Tomb of the communist dictator Iósif Stalin, in Moscow, whose crimes the NGO Memorial was investigating. /
The NGO Memorial unmasked the crimes of the communist dictator, Iósif Stalin, to rehabilitate his victims, pay homage to them and prevent them from falling into oblivion
After a month and a half of sessions and deliberations, the Supreme Court of Russia decided on Tuesday to outlaw the NGO Memorial, an organization whose main work has been to unmask the crimes of the communist dictator, Iósif Stalin, achieve the rehabilitation of his victims, pay homage to them and prevent them from falling into oblivion. Memorial has documented the brutal Stalinist repression, purges, summary executions and prison sentences in the Gulag, the terrible prison camps from which it was impossible to escape. Over time, he incorporated into his activity the assistance to political prisoners and the defense of Human Rights in general.
Judge Alla Nazárova read the sentence on Tuesday, according to which all organizations linked to Memorial are banned. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, in the words of prosecutor Alexei Yafiárov, assured during the trial that Memorial, which had previously been stigmatized as a “foreign agent”, “represents a public threat, since it speculates in relation to repression of a political nature (…) And creates a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state ». Yafiárov also based the dissolution petition on “constant violations of the law on foreign agents.”
A large group of opposition activists gathered outside the court building who, after hearing the ruling ordering the closure of Memorial, shouted “disgrace, disgrace! Defense attorney for the NGO, Henri Réznik, described the sentence as “politically motivated”. In his opinion, “the speech of the Prosecutor’s Office has reminded us of the repressive trials of 1930”, organized against Stalin’s adversaries and also instigated by imperatives of a political nature.
And, indeed, the ban on Memorial is part of the repressive wave launched by the Kremlin against its critics, which has been intensified in 2021 with the arrest and imprisonment of the opposition leader, Aléxei Navalni, in addition to the dismantling of its platform, the called the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).
“Nefarious and unfair” decision
Another of Memorial’s lawyers, María Eismont, said Tuesday that what happened with Memorial “is a disastrous, unfair decision (…) it returns Russia to its past and increases the danger of further repression.” At the same time, in another judicial case opened in the Moscow Municipal Court, whose hearing is scheduled for today, Wednesday, Memorial is accused of “apology for terrorism and extremism” of ensuring the conditions of detention of people accused of crimes of terrorism, usually members of radical Islamic organizations.
On November 11, the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit with the Municipal Court of the Russian capital against the Human Rights section of Memorial and the General Prosecutor’s Office against the organization as a whole, which groups 50 entities and receives international funding, for allegedly violating the Foreign Agent Law “systematically and repeatedly”.
Memorial, listed as a “foreign agent” since 2016 and therefore obliged to present itself as such in its publications and events, denies having breached the law and stresses that ensuring that humane treatment is guaranteed in prison, including terrorists, does not It means agreeing with their activities, much less justifying or apologetic about them.
Soviet dissidents
Memorial was created in 1988 by Soviet dissidents, including the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, with the main objective of investigating crimes committed during the Stalin era. But later, especially after the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, came to power, he extended his investigations against all kinds of abuses in other areas, for example, atrocities committed by troops and security forces in Chechnya or by Russian mercenaries in Chechnya. Ukraine and other countries.
The head of Memorial in Chechnya, Natalia Estemírova, was kidnapped and then shot to the head in July 2009. So far the crime has not been clarified.
But the general clamor in support of Memorial has been unanimous. The UN, the EU, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, Amnesty International and the Russian Nobel laureates, Mikhail Gorbachev and Dmitry Murátov, have shown their solidarity. In the opinion of the deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, Boris Vishnevski, “the heirs of Stalin’s executioners want to destroy one of the main human rights organizations in Russia because it prevents their crimes from being forgotten.”
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