The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union and KHPG are calling on Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand an explanation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation regarding the grounds for banning Vasyl Ovsiyenko’s entry into the country;

On 22 July member of KHPG and former political prisoner, Vasyl Ovsiyenko was refused entry to Russia. When did Russia’s “blacklist” start including human rights defenders, who else is on it, and why are the Ukrainian authorities silent?

Last night Vasyl Ovsiyenko, member of KHPG and former political prisoner was removed by Russian border guards from a train from Moscow to Bryansk. The border guards sent him back to Ukraine having found his name on a list of people refused entry to the Russian Federation

Ivan Dziuba wrote that Yevhen Kontsevych was "in his way a symbol and legend for this generation – the generation of the Shestydesyatnyky. ... an amazing man who always inspired everybody. It wasn’t, as might have seemed, that he needed to be supported – he supported everybody and gave them some of his energy…"

Iryna Senyk, poet, former political prisoner, member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (UHG), died on 25 October 2009 She was 83

“I understood for the first time that real patriotism - not just that for show, is always quiet, serious and civic and not narrowly ethnic. With Ivan it was even something sacredly light.” (Zinoviy Antonyuk)

The two pivotal figures of the 1960s “Shistdesyatnyky” would have turned 80 this week. They were close friends and even celebrated their “joint seventieth birthday” (each was 35) in 1964

4 September marked 44 years since a protest action against arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia at the preview showing of S. Paradzhanov’s film ‘Tini zabutykh predkiv’ [‘Shadows of forgotten ancestors’].

Unable to totally stop the activities of the national democratic movement, the KGB tried to influence its further development, as well as systematically obstructing its members

German historian Gerhard Simon points out that the situation in Ukraine is unique because it is the security service itself that is engaged in educational activity about the crimes of the past.

20 May 2009 marks the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR, the first independent civic organization of the Soviet era

Vasyl Ovsiyenko, human rights defender and former political prisoner, has been awarded the Order of Yaroslav Mudry for his service to Ukraine and his defence of human rights and freedoms

Vasyl Stus demanded both for himself and for his people the right to think freely and express their views without persecution, and the right to live in a free country. We are also free to resist attempts to use dirty means in order to blur the real issue and divide people.

The Acting Head of the Security Services [SBU], Valentyn Nalyvaichenko has stated that, in accordance with a Presidential Decree from 23 January, all criminal cases initiated by the Soviet punitive bodies from 1917 to 1991 are to be declassified

Reflections on the gratitude due Solzhenitsyn, on inevitable causes for reproach and on the issue of repentance and acknowledgement of the crime of communism

4 January was the sixtieth birthday of Myroslav Marynovych, founding member of the Ukrainian Helsink Group and former political prisoner, human rights defender, philosopher, writer and Vice-Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University

The Vice-Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, human rights defender and, former political prisoner believes it would be impossible to accept such an award while these are being used by the President as instruments for political bargaining

Petro Stepanovych Saranchuk, one of the members of the national liberation movement and former political prisoner, died on 10 September in Mykolaiv, aged 81

On 7 July 1988 at a rally attended by some fifty thousand people in Lviv the creation was announced of a the Ukrainian Helsinki Union. This was the first mass social, political and human rights organization in the Ukrainian SSR

On the dangers of imposing heroes, on history textbooks and shining examples in Ukraine’s recent history we should not forget