'Erasing history': Russia closes top rights group, capping year of crackdowns

MOSCOW, (Reuters) - Russia's Supreme Court ordered the country's oldest human rights group to disband yesterday for breaking a law requiring it to act as "a foreign agent", capping a year of crackdowns on Kremlin critics unseen since the Soviet era.

The closure of Memorial International bookmarks a year in which Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin's top critic, was jailed, his movement banned and many of his allies forced to flee. Moscow says it is simply enforcing laws to thwart extremism and shield the country from what it says is malign foreign influence.

Critics say that Vladimir Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 1999, is turning back the clock to the Soviet era when there was zero tolerance of dissent. The Kremlin, at odds with the West on everything from Ukraine to Syria, says it is impossible to recreate the Soviet Union.

The legal assault on Memorial, which documents and keeps alive the memory of Josef Stalin's 1937-38 "Great Terror" among other episodes, is an attempt to whitewash Soviet Russia's darkest chapters which do not chime with the Kremlin's narrative of a resurgent country with nothing to be ashamed of, they say.

"Memorial is a special organisation with its own ideology. We combine what's called relevant human rights activities with historical studies and comprehending the historical path of Russia in the 20th century. It seems that such a union does not please someone in the Russian leadership," Oleg Orlov, a Memorial board member, said outside the court.

As the court heard the case against Memorial, which said it was a force for good even if it sometimes made minor bureaucratic errors, four policemen clad in fur hats carried away a bearded protester after he shouted: "There are no laws, there is no property, there are no rights, there are no choices."

As the man was carried away, he shouted: "Russians love the son of a bitch Stalin."

A state prosecutor told the court that Memorial had promoted what he called a false image of the USSR as "a terrorist state" and blackened the memory of the communist state's behaviour during World War Two. He said "someone" was paying Memorial for such treachery.

Memorial is open about the fact that it receives funding from abroad, one of the main reasons the authorities have labelled it a foreign agent. Its website lists funding from Poland, Germany, Canada and the Czech Republic.