Memorial has been one of the few organizations in Russia willing to question the official interpretation of events by the government, which often glosses over the atrocities committed by its former Soviet leaders.

The group was founded in 1989 in the perestroika period under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, shortly before the collapse of communist rule. Initially, its mission was to preserve the memory of those who died under Soviet repression, particularly the Stalin-era purges, which historians estimate killed millions of people.

The group has also exposed violations in Russia's Northern Caucasus, especially Chechnya, a region which fought two traumatic separatist wars with Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

'A message for freedom of thought'

Announcing the award, EU Parliament President, Jerzy Buzek, said the assembly hoped "to contribute to ending the circle of fear and violence surrounding human rights defenders in the Russian Federation."

"We hope to advance our message that civil society activists everywhere must be free to exercise their most basic rights of freedom of thought," Buzek said.

A quarter of the European Parliament's 736 deputies come from countries which were once dominated by the USSR. They have regularly criticized what they see as Russia's approval of Soviet crimes against their countries.

The prize - named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov - was actually awarded to leading rights activists Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Oleg Orlov and Sergei Kovalev in the name of Memorial. Sakharov was the group's first chairman, a post now held by Orlov.

Alexeyeva, along with Sakharov, founded the Moscow Helsinki Group to monitor the Soviet Union's adherence to human rights pledges made in the Helsinki Final Act agreement of 1976.

Kovalev has been a human rights campaigner for decades and founded the first Soviet human rights group in 1969. He was later among the co-founders of Memorial.

Russia still trying to suppress criticism

Memorial's crusade for human rights has come at a cost, with supporters finding themselves targeted by those who feel threatened by the group's investigations.

Former Russian president, Vladmir Putin, who is currently prime minister, has sought to curb the activities of human rights groups. Some activists have been murdered, kidnapped or beaten.

In July of this year, Memorial activist Natalia Estemirova was found dead after being kidnapped in Chechnya.

Orlov, Memorial's chairman, was kidnapped in 2007 in Russia's Ingushetia region, beaten, and threatened with death. Earlier this month, Orlov lost a defamation lawsuit brought by Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov, and was ordered to retract his accusations that Kadyrov was behind the murder of Estemirova.

Estemirova's death was the latest in a string of mysterious murders of activists in Russia, including that of her friend, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in October 2006.

The Sakharov Prize, first awarded in 1988, was given last year to Hu Jia, a Chinese dissident jailed for subversion. China sharply criticized the decision.

gb/dpa/AFP/Reuters
Editor: Michael Lawton