Russian Supreme Court orders NGOs closure

Russian Supreme Court orders NGOs closure

Memorial International held responsible for violations of the law on 'foreign agents'

The Supreme Court of Russia has ordered the closing of Memorial International, one of the country's oldest and well-respected human rights organizations.

Supreme Court judge Alla Nazarova cited the systematic violations of the law on "foreign agents" as the reason for liquidation.

The non-government organization (NGO) was established in the late 1980s to bring to light the crimes committed by the Soviet regime. These pertained to the victims of dictator Josef Stalin's political purges and the atrocities committed during the World War II era.

The controversial foreign agent law was first introduced in Russia in 2012 and modified later. The law requires NGOs receiving foreign donations and engaging in political activities to formally register and identify themselves as 'foreign agents.' In Russian, the term bears Cold War-era connotations of espionage. The law was earlier used by Russia to pressure the NGOs to disband.

Representing the Russia Prosecutor General's Office, the prosecutor, Aleksey Zhafyarov, argued that Memorial International had failed to label itself as a foreign agent. He added that the NGO had created a "false image of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as a terrorist state." Zhafyarov also described the NGO as critical of the Russian state.

Legal representatives for the NGO countered by arguing that the government's case was politically motivated. They stated that the foreign agent law was not a legitimate basis for liquidation. Even otherwise, the NGO had complied with the law by marking all documents with the foreign agent indicator.

Following the court's order, the NGOs representative Maria Eismont stated that Memorial International intended to appeal the case. She said, "Memorial will live on because of the people behind it who were serving the great cause."

Memorial International has faced increased pressure in recent years for its work to elucidate tragedies committed between the early Soviet periods to post-Soviet warfare in Chechnya. This occurred against the backdrop of a dramatic surge in the popularity of Stalin.

Russian independent pollster the Levada Center found that as of May 2021, about 56 percent of Russians categorized Stalin as a "great leader." The figure had doubled since 2016. The trend was described by a Carnegie Moscow Centre analyst as "an entirely natural consequence of the policy advanced and sponsored by Russia of historical amnesia and the literal rewriting of history."