HD Speech by Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament, at the ceremony awarding the 2009 Sakharov Prize to Memorial

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek made the following statement on the detention of 2009 Sakharov Prize Winner Oleg Orlov and some 100 others in Moscow:

"On behalf of the European Parliament I have to express my consternation on hearing of the detention of some 100 people, including Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights Center, and Laureate of the Sakharov Prize 2009. They were arrested during a peaceful demonstration on Triumphalnaya Square, in Moscow on 31 January.

It is the second time since the award of the 2009 Sakharov Prize in Strasbourg in December that one of our laureates has been arrested. On 31 December 2009, 82 year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva faced similar action merely for defending the constitutional right to demonstrate freely and peacefully.

I call on the Russian authorities to cease this heavy-handed treatment of peaceful demonstrators."

Knut Fleckenstein as Chairman of the EP Delegation to the Parliamentary Cooperation Committee EU-Russia associates himself with this statement.

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