Polish president posthumously awards Order of Merit to human rights defender Alexeyeva
The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland is the highest award for outstanding service in the consolidation of international cooperation and the development of relations between nations
WARSAW, December 11. /TASS/. Polish President Andrzej Duda decided to posthumously award the cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland to human rights defender Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported on Tuesday.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Head of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister Michal Dworczyk will take part in the lying-in-state ceremony for Alexeyeva in Moscow. "He will lay down a wreath and read out a letter of condolences from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawieck, as well as announce the posthumous awarding of the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by the president to Lyudmila Alexeyeva upon the recommendation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," the ministry reported.
Lyudmila Alexeyeva did not feel well recently and could be rarely seen at public events. On December 8, 2018, the death of the human rights defender, aged 91, was reported.
Lyudmila Alexeyeva was born on July 20, 1927. In 1950, she graduated from the Department of History of the Moscow State University and worked as a history teacher, an editor in the Nauka (Science) publishing house and an employee of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Alexeyeva became a human rights defender in 1966, but in 1977 she had to emigrate from the Soviet Union and settled in the US. She returned to Russia in 1993 and headed the Moscow Helsinki Group in 1996. In 2002, she became a member of the Russian Presidential Commission for Human Rights, which was transformed into the Human Rights Council in 2004.
The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland is the highest award for outstanding service in the consolidation of international cooperation and the development of relations between nations. This order is awarded to foreign citizens and Polish nationals living abroad who made a considerable contribution in the sphere of international cooperation and the development of Poland’s ties to other states and nations through their activity.