HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER ELENA BONNER DIES AT 88
Nanore Barsoumian
For decades, Elena Bonner stood tall in the way of injustice,
dedicating her life to a struggle against authoritarianism and human
rights abuses. She battled Soviet-era persecutions, becoming a leading
dissident. She spoke on behalf of the oppressed peoples of the Soviet
Union and directed the eyes of the world to the darkest of places,
where blood and agony pervaded. Her voice could not be easily ignored,
and she used it relentlessly. On June 18, we all lost an irreplaceable
human being. Bonner passed away in Boston, at the age of 88, due to
heart failure. Many dispossessed and disenfranchised people, among
them Armenians, remain grateful to her.
Elena Bonner
“Practically from the very beginning of the national liberation
movement in Karabagh, Elena Bonner had been actively protecting the
right of our nation to self-determination. She visited our country
and together with us fought for restoration of historical justice and
from the highest platforms demanded a stop to human rights violation
pursued by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabagh,” wrote the president of the
Nagorno Karabagh Republic, Bako Sahakyan, in a letter addressed to the
family of the activist. “Accept my deep and sincere condolences. In
this difficult hour the people and authorities of the Nagorno Karabagh
Republic share with you the whole pain and sorrow of this irretrievable
loss. We shall always keep in mind the bright memory of Elena Bonner.”
In compliance with her wishes, Bonner will be cremated. The urn
containing her ashes will be flown to Russia to be buried alongside
her husband, Andrei Sakharov, mother, and brother.
Born on Feb. 15, 1923, in Merv, Turkmenistan, to Gevork Alikhanov,
a prominent Armenian Communist and a secretary of the Comintern,
and Ruth Bonner, a Jewish woman born in Siberia, Elena spent her
childhood in Chita, a city in southeast Russia. In 1937, her life
changed drastically when her father was arrested. Elena moved to
her grandmother’s residence in Leningrad with her mother and younger
brother, Igor. A year later, her mother was sent to hard labor in a
gulag. They would lose contact until the early 1950’s. In 1954, her
parents were exonerated. More than half a century after her father’s
arrest, Elena learned that her father was executed in 1938.
Elena graduated from a Leningrad high school, became a nurse, and
volunteered in the Red Army’s hospital trains in 1941. After being
wounded, she was discharged in 1945, and soon enrolled in the First
Leningrad Medical Institute. She married her classmate Ivan Semyonov
and, in 1950, gave birth to a daughter, Tatiana, and a son, Alexey,
in 1956. Nine years later the couple separated.
Andrei Sakharov and Bonner met outside a courtroom in Kaluga while
protesting the trials of human rights advocates in 1970. They married
in 1972, the year she renounced her Communist Party membership, partly
affected by the state’s response to the 1968 uprising in Prague,
and partly due to what befell her parents and friends.
The couple spent the following two decades-until Sakharov’s death in
1989-rushing to the defense of the oppressed in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere, despite arrests and harassment. Both were internationally
known figures, a fact that shielded them to some degree from severe
Soviet repercussions. Sakharov, a Russian nuclear physicist and human
rights activist, was on the team that built the Soviet Union’s first
hydrogen bomb, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
Bonner and Sakharov were at the center of the dissident movement,
monitoring human rights violations against ethnic and religious
minorities, and persecutions of political dissenters. Years of
harassment by the KGB, as well as arrests-Sakharov was arrested after
he called for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and Bonner for
slandering the Soviet state-did not silence the persistent duo. Both
were exiled to Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), which culminated in a
memoir, Alone Together, published in 1987. In 1985, after three hunger
strikes by Sakharov, Bonner was allowed to travel to the U.S. for
open heart surgery. Their exile ended suddenly when they received a
call from Mikhail Gorbachev a day after a telephone was installed in
their apartment.
Even after Sakharov’s death in 1989, Bonner continued her crusade for
justice in Russia. She championed human rights above all else. In 1995,
she resigned from the Presidential Human Rights Commission to protest
the war in Chechnya, and ceased to support Boris Yeltsin. She later
voiced her opposition to his successor, Vladimir Putin.
Staunch supporter of Karabagh
Bonner was an outspoken supporter of the self-determination of
Nagorno-Karabagh. She visited the region a number of times as a
member of Helsinki Watch (which later evolved to Human Rights Watch),
and with Sakharov. She testified before the U.S. Congress and at the
UN on the situation in Karabagh, condemning the massacres carried
out by Azerbaijan against the Armenians. She wrote essays on the
subject, focusing international attention on human rights abuses
against Armenians in Azerbaijan and the assaults against the people
of Karabagh.
In May 1990, Bonner received the “Woman of the Year” award from the
National Representative Assembly (NRA) of the Prelacy of the Armenian
Apostolic Church.
In 1991, Bonner co-authored a letter with Yuri Orlov, a prominent
nuclear physicist and human rights advocate, addressed to two U.S.
