The liquidation of the human rights organization Memorial is a blow not only to Russian civil society, but also to European values, more than 60 German human rights activists, politicians, journalists and historians said in a collective statement. “We oppose the unjustified attack on Memorial and call on the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to immediately withdraw the claim to liquidate International Memorial and the Memorial Human Rights Center,” reads an open letter dated Friday, November 12.
The signatories also appealed to the governments of Germany and the European Union with an appeal “to do everything possible to protect Memorial, its employees and Russian civil society.”
A blow to European values
The crackdown on Memorial is more than an attack on a historical and educational project, the letter’s authors insist. “By their actions, the Russian authorities will deal a heavy blow to Russian civil society and huge damage to relations with Europe,” they warn, noting that the attack on the human rights center will push Russia even further away from European values enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Memorial was founded in 1989 by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and other human rights activists. Since then, he has been analyzing political repression in the USSR and protecting human rights in the present, the signatories explain.
Among the signatories are Peter Franck, an expert on Russia at Amnesty International in Germany, historian and publicist Karl Schlögel, Director of the Center for Eastern European and International Studies Gwendolyn Sasse, writer and publicist Katya Petrovskaya and MEP Lagodinsky.
Liquidation of “Memorial”
On November 11, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office applied to the Supreme Court with a demand to liquidate International Memorial for “systematic violations” of the law on “foreign agents”, namely, for refusing to be labeled “foreign agent”. At the same time, the Moscow prosecutor’s office filed a claim with the Moscow City Court to liquidate the Memorial human rights center.
The materials of the center “contain linguistic and psychological signs of justifying the activities” of terrorist and extremist organizations, according to the motivation part of the claim. This is a list of political prisoners maintained by human rights activists, the center explained. In addition, the center ignores the requirements for labeling “foreign agent”, said the supervisory authority.
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