A Moscow court has ordered the closure of the Memorial Human Rights Center, one day after another court shut down the group's main parent organization, capping a year of administrative moves by the state to throttle civil society across the country.
The widely expected ruling on December 29 by the Moscow City Court was based on the finding that the organization had violated the country’s draconian "foreign agent" law, which has been used with growing frequency against rights groups, journalists, lawyers, civil society activists, and others.
Among other things, the law requires organizations deemed to be "foreign agents" to include an intrusive label on everything they publish or broadcast.
Outside the court building, a crowd of several dozen stood in freezing temperatures chanting "Shame! Shame!" after the ruling was announced.
The day before, the Supreme Court ordered the closure of Memorial International, a venerable rights group that was set up just prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union to try and catalog the breadth of Stalin-era repressions.
During that hearing, one prosecutor accused Memorial of creating "a false image of the U.S.S.R. as a terrorist state and [denigrating] the memory of World War II." Memorial officials have denied the accusation.
Memorial International is both a stand-alone group and the umbrella organization for many regional branches and the Memorial Human Rights Center, which is the main domestic entity for Memorial within Russia.
Rights activists argued there were no legal grounds to liquidate the organization, which counts Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov as one of its founders.
"Today we heard that the filing of the claims against the Memorial International and the Human Rights Center on the same day was just a coincidence. I don't think anyone in the audience believes it. This indicates that the goals are political. The state does not like what [Memorial] is doing and saying," lawyer Ilya Novikov was quoted as telling the court.
"Whether a ship sinks to the bottom with its flag raised or lowers it voluntarily is extremely important," Novikov was quoted as saying. "Memorial is going to the bottom with its flag raised, it will not be lowered."
Memorial initially focused on trying to document Soviet repression, documenting thousands of victims who ended up in the gulag network of labor camps or were summarily executed by Soviet secret police.
In the decades since, the group has produced hallmark indicators of the country’s rights situation and documented more contemporary injustices.
By closing the organization, the government "is trying to break the red flashing light that signals that something is wrong, and not to solve the problem itself," said Vitaly Cherkasov, a lawyer who was not part of the Memorial legal team.
During the Moscow court hearing, prosecutors suggested Memorial's support for public protests was aimed at destabilizing the country, and that its running list of people and organizations it considers to be political prisoners created "a negative perception of the Russian judicial system and disinformation of citizens."
That list includes well-known political figures such as corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny.
It also includes many religious groups and believers who have been labeled extremist under a separate, similarly draconian law. Those include Jehovah's Witnesses, a denomination that has been relentlessly targeted by the Russian authorities, and Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic organization. Both are outlawed in Russia.
President Vladimir Putin has suggested the group was advocating for "terrorist and extremist organizations."
The two court decisions have been met with condemnation by Western governments and human rights activists.
"Memorial has worked tirelessly for decades to ensure abuses of Soviet era are never forgotten. Its closure is another chilling blow to freedom of expression in Russia," British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a post to Twitter.
The European Court for Human Rights, meanwhile, called on Russia to suspend enforcement of the ruling pending an appeal from both Memorial organizations. It's unclear whether Moscow would comply with the request. Russia routinely ignores rulings from the court, which is the continent's main rights court.
The court "decided to indicate to the government of Russia...that in the interests of parties and the proper conduct of the proceedings before it, the enforcement of the decision to dissolve the applicant organizations [Memorial International and Memorial Human Rights Center] should be suspended for a period that would be necessary for the court to consider" Memorial's case at the ECHR.
The "foreign agent" law was adopted initially in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly.
It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance, and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as "foreign agents," and to submit to audits. More recent amendments have targeted media organizations, individual journalists, and even defense lawyers.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was among the first media organizations deemed to be a "foreign agent."