Congressmen, urging them to consider the plight of Armenians in the
Soviet Union who were forcefully deported, tortured, and killed in
Azeri controlled regions.
The “Soviet army and special troops have been systematically deporting
thousands of Armenians, even entire villages, from Azerbaijan to
Armenia, according to a group of participants in the first Sakharov
Human Rights Congress who visited the region last week,” they wrote.
“Soviet tanks and helicopters surround the villages. The men are
separated from their wives and children; they are often beaten and
tortured, sometimes killed. The fate of most is unknown. The women and
children are evacuated by helicopter to Armenia. By giving this kind
of support to the Azerbaijanis, the Soviet central government is not
only flagrantly violating the human rights of thousands of Armenians,
but intensifying the instabilities of this volatile region.”
Bonner’s activism impacted numerous lives, as she became a beacon
of hope for the oppressed. On June 21, four Armenian men-“Armenian
political prisoners of the Soviet period”-sent their condolences to
the Russian branch of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation. “She was one of
the most prominent Soviet human rights activists, a firm and resolute
person,” they wrote. “At the time, each of us felt her support and
protection. Her experience in an uncompromising struggle is still
relevant today. We grieve with the family.”
Note: The biographical data above is based on Elena Bonner’s biography
as presented by the Andrei Sakharov Foundation.
Text of ARF Eastern US Central Committee Statement
The Central Committee of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Eastern
United States joins with Armenians worldwide to mourn the passing of
Elena Bonner, the world renowned human rights activist. Armenians will
always remember how, together with her husband Andrei Sakharov, Dr.
Bonner spoke out forcefully in condemnation of the Azeri massacres of
Armenians in Sumgait, Kirovabad, and Baku, Azerbaijan in 1988 and 1990.
Dr. Bonner was a champion for the right of self-determination for
the people of Mountainous Karabakh. As a prominent member of Helsinki
Watch, she travelled to Karabakh on a number of occasions to see for
herself the human rights conditions in the region. Through the Sakharov
Foundation, she wrote and spoke often in support of Karabakh on the
international stage including in the United Nations and in testimony
before the U.S. Congress. The ARF expresses its deep condolences
to Dr. Bonner’s children, Alexey Semyonov and Tatiana Yankelevich,
and their families.
Armenian Activists Reflect
The Armenian Weekly reached out to community activists and leaders, who
had met and worked with Bonner, for their impressions and reflections.
“I met Andrei Dmitrievich first in Newton when he was visiting his
daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich, many years ago. Subsequently to that,
we worked closely with the Sakharov Foundation, and Elena agreed to
come to the United States and testify at hearings that we were doing
in Washington, D.C. regarding Nagorno-Karabagh. She was wonderful. She
was a champion of the cause. She even came to the UN. We had a special
luncheon for her-this is the East Coast and West Coast ANCs [Armenian
National Committee] of those days. She visited the Hairenik [Building
in Watertown, Mass.] and gave interviews to our papers. We remained
friends. When she was living in Newton, Mass., she invited me over
to dinner, and she made dolma. Her daughter Tatiana was there as well.
Those are the things that I remember, having long discussions with
her, at night, in the hotel room when we were traveling from New
York to DC. [We would talk about] Nagorno-Karabagh, her daughter,
Andrei Dmitrievich, her background…everything!”
-Ani Haroian, member, Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Eastern
U.S. Central Committee
“The ANCA joins with Armenians from across the United States in
marking the loss of Yelena Bonner, a proud daughter of the Armenian
nation, who -with courage, compassion, and an unerring moral compass,
emerged on the world stage as a giant in the struggle for truth,
freedom, and universal human rights. We recall, with great warmth and
enduring respect, her hard work advancing the democratic and national
aspirations of the Armenian nation, especially during the difficult
early years of the Artsakh liberation movement, a troubled time during
which her voice and values made a real and lasting difference for
the future of the Armenian people.”
-Aram Hamparian, executive director, Armenian National Committee of
America (ANCA)
“Dr. Bonner was a remarkable woman who brought intelligence and
compassion to her work. Among her lesser known accomplishments was her
leadership that brought the First International Sakharov Congress to
send one of the first international observer groups to Nagorno-Karabagh
in 1991. She has left an everlasting mark on our world.”
-Sharistan Melkonian, executive director, Armenian Volunteer Corps.
Melkonian met Bonner in her role as executive director of the Armenian
National Committee of America, Eastern Region.
“She has played a significant role in the support of the Karabagh
movement with her husband, Andre Sakharov. That was during the Soviet
era, at a time when the government and all the Soviet machinery were
working against us. Her and her husband’s voices were very important
in support of our demands. They offered great moral support.”
-Father Bedros Shetilian of the St Gregory Armenian Church in
Springfield, Mass. He met Bonner in Russia.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2011/06/23/human-rights-defender-elena-bonner-dies-at-88/