2nd ban of major human rights group in two days

MOSCOW — A Moscow court ordered the closure of one of Russia’s most prominent human rights groups Wednesday, a day after its parent organization was also shut down in verdicts that, for many Russians, served as a painful coda to a year marked by the erosion of civil rights and freedom of expression.

The ruling by Moscow’s City Court will close the Memorial Human Rights Center, which keeps a tally of political prisoners. On Tuesday, the country’s Supreme Court ordered the shuttering of Memorial International, which was founded in 1989 by Soviet dissidents to preserve memories of Soviet repression.

Together, the shut downs reflected President Vladimir Putin’s determination to control the narrative of some of the most painful and repressive chapters in Russian history and keep dissidents at bay. Since January, the Kremlin has accelerated a campaign to stifle dissent, clamping down on independent media, religious groups and political opponents.

Memorial’s list of political prisoners now stands at 435 names — twice as many as the government acknowledged in the late Soviet period. Prosecutors accused the human rights group of justifying “international terrorist and extremist organizations” by including on its list imprisoned members of religious groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

That list includes Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition leader, who was poisoned with what Western intelligence agencies believe is the Russian-made nerve agent Novichok.

Prosecutors said the group promoted “biased materials on human rights topics” that were used to discredit “the structure of the Russian Federation.” They said members of the organization had “participated in all protest movements” and “supported all protests aimed at destabilizing the country,” including Navalny’s AntiCorruption Foundation.

Prosecutors also accused the group of failing to comply with a 2012 “foreign agent” law, the same reason the Supreme Court gave Tuesday in closing down Memorial International. The law requires designated organizations to meet onerous financial reporting rules and to add a disclaimer to all public communication warning that it was produced by a “foreign agent.”