Thursday November 11, 2021
Moscow wants dissolution
The end of the Russian organization Memorial is imminent
Russia is making a fresh attempt to ban the human rights organization Memorial. According to her, this has requested the General Prosecutor’s Office. The background to this is the charge of having violated the law on “Foreign Agents”.
Russia’s most renowned human rights organization, Memorial, is threatened with end: As the organization announced, the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office has applied to the Supreme Court to dissolve it. Memorial said she was accused of “systematically” violating the “Foreign Agents” law. According to the court’s website, a hearing has been scheduled for November 25th.
The largest and oldest human rights organization, which was founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents during perestroika, spoke of a “political decision to destroy Memorial”. The organization went on to say: “We have repeatedly pointed out that the law was intended from the outset as a tool to suppress independent organizations and we have insisted that it be abolished.”
Memorial has been campaigning for years to come to terms with communist terror and for the protection of human and civil rights in today’s Russia. The non-governmental organization has been registered as a “foreign agent” since 2016 because it is partially financed from abroad. Affected organizations, the media or even individuals are obliged to disclose their sources of finance and to identify themselves as a listed “foreign agent” in all publications.
In 2015, the Supreme Court rejected an application by the Russian Ministry of Justice to dissolve Memorial. If the group is actually disbanded this time, “Russia will finally become a totalitarian state,” said Russian human rights activist Soja Swetowa on the radio station Moscow Echo.
The Russian authorities have steadily increased the pressure on non-governmental organizations and on independent and opposition media in recent months. Most of them are now classified as “foreign agents”. At the same time, the number of political prisoners is increasing: at the end of October, Memorial listed at least 420 political prisoners, including the opposition politician Alexej Navalny. In 2015 there were 46.