Russia: Court shuts down human rights group Memorial

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Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the liquidation of the Memorial International human rights group, in Moscow on Tuesday.

“Court decided to satisfy the lawsuit by the Prosecutor General’s office to dissolve the international non-governmental organization Memorial International Historical and Educational Charitable and Human Rights Society, its regional branches and local divisions,” the judge said her verdict.

Memorial International lawyer Maria Eismont said that the group would appeal the decision and vowed to continue their work.

“Of course, nothing ends here - we will appeal [the court decision]. The Memorial will continue [its work], the people [will continue their work], because above all the Memorial is the people who do this great work that they do,” she said.

Another defense counsel, Henri Reznik, said that Memorial has “prospects for an appeal to Russia’s Constitutional Court or the European Court”.

“The point is that the court had great opportunity to justify the decision to dismiss the suit both with reference to non-compliance with international legal norms, which in this case are mandatory and with reference literally to the letter of this imperfect law because the suit statement itself violates the letter of this law,” he added.

Memorial received a notification from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on November 11. According to the document, the Prosecutor General’s Office brought an action against the human rights group due to violations of Russia’s “foreign agent” legislation.

SOUNDBITES:

C/U Judge reading verdict *UPSOUND* Judge (Russian): “[Having considered] in an open court hearing the administrative lawsuit on the administrative claim of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation to liquidate the international non-governmental organization International Historical and Educational Charitable Human Rights Society Memorial. Guided by Articles 174, 177 of the Code of Administrative Court Procedure of the Russian Federation, Court decided to the lawsuit by the Prosecutor General’s office to dissolve the international non-governmental organization Memorial International Historical and Educational Charitable and Human Rights Society, its regional branches and local divisions”.

SOT, Henri Reznik, Memorial International lawyer (Russian): “There are prospects for an appeal to Russia’s Constitutional Court or the European Court. The team will discuss this and determine it later professionally, with a cool head, after getting over from taking drinks on New Year’s Eve.”

SOT, Henri Reznik, Memorial International lawyer (Russian): “The point is that the court had great opportunity to justify the decision to dismiss the suit both with reference to non-compliance with international legal norms, which in this case are mandatory and with reference literally to the letter of this imperfect law because the suit statement itself violates the letter of this law.”

SOT, Maria Eismont, Memorial International lawyer (Russian): “Of course, nothing ends here - we will appeal [the court decision]. The Memorial will continue [its work], the people [will continue their work], because above all the Memorial is the people who do this great work that they do. The Memorial will continue its work, this work will continue because it is extremely important.”

SOT, Tatiana Glushkova, Memorial International representative (Russian): “Probably the things representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office said during the debate were more important. The fact is that we have consistently seen their position change during the course of this trial. They started with the fact that International Memorial failed to mark several of its publications, and that’s a reason to liquidate it. In the process, we heard that in fact, that the labelling we used was inappropriate, it was not enough, labelling should have been done differently. Only during the trials, Roskomnadzor said about how it saw this labelling for the first time in the nine years of the existence of the Foreign Agents law, although before that all attempts to get this information from it failed. Finally, it was made clear in the debates that the problem is not really with the labelling, but with the activities of International Memorial.”

Video ID: 20211228-027

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