Russia’s top court shutters noted human rights group
MOSCOW — Russia’s highest court on Tuesday shut down one of the country’s oldest and most prominent human rights organizations, the latest move in a relentless crackdown on rights activists, independent media and opposition supporters.
The Supreme Court’s ruling to close Memorial, an international human rights group that drew international acclaim for its studies of political repression in the Soviet Union, sparked international outrage.
Memorial is made up of more than 50 smaller groups in Russia and abroad. It was declared a “foreign agent” in 2016 — a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong connotations that can discredit the targeted organization. Prosecutors said the group repeatedly failed to identify itself as a foreign agent and tried to conceal the designation, the accusations rejected by Memorial.
During the hearing, prosecutors also charged that Memorial “creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state,” a claim the group said revealed the authorities’ real motive.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling confirmed once again that the history of political terror organized and directed by the government isn’t an academic issue that is interesting only for experts, but an acute problem of today,” Memorial said in a statement.
The group said it would appeal the verdict and pledged to continue its work.
A crowd that gathered in front of the courthouse on Tuesday erupted into chants of “Disgrace!” in response to the ruling. Police detained several people who picketed the courthouse.
Amnesty International called Memorial’s closure “a blatant attack on civil society that seeks to blur the national memory of state repression” and “a grave insult to victims of the Russian Gulag.”
U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan deplored the court’s verdict as “a blatant and tragic attempt to suppress freedom of expression and erase history.”
Memorial’s partner organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center, is up for being closed as well, with a court hearing Wednesday morning in Moscow City Court.
Russian authorities in recent months have ratcheted up pressure on rights groups, media outlets and individual journalists, naming dozens as foreign agents. Some were outlawed as “undesirable,” and several were forced to shut down or disband themselves to prevent further prosecution.
On Tuesday, five associates of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny were taken into custody.
Earlier this year, a Moscow court outlawed Navalny’s organizations — the Foundation for Fighting
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Corruption and his country-wide network of regional offices — as extremist, exposing their staff members and supporters to prosecution.
One of the five detained activists, Ksenia Fadeyeva, is reportedly facing charges of forming an extremist group. Fadeyeva used to run Navalny’s regional office in the Siberian city of Tomsk, and in last year’s election won a seat in the city legislature.
Another Navalny associate, Lilia Chanysheva, was arrested and jailed in November on similar charges. She used to head Navalny’s office in the Russian region of Bashkortostan and is facing up to 10 years in prison, if convicted.
Navalny is serving 2 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that is widely seen as politically motivated. The politician was arrested in January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he said was carried out by the FSB security agency on Kremlin orders — accusations that Russian officials reject.