Elena Semionova, is a human rights defender in Pavlodar, in northern Kazakhstan. She heads a local Public Monitoring Committee, a non-governmental body that monitors the situation in pre-trial detention centres, and an NGO, “We are against Torture”. In 2020, to date, she has been the subject of six civil defamation cases lodged against her by prison officials because of her work exposing alleged cases of torture in prisons.
