Russia: justice orders the seizure of the offices of the NGO Memorial

The offices of the NGO Memorial, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, have been seized by Russian justice. It had been banned in Russia since December 2021.

SourceAFP

QA few hours after winning the Nobel Peace Prize alongside a Belarusian activist and a Ukrainian NGO, a Moscow court on Friday ordered the seizure of the offices in the Russian capital of Memorial, banned from Russia. The main premises of Memorial in Russia “have been transformed into public property”, the Tverskoy court told the Interfax news agency after yet another trial against the NGO.

Memorial’s downtown Moscow offices housed the organization’s administrative departments, as well as regularly hosting exhibitions open to the public. A representative of the Tverskoy court claimed that Memorial “marked its involvement in the rehabilitation of Nazi criminals, discredited the authorities and created a false image of the USSR”, according to the Ria Novosti news agency.

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Banned in Russia since December 2021, Memorial is a reference in the fight for freedoms and the memory of political repressions in the country and in the former USSR. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him on Friday, jointly with Belarusian activist Ales Beliatski and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, in the midst of Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.