International forum in memory of Anna Politkovskaya disrupted in Nizhni Novgorod

The international forum in memory of Anna Politkovskaya, an observer of the "Novaya Gazeta," which was to start today, has been disrupted.

Survivors of terrorist attacks in Moscow and Beslan and representatives of international human rights organizations - "International Organization for Fighting Torture" (Switzerland), Amnesty International (Great Britain), "League for Human Rights" (Spain), as well as American Human Rights First and the "National Foundation in Support of Democracy" were planning to participate in the conference.

Holding of the forum was disrupted because the Nizhniy Novgorod Branch of the VTB-24 Bank refused to work with the organizers of the action from the "Nizhniy Novgorod Foundation in Support of Tolerance" (NNFST).

Georgiy Grechin, Manager of the VTB-24 Branch in Nizhni Novgorod, has stated that the actions of the Bank were caused by instructive documents, materials of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the legislation of the Russian Federation. Oksana Chelysheva, an activist of the Nizhni Novgorod Branch of "The Other Russia" who works for the NNFST, has told the "Kommersant" newspaper that human rights activists were told at the Bank that their organization was in the "black list" of the "Rosfinmonitoring" (Russian Committee for Financial Monitoring); therefore, the credit organizations were not recommended to cooperate with it.

Human rights activists believe that the authorities are behind the attack on them. They have reminded that a criminal case can be initiated against human rights activist Stanislav Dmitrievskiy, one of the advisors of the Foundation, accused of using non-licensed software.

Nevertheless, some foreign participants were not confused by these obstacles and stated that they would come to Nizhni Novgorod all the same to honour the memory of Anna Politkovskaya.

However, yesterday the administration of the "Oktiabrskaya" Hotel cancelled the booking of hotel rooms because "the rooms were flooded."