Pavel Vasilievich Sulyandziga (russian: Павел Васильевич Суляндзига born 20 February 1962 in Olon,

Pozharsky District Pozharsky District (russian: Пожа́рский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #161-KZ and municipalLaw #191-KZ district (raion), one of the twenty-two in Primorsky Krai, Russia. It is located in the northern and northwestern parts of t ...

, Primorsky Kray) is a Russian indigenous rights activist of Udege nationality. He is a member of the UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, tasked with the dissemination of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and a former member of the

Public Chamber of Russia The Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation (russian: Общественная палата Российской Федерации), sometimes shortened to Civic Chamber (russian: Общественная палата), is a consultative civil s ...

Until 2010, he was the first vice-president of the

Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North The Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) (russian: Ассоциация коренных, малочисленных народов Севера, Сибири и Дальнего Востока Российской Фе� ...

(RAIPON) and member of the

United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII or PFII) is the UN's central coordinating body for matters relating to the concerns and rights of the world's indigenous peoples. There are more than 370 million indigenous peop ...

Sulyandziga's home region is the

Bikin River The Bikin (russian: Бики́н) is a river in Primorsky and Khabarovsk Krais in Russia. It is a right tributary of the Ussuri, and is long, with a drainage basin of . Its main tributaries are the rivers Alchan, Klyuchevaya, Kontrovod and Ze ...

valley, located in close proximity to the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve, which was designated UNESCO World Heritage in 2001. The Bikin valley is covered with dense forest and constitutes an important habitat for the

Amur tiger The Siberian tiger or Amur tiger is a population of the tiger subspecies '' Panthera tigris tigris'' native to the Russian Far East, Northeast China and possibly North Korea. It once ranged throughout the Korean Peninsula, but currently inhabi ...

. During the late 1980s, Pavel Sulyandziga lived in the village of Krasny Yar, where he was successful in mobilizing the population against the administration's plans to grant timber harvesting licenses to a Soviet-Korean joint venture led by Hyundai. Since then, he has remained one of the most outspoken indigenous rights activists in the Russian Federation. Since 1999 he has been co-editor of the magazine "The World of Indigenous Peoples - Living Arctic" (russian: Мир коренных народов — Живая Арктика). In 2011, he was elected a member of the UN working group on human rights, transnational corporations and other types of business from the Eastern Europe region for three years. In August 2012, with the participation of Sulyandziga and with the assistance of the Russian authorities, the evacuation of the seriously ill and isolated from the public world chess champion Boris Spassky from Paris to Moscow was planned and carried out. In 2014, he was not released from Russia for the UN conference in the United States on indigenous peoples (according to Sulyandziga, a border guard tore a page from his passport and then declared that it was invalid). In 2016, he was nominated by the Yabloko party as a candidate for the State Duma on the regional list from Primorsky Krai, as well as in a single-mandate constituency. In 2017, he asked for political asylum in the United States.Новая газета, 3 мая 2017 года. Защитник коренных народов Севера попросил политического убежища в США
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sulyandziga, Pavel 1962 births Living people People from Primorsky Krai Indigenous rights activists Russian political activists Members of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation Yabloko politicians Tungusic peoples