Committee of Concerned Scientists
We are scientists, physicians, engineers and scholars dedicated to protecting the human rights and scientific freedom of colleagues around the world.
The Committee of Concerned Scientists wrote on behalf of Russian zoologist and environmental activist Suren Gazaryan and geologist Evgeny Vitishenko in May 2012 to protest criminal charges designed to retaliate for environmental inspections. Those charges resulted in a three-year suspended sentence for Dr. Gazaryan. In August 2012, Dr. Gazaryan was charged with attempted murder of a security … continue reading >>
Following up on its letter of 2010, CCS wrote to President Putin protesting the due process followed when Professors Svyatoslav Bobyshev and Yevgeny Afanasyev of Baltic State Technical University were sentenced to 12 years each for spying for China. The sentences were reportedly handed down in a closed trial. These accusations stem from a cooperative relationship Baltic State Technical University … continue reading >>
Fines and threat of criminal prosecution against these scientists appear to be aimed at intimidation, according to reports received by CCS, because both scientists protested state and local actions they believe violate Russian environmental laws. … continue reading >>
Yakov Alpert, a pioneer in serveral fields of radio and space plasma physics, died on October 17, 2010 in Boston at the age of 99. Alpert participated in Sputnik I and many other Soviet satellite projects in the 1960s and 1970s. He became a Russian refusenik when he applied for an exit visa in 1975. Like all dissident scientists in the U.S.S.R., he lost his job and the right to work in his … continue reading >>
Dr. Boris Nemtsov, a physicist and former Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, was arrested on December 31, 2010, while participating in a peaceful rally in Moscow. A court sentenced him to 15 days in jail for "disobeying police instructions." According to news reports, Nemtsov tried to appeal his sentence as violating his human rights to a fair trial but the court refused to hear … continue reading >>
Drs. Svytoslav Bobyshev and Yevgeny Afanasyev, professors at Baltic State Technical University in St. Petersburg, Russia have been detained since March without a trial at Moscow’s Lefortovo maximum-security prison. The professors have reportedly been accused of spying and passing state secrets to unidentified Chinese citizens. The accusations stem from a cooperative relationship … continue reading >>
We welcomed the release of Dr. Igor Sutyagin, the Russian academic, who served more than a decade in prison in Siberia on espionage charges that we protested starting in 2001 as unfounded. Sutyagin was an arms control researcher for a British company to which he provided published and openly available information. … continue reading >>
Journalist and human rights activist Alexandr Podrabinek has gone into hiding because of death threats after publishing an article about the current Government’s defense of the former Soviet Union’s crimes against the Russian people. His wife, Alla Podrabinek, has alleged that the entire family was the target of a campaign of intimidation “either on the direct orders of the Russian … continue reading >>
Mathematician Irina Brailovsky's story typifies those of hundreds of Jewish scientists, engineers and physicians who applied to emigrate from the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. In retaliation, they were dismissed (or demoted) from professional employment and were shut out from mainstream Soviet science. She, her husband Victor, a computer science expert, and family were first refused exit in … continue reading >>
The internationally distinguished high energy physicist Yuri Orlov held top research and honorary posts in the Soviet scientific world until authorities took note of his growing leadership role in the human rights movement.In retaliation for founding the Moscow chapter of Amnesty International in 1973, Orlov was dismissed from his post at Moscow's Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism. Undaunted, in … continue reading >>
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In July, we protested the arrest of one of Turkey’s most prominent academic reformers, Kemal Gürüz, who was arrested and jailed for the second … continue reading >>
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