In the Perm region, because of the Memorial expedition, a criminal case was opened for illegal logging

Police officers in the Perm Territory, after the expedition of "Memorial" to the cemetery of the repressed, opened a criminal case on illegal felling of forest plantations (Article 260 of the Criminal Code). This is reported by Novaya Gazeta.

Employees of "Memorial" planned to improve the cemetery of the Lithuanian and Polish repressed in the Kudymkarsky district, as well as to install memorial signs in the village of Velva-Baza.

“Last Saturday, around 2:00 pm, ten people came to our camp: employees of the police, the Ministry of Forestry of the Perm Territory and the migration service. They said that we were cutting wood illegally. Although we didn’t cut down any forest, we just removed the dead wood and mowed the grass at the Galyashora cemetery, ”Novaya quotes Robert Latypov, chairman of the Perm Memorial, as saying.

The human rights activist said in a conversation with Novaya Gazeta that there really were stumps in the cemetery. However, an official from the forestry ministry confirmed that they had been cut down a long time ago. Despite this, the police opened a criminal case on the fact of deforestation. There are no suspects or defendants in the case yet.

• On August 10, the police came to the Memorial employees in the uninhabited village of Galyashor. They interrogated the memorialists until two in the morning, threatening them with a criminal case for deforestation.
• In 2016, Lithuanians already installed a memorial sign at the cemetery of the abandoned village of Galyashor in the Kudymkar region. The head of the district then did not respond to their appeal. Law enforcement agencies regarded the actions of the Lithuanians as a self-seizure of forest fund lands, issuing fines to two residents of the Perm Territory who helped them. After the intervention of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Perm Territory, the fines were canceled, and the monument was legalized.