Russian justice examines Thursday, December 23 a request to dissolve the Human Rights Center of the Memorial NGO, pillar of civil society and the latest target in a campaign targeting critical voices of the Kremlin.
Read alsoThe Memorial NGO risks the "liquidation"
The trial is due to open Thursday without an audience or journalists in the courtroom, with the Moscow court arguing for health restrictions to limit access. The prosecution accuses the Memorial branch in charge of human rights for having violated certain obligations deriving from its status of
"foreign agent"
, a label reserved for organizations considered to be working against Russian interests with foreign funding. The same Center is also accused of apologizing for
"extremism and terrorism"
for the publication of a list of prisoners including the names of members of religious or political groups banned in Russia.
“This is not an exercise! The court may well decide to close the Memorial on the same day
,
”
the Human Rights Center warned on Telegram on Monday.
These prosecutions are part of a climate of growing repression targeting those perceived as opponents of the Kremlin, whether they are NGOs, independent media or the movement of imprisoned opponent Alexeï Navalny, banned in June for
"extremism. "
.
Since the start of the year, the anti-Kremlin opposition has come under legal assault, forcing many of its figures into exile, while others have been imprisoned.
"Memorial is not the enemy of the people, Memorial is the friend of the people"
Journalist Dmitry Muratov, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Memorial International, the umbrella organization for the various subsidiaries of the NGO, is also threatened with dissolution in a trial before the Supreme Court, where the next hearing is scheduled for December 28. Founded in 1989 by Soviet dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, Memorial's mission is to shed light on the Gulag and the crimes of the Soviet Union. After the end of the USSR, she also became involved in the defense of human rights. During the two Chechen wars, she distinguished herself by documenting the abuses of Russian forces and their Chechen allies. In 2009, Natalia Estemirova, head of the NGO in this region of the Caucasus, was assassinated. The crime has never been elucidated.The Human Rights Center also defends the rights of political prisoners, migrants and sexual minorities.
Read also The descendants of Stalin's victims in search of the truth
The threat of liquidation of the NGO, which enjoys great prestige in the West, has therefore aroused a wave of indignation.
“Memorial is not the enemy of the people, Memorial is the friend of the people,”
journalist Dmitri Mouratov said in mid-December, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. The supporters of the NGO consider that the Putinian authorities want to suppress the Memorial in order to ignore the history of the Soviet repressions, because the Kremlin has more at heart to celebrate the heroism of the USSR in the face of the Nazis than the memory of millions of victims of Stalin. On December 9, Vladimir Putin himself accused Memorial of having classified collaborators of Hitler's Germany as victims of Stalinist repressions. Memorial replied that it wasa one-time error, corrected since.
The NGO in turn accuses the authorities of complicating its work, by limiting access to archives or by classifying the identities of the perpetrators of the Soviet purges secret.
Memorial also accuses the Russian authorities of having set up a case of sexual assault against one of its historians, Yuri Dmitriev, sentenced in 2020 to 13 years in prison, in order to punish him for his research on Stalinist terror .
