Source: Moscow Helsinki Group

Head of the Moscow Helsinki Groupo, Ludmila Alekseeva, is ready to return to the Presidential Human Rights Council, she has told Interfax. 

"If the question is decided, then it will probably not be before the summer. Perhaps it will be decided in time for my 88th birthday which falls at the end of July,” Alekseeva said. “They have suggested that I return to the Council more than once, but I refused. Now I say I am ready to agree.” 

On 28 April Izestiya reported that Alekseeva is ready to again join the Human Rights Council. According to Alekseeva, she took the decision when she saw that members of the Council “were able to do things that they cannot do from outside the Council”. She believes that in the current situation any possibility of doing something should be made use of. 

Members of the Human Rights Council are unanimous in their wish to see the return of Alekseeva as a member, the publication points out. They have approached President Vladimir Putin with this request. Only he has the right by his decree to make a new member of the Council. 

In the summer of 2012, Ludmila Alekseeva left the Human Rights Council. She was not satisfied with the new system for choosing members of the Council on the basis of Internet voting. However, at the beginning of August she returned to the Council and continued working as a member. At that time Alekseeva stated that what concerned her most was the new make-up of the Council. ‘If this list of members of the Council that will be taken to the President for confirmation will include worthy and hard-working people, then I am prepared to remain a member,’ Alekseeva said. ‘But if it will be made up of the kind of people who just do as they are told or who cannot work effectively, then I don’t want to waste my very limited strength on working in this Council’. 

On 12 September 2012 Alekseeva decided to leave the Human Rights Council. She stated that she did not want to take part in squabbles and intrigues taking place around discussions of candidates for membership of the Council. 

"Everything that is happening now around discussion of these candidates, how it is all happening – I have already been through the selection procedure three times and then there was nothing like what is happening now, everything was quite calm. But now there are so many intrigues, so many squabbles and so much dirt is being thrown around about this that I don’t want to work in such an atmosphere. I prefer to leave,’ Alekseeva said. ‘I wrote my letter of resignation long ago, but I promised that I would wait for this whole procedure of making the lists of candidates to be completed. But it has become so unpleasant that I decided to resign earlier.’ 

On 4 October 2012 the Council expressed its regret that Alekseeva had decided to resign and asked her to reconsider her decision. However she refused to continue working on the Council