Moscow closes Memorial International, Russia’s longest-running and prestigious NGO, which promises to appeal and continue its work
Although expected, the news has left human rights defenders in Russia shocked: the Supreme Court has ordered the closure of the most prestigious and long-lived NGO in the country, Memorial International, in what appears to be the latest attempt to silence the little left of civil society.
Accepting the Attorney General’s request, the Supreme Court recognized Memorial guilty of infringement of the controversial law on foreign agents, already used as an ax on several NGOs and independent media.
The NGO did not correctly place the necessary items on its materials ‘foreign agent’ label, an expression that in Russia evokes the accusation of spy, from the Soviet era. During the latest hearing, prosecutors also claimed that Memorial “creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state and denigrates the memory of the Second World War “, rehabilitating” the Nazi criminals “.
“Shame, shame”, was the cry raised among the NGO supporters in the courtroom, after the reading of the sentence. Founded in the late 1980s in Moscow in the wake of the commitment, among others, of dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Andrei Sakharov, Memorial is concerned with preserving the memory of victims of political repression in the USSR and Russia and it was the symbol of post-Soviet democratization of the country.
Over the years, he has created a database of the victims of the Stalinist Great Terror and the system of gulag, but at the same time it has always linked the commemoration of the past to the fight for human rights in the present: it has numerous branches in the Federation, one in France and in the Czech Republic and numerous associations of the same name that are inspired by its values in various countries, including Italy, where its leaders have just asked for an “urgent meeting” with the Farnesina to discuss the case.
The Summits of Memorial have denied the allegations, calling them “politically motivated” and explaining that only an insignificant amount of material has been published without the “foreign agent” label; the president of the NGO, Yan Rachinsky, has announced that they will do appeal first in Russian courts and then, if necessary, to the European Court of Human Rights. “We will challenge the decision of the Russian Supreme Court in every possible way. And we will find legal ways to continue our work,” a statement read.
Until the appeal ruling, Memorial promises to continue his work. “By shutting down the organization, the Russian authorities trample the memory of millions of victims lost in the gulag”, he denounced. Marie Struthers, director of Amnesty International for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It is a “brazen and tragic attempt to repress freedom of expression and to erase history”, commented theUS ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan.
Navalny, gag laws and the annus horribilis of human rights in Russia
The decision of the supreme judges comes at the end of an annus horribilis for human rights in Russia, which began in January with the arrest of the opponent Aleksei Navalny and continued with the systematic repression of critical and non-aligned voices in the Kremlin.
Without naming her directly, the president Vladimir Putin he had recently accused Memorial of promoting “terrorism and extremism”. And it is precisely theaccusation of extremism – with whom, for example, they have been all organizations in Russia related to Navalny closed this year – which Memorial is now facing tomorrow in a separate case and which concerns its Human Rights Center.
According to Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, the Memorial case falls within the Moscow’s wider “conflict” with the West: the Russian authorities, he wrote in the independent newspaper Meduza, “are not so much interested in the activities of this NGO at home, as in the its popularity in Europe, mainly in Germany, where the issue of totalitarian crimes is extremely important “.
“The more a figure or organization is visible”, explained the analyst, “the more it weighs in the strategy of the conflict” of Moscow with Europe and the USA and in which “significant organizations and personalities within Russia , including Memorial and Navalny, are turning into bargaining chips “with which the Kremlin tries to obtain leverage, unable to count – except for gas supplies – on much more than” the threat of force “.
Russia, sentence against historical gulag Dmitriyev rises to 15 years
Memorial’s closure comes after yesterday a Russian court increased the sentence for child sexual abuse of Yury Dmitriyev, a historian known for his research on Soviet crimes, from 13 to 15 years. Memorial had repeatedly declared the trial a political hoax, thus running the risk of being closed.
Dmitriyev, 65, was arrested in 2016 on child pornography charges for possessing some photographs of his naked adopted daughter. The historian, now 65, had claimed that the images had been taken to monitor the child’s growth and had been acquitted in 2018.
However, the prosecutor had managed to obtain the overturning of the sentence in 2020 and today obtained the extension of the sentence for another two years. Dmitriyev spent decades locating mass graves of victims of Stalinist persecutions and exhuming their bodies. The Memorial association, of which Dmitriyev is regional secretary for Karelia, considers the historian a “political prisoner” attacked for his “activity in preserving the memory of political repressions”.
Investigators had asked the Moscow court to close the Memorial Human Rights Center, accusing it of condoning “terrorism and extremism”.
Navalny, 2 former collaborators in Siberia searched and arrested
The Russian authorities carried out searches in the homes of two former local managers of the regional network of the opponent in prison Aleksei Navalny, a reality now banned in Russia. The two were arrested. One of the two activists faces up to 12 years in prison. The move came on the day when the Russian Supreme Court ordered the closure of the most authoritative NGO for human rights, Memorial International, accused of violating the law on foreign agents.
In June, Russian authorities declared Navalny’s political organizations “extremist”, forcing his team to close the network of regional offices that had supported his political campaigns and carried out investigations into corruption in the state apparatus. Since then, almost all of its closest allies have fled the country.
Among them, Leonid Volkov, the former head of the regional network and right-hand man of the opponent, fled to Lithuania. It was he who made it known of the raid on the homes of the two former office coordinators in the Siberian regions of Irkutsk and Tomsk: Zakhar Sarapulov and Ksenia Fadeyeva. The two activists were questioned, while contact was lost with a third coordinator from the Altai region. Fadeyeva, who is also a local MP, is accused of having created and taken part in an extremist organization, using her official role; the offense provides for a sentence of between seven and 12 years of imprisonment.
Russia, Navalnyj’s daughter: “I saw FSB agents everywhere after my father’s poisoning”
The daughter of Russian opponent Alexei Navalnyj, Daria Navalnaya, told the weekly “Der Spiegel” that she started seeing “everywhere” agents of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) following the attempted poisoning of her father. in 2020. The young woman added that she was “amazed” when she discovered that the Russian intelligence agency had been following her father “for three and a half years”.
According to Daria, the service also tried to make an attempt on the life of her mother Julija Navalnayja. “It was a disturbing reality for me, I started to be constantly worried and I almost became a bit paranoid”, admitted the young woman. In this regard, Daria recalled having started to see “seeing agents everywhere” and having thought with reference to the attack against her father: “If they do something like this in Russia who will stop them from finding dad in a hospital in Germany and get the job done? “.
Following the poisoning in Russia, Navalnyj was hospitalized in a coma at the Charite ‘, the university polyclinic in Berlin, on the initiative of the German government of the then Chancellor Angela Merkel. When asked what she feels about those who tried to kill her father, Navalnyj’s daughter replied: “Anger, misunderstanding”. Furthermore, Daria stressed, the fact that FSB agents “blindly carry out the order to kill someone just because they disagree on how our state works, shows that Putin is afraid of my father, and that my father is doing something. right! “.
Finally, the young woman has the “fear for life” of the parent, but “this means that she is doing something right”. Navalny has been in prison since last January in a penal colony for having violated his parole in the Yves Rocher case, a procedure in which he was found guilty of embezzlement.
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