UN expert urges release of jailed Russian vote monitor

The United Nations expert on rights in Russia on Thursday condemned the prison sentence handed down to a high-profile election monitor and called for his immediate release.

Russia last week sentenced Grigory Melkonyants to five years in jail, part of an intensifying crackdown by the Kremlin against independent critics and opponents.

Melkonyants, 44, is the co-chair of the Russian vote-monitoring NGO Golos, which records alleged fraud in Russian elections.

"This sentence is a grave miscarriage of justice and a blatant attempt to silence one of Russia's critical voices for electoral transparency," said Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Russia.

"It is yet another example of the severe clampdown on civil society by Russian authorities in the past three years, since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022," she said.

"The charges are politically motivated and based on legally dubious grounds, including misrepresented evidence and disregard for the defendant's rights."

Melkonyants was arrested in August 2023.

Prosecutors accused him of working with a European election monitoring association -- the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations -- outlawed as an "undesirable organisation" in Russia.

Golos runs an online interactive map with reports of election violations in national and regional ballots across Russia.

Independent observers have long denounced Russian votes as neither free nor fair.

International and domestic observers have for years reported widespread ballot stuffing and voter coercion.

"Melkonyants is being punished not for a crime but for his steadfast commitment to human rights and safeguarding the principle of free and fair elections in Russia," said Katzarova.

"Melkonyants must be released immediately with all charges against him dropped. The repressive laws under which he has been targeted must be repealed."

UN special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council to report their findings. They do not, therefore, speak for the United Nations itself.

Katzarova has addressed the Russian government on Melkonyants' case.