Russia orders human rights group to close
Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the closure of International Memorial, the country’s most prominent human rights group, escalating a sweeping crackdown that has also targeted opposition activists and independent media.
The group founded by Soviet-era dissidents including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov must shut down after failing to identify itself as a “foreign agent” under Russian law, Judge Alla Nazarova said Tuesday.
International Memorial catalogs political repression ranging from the mass purges and Gulag prison system of former Soviet ruler Josef Stalin to the persecution of dissent in contemporary Russia under President Vladimir Putin. It denied major violations of the law and told the court it was willing to correct any infractions in order to continue to operate, while prosecutors had asked for a closure order.
“Shutting International Memorial will throw the country back and increase the risk of total repression,” Maria Eismont, a lawyer for the organization, told the court. “You cannot liquidate Memorial without renouncing what it did and is doing.”
The decision was announced days after Russia marked the 30th anniversary of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union that allowed activists to chronicle the full scale of persecution carried out by the authorities and the security services. Memorial seeks to rehabilitate victims of repression as well as publicize rights violations in modern Russia.
The order comes amid an aggressive Kremlin campaign targeting opposition activists, independent media and rights groups since Putin’s most prominent domestic critic Alexey Navalny was sentenced to prison in February. Many outlets and journalists have been labeled as “foreign agents” under a law that forces them to comply with onerous reporting requirements or face closure.
The case against International Memorial is one of two that the organization is facing. Moscow prosecutors are also asking a court to close Memorial’s Human Rights Center, with hearings scheduled for Wednesday.
In 2015, the same judge rejected a request to dissolve Memorial, state-controlled Tass reported at the time. International Memorial was labeled a foreign agent in 2016, while its local group was designated one in 2014.
Police detained some protesters among a small group that gathered outside the court in Moscow to show support for Memorial on Tuesday.