LEWISTON – Professor Barry Rodrigue, an associate professor at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College and adviser to the International Students Organization of Lewiston-Auburn (ISOLA), was recently instrumental in getting the State Legislature to pass a joint resolution asking the U.S. Congress to take action to help the people of Chechnya and other parts of the northern Caucasus, who are under the strict military rule of the Russian government based in Moscow.

The resolution passed easily in the House and Senate.

Rodrigue asked Rep. Elaine Makas, D-Lewiston, to sponsor the resolution. Makas and Rodrigue were joined by human rights scholars and activists from Maine at the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine (HHRC) on May 21 at the State House in Augusta to announce their efforts and draw attention to the continued plight of the people in Chechnya.

“It is important for the people of Maine and the United States to not forget the horrendous struggle of these people for their basic human rights,” said Makas. “I am honored that Barry asked me to sponsor the resolution and excited that he and others from Maine will be able to take it to Congress and the Kremlin to show that we have not forgotten, and must not forget, the bravery and suffering of these people.”

Rodrigue and ISOLA students from USM’s Lewiston-Auburn College will take the resolution to Washington, D.C., this summer to lobby members of Congress to take a stronger stance in negotiations with Moscow to end the violence that has been ongoing for more than 10 years in Chechnya and other parts of the region.

“This resolution from the Maine State Legislature is a very important act of solidarity,” said Rodrigue. “Chechnya has suffered through more than a decade of some of the worst warfare and human rights violations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

“This resolution is historic, and Maine can be proud of taking a moral stand against the destruction of entire families, communities and societies in the Caucasus. The effect of such moral support cannot be underestimated.”

Rodrigue, who has traveled and worked in the former Soviet Union in recent years, will also take the resolution to Moscow to show lawmakers in the Kremlin and the people of Russia that residents of the United States are concerned about the plight of the people in the northern Caucasus.

He will also travel to Chechnya and share the resolution with civic leaders there.

When he returns, the resolution will be donated, with other materials about human rights issues in the Caucasus, to the HHRC.