”