MOSCOW – Russia’s Supreme Court yesterday ordered the closure of Memorial, the country’s most prominent rights group that chronicled Stalin-era purges and symbolised post-Soviet democratisation.
The ruling against Memorial International, the group’s central structure, caps a year that began with the jailing of President Vladimir Putin’s top critic Alexei Navalny and saw a historic crackdown on rights groups and independent media.
But the ban against Memorial stands out even in the current climate and would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
Judge Alla Nazarova ordered the closure of Memorial International and its regional branches after prosecutors accused the organisation of failing to mark its publications with a “foreign agent” label, the tag for groups receiving overseas funds.
“Disgrace! Disgrace!” supporters shouted in court after the ruling.
Prosecutors also accused Memorial International of denigrating the memory of the Soviet Union and its victories and rehabilitating “Nazi criminals”.
During yesterday’s hearing, a prosecutor said Memorial “creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state and denigrates the memory of World War II”.
The decision is the hardest blow yet to the organisation founded in 1989 by Soviet dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov.
The ruling came after Putin accused the group of advocating for “terrorist and extremist organisations”.
In a statement yesterday evening, Memorial International said it would appeal and find “legal ways” to continue its work.
“Memorial is not an organisation, it is not even a social movement,” the statement said. “Memorial is the need of the citizens of Russia to know the truth about its tragic past, about the fate of many millions of people.” – AFP, December 29, 2021
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