Russia announced Friday the closure of the local offices of several reputable human rights NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
This announcement came in the midst of a Russian-Western showdown around Ukraine, where Russia has been leading a military offensive since February 24.
The local representation of Amnesty (United Kingdom) and that of HRW (United States) have “been excluded from the official register of foreign non-governmental organizations” in Russia, because of “violations of Russian legislation”, according to a press release published in the evening by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
Among the other NGOs excluded from this register, 15 in total, are the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace (United States), the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (Germany) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Germany).
NGOs punished for telling the truth in the Kremlin
This is de facto their closure, Amnesty said in a statement.
“Today, the Russian authorities have closed the representations of Amnesty International and other international NGOs,” she said.
The NGOs have thus been “punished for having defended human rights and having told the truth to the Russian authorities”, estimated Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty, quoted in the press release.
“The authorities are deeply mistaken if they believe that by closing our office in Moscow, they will be able to put an end to our work aimed at documenting and exposing human rights violations,” she said.
“redouble efforts”
Amnesty will now “redouble its efforts to expose Russia’s gross human rights violations at home and abroad”, according to Agnès Callamard.
Human Rights Watch, established in Russia for 30 years, also assured that it would continue its work in the country.
“HRW has been present in Russia since Soviet times, when it was a closed totalitarian state. We found ways to document human rights abuses at the time and we will do so in the future,” Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at HRW, said in a statement.
Since the start of the military operation in Ukraine, the sites of many Russian and foreign media have been blocked in Russia.
In March, the authorities also passed several laws punishing heavy prison sentences for what they consider to be “false information” about the conflict.
Another NGO dissolved at the end of March
At the end of March, the Supreme Court of Russia also confirmed the dissolution of the NGO Memorial, a pillar of Russian civil society and guardian of the memory of the millions of victims of crimes of the USSR.
Russian justice ordered the dissolution of this NGO in December, accusing it of not having specified its status as a “foreign agent” in certain publications.
Those who are qualified as “foreign agents” in Russia, under a law passed in 2012, are required to present themselves as such in each of their publications, including on social networks. And the media that mention them must also specify this each time.
The law concerns organizations receiving funding from abroad and having “political activity”, a vague concept.
The dissolution of the NGO Memorial has highlighted the extent of the all-out repression in Vladimir Putin’s Russia since 2020.
This turn of the screw has been reinforced since the beginning of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, on February 24, with the blocking of foreign social networks, many independent media and the arrest of thousands of demonstrators opposed to the offensive.