The historic organization for the defense of freedoms, dissolved at the end of December by the courts, is the subject of a police raid on Friday. A turn of the screw in line with the repression suffered by the critical media in recent days.
Already bludgeoned by justice, the NGO Memorial, the most emblematic of Russia, undergoes searches this Friday morning in its premises. “The Memorial searches are underway at both offices” Muscovites of the organization told the Memorial Human Rights Center on its Telegram account, without specifying the reason.
A pillar of the defense of human rights, the association founded in 1988 by historians to shed light on the crimes of communism had been dissolved on December 28 by the Russian Supreme Court, after years of struggle against an increasingly repressive. The next day, it was the turn of the Memorial Human Rights Center, its human rights branch, to be liquidated. The verdict was confirmed on February 28.
“The motive is not known”
The searches undertaken this Friday are part of Russia’s all-out repression of Vladimir Putin since 2020. A repression that has taken a new turn with the invasion of Ukraine, parliamentarians rushing to adopt laws repressive of freedom of expression. Shortly after Memorial’s message on Telegram, it was the turn of the Civic Assistance Committee, a historic Russian migrant aid NGO, to report being raided by the police. “The motive is not known”the organization said on social media.
The Kremlin’s turn of the screw had begun with the media, to regain control of a front dominated by Ukraine since the start of the war: the historic Echo radio station in Moscow announced that it would stop broadcasting on Wednesday, a first since its creation in 1990, powered by Mikhail Gorbachev. Then it was the turn of the online television channel Dojd, which was forced to cut its antenna, while access to several international media sites was restricted. The information site Znak told him on Friday “stopping work because of excessive restrictions”.