Happy New Year from Holland

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In November, 2013, letters from Holland began to arrive to the office of Human Rights Commission of Komi "Memorial". Eight letters came at once. Some people have expressed solidarity with the struggle for human rights and wished a happy New Year. The cards were different — with or without envelopes, in Russian or in English. There were handmade cards, made of plain paper with printed photo and hand-written wish. One card was signed in Dutch, but the text of wishes was Ukrainian. Here it is:

We didn’t understand, who organized this solidarity with the "Memorial", and why people suddenly decided to wish us a happy New Year. We dimly guessed that this solidarity was related to local neo-fascist attack on our meeting and attacks on human rights defenders' apartments. Trying to grasp the meaning of letters, I suddenly found small letters — "Amnesty International".

In December, we received 12 letters. There were a lot of handmade cards again that couldn’t but rejoice, as people didn’t just wrote but even made cards themselves. The most amazing card was made clearly by a child: with drawn water and some bucket full of letters, and "For you" in English on top.

Most of the letters were in English, and only three of them— in Russian. But again it wasn’t clear who organized it. In this case, none of the letters had marks of addresser.

After the New Year, on January 11, we received 27 postcards at once! There were a lot of great things: handmade envelopes, handmade cards, one person sent us greetings with a Disney envelope and postcard. I have a suspicion that some teenage girl has sent it.

But one envelope cut to the heart. It was an ordinary envelope, and there were just five specialized postcards of Dutch branch of Amnesty International inside with general imprinted text of wishes to civil activist and expression of solidarity with his uphill struggle for human rights. Apparently, cards were specifically designed for mailing persecuted civic activists worldwide.

Now it became clear that we were in some kind of a campaign of Dutch defenders’ solidarity with human rights activists in Russia. Apparently, before the New Year guys from Amnesty International of Netherlands expressed solidarity with human rights defenders all other the world who got under harassment of the authorities or radical groups, so we were under such a campaign.

Thank you, unknown friends from Holland that you have expressed solidarity with our organization. Sometimes, when things are not so good, it is important that someone was next to you, just saying "Hang in there". Protecting small and weak from the strong and unfair is a very hard and churlish work. Words of solidarity are always needed in those moments when the strong ones throw mud at you when you are trying to stop them oppressing the weak. Once again, thanks to those 47 people who wrote the words of encouragement and thanks to all those who send letters of solidarity with defense of human rights worldwide.