MOSCOW: Russia’s Supreme Court ordered on Tuesday the check of Memorial, the country’s most prominent rights group that told Stalin-era purges and symbolized post-Soviet democratization, sparking a transnational roar.
The court ruling against Memorial International, the group’s central structure, caps a time that began with the jailing of President Vladimir Putin’s top critic Alexei Navalny and saw a major crackdown on rights groups and independent media.
But the ban against Memorial stands out indeed in the current climate and would have been inconceivable just a many times agone.
Judge Alla Nazarova ordered the check of Memorial International and its indigenous branches after prosecutors indicted the organization for failing to mark its publications with a marker of “ foreign agent”, the label for groups that admit finances from overseas.
“ Disgrace! Disgrace!” sympathizers cried in court after the ruling.
Prosecutors also indicted Memorial International of denigrating the memory of the Soviet Union and its palms and rehabilitating “ Nazi culprits”.
During Tuesday’s hail, a prosecutor said Memorial “ creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state and denigrates the memory of World War II”.
The court decision is the hardest blow yet to the organization innovated in 1989 by Soviet dissentients including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov.
The ruling came after Putin indicted the group of championing for “ terrorist and revolutionist organizations”.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, Memorial International said it would appeal and find “ legal ways” to continue its work.
“ Keepsake isn’t an organization, it isn’t indeed a social movement,” the statement said. “ Keepsake is the need of the citizens of Russia to know the verity about its woeful history, about the fate of numerous millions of people.”
The court ruling sparked a transnational counterreaction, with US minister John Sullivan calling it “ a blatant and woeful attempt to suppress freedom of expression and abolish history.” “ The dissolution of Memorial International is a terrible loss for the Russian people,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, adding the decision was “ deeply fussing for the future of literal exploration and the defense of mortal rights in Russia.” Marija Pejcinovic Buric, clerk general of the Council of Europe, said Russia appeared to be moving “ further down from our common European norms and values.” “ The liquidation of International Memorial is ruinous news for civil society in the Russian Federation,” she said.
Dozens of sympathizers gathered outside the courthouse in indurating temperatures and several people were detained.
Keepsake is a loose structure of locally registered organizations, with Memorial International maintaining the network’s expansive libraries in Moscow and coordinating its work. The group has spent times listing atrocities committed in the Soviet Union, especially in the notorious network of captivity camps, the Gulag. Sympathizers say its check signals the end of a period in Russia’spost-Soviet democratization process, which began 30 times ago this month.
Author Leonid Bakhnov, whose forefather was executed at the peak of Stalin- period purges in 1937, said the group’s check was “ a tragedy for Russia”. “ What an awful New Year they arranged for us,” he said plaintively.
