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Emil Adelkhanov (bornEmmanuil Steinberg, 11 August 1945,Vorkuta – 27 June 2016,Tbilisi) was a Georgianhuman rights activist, and a representative ofAmnesty International andHuman Rights Watch in Georgia.
Emil Adelkhanov was born inVorkutlag in a family of political prisoners.[1] His father was Naum Steinberg (1914–1969), aUkrainianlinguist andEsperanto specialist. His mother was Arfenik Adelkhanova (1905–1950), anArmenian genocide survivor, whose family managed to flee from theOttoman Empire in 1915 and settle inTbilisi, and who later was involved in local politics.[citation needed] He was raised first by his grandfather,Shimon Steinberg, and after 1955 by his maternal aunt, Dekhtsanik Adelkhanova, who adopted two of her nephews and changed their names.[citation needed]
In 1969, Adelkhanov graduated from the philological faculty ofTbilisi State University, and started to work as an English translator.[1] In the early 1970s he became a distributor ofSamizdat[1] inTbilisi, including the works byAleksandr Solzhenitsyn andNadezhda Mandelstam[citation needed]. Throughout 1970s and 1980s he was collecting data and writing articles for theChronicle of Current Events, coveringTranscaucasia.[1] He played an active role in the struggle for the human rights ofMeskhetian Turks and other ethnic minorities in Georgia[citation needed]. From 1992 until the end of his life, he worked at the newly foundedCaucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development.[1][2]