From the MT:
“Russian Court Orders Closure
of Renowned Rights Group Memorial”
(Supporters of the Memorial
rights group gather outside Russia's Supreme Court during a hearing in
Memorial's case.)
Russia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday
ordered the shuttering of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights watchdog, for
repeatedly violating the country’s foreign agent law. The group's closure
rounds out a year in which Russian authorities have cracked down on nearly all
forms of dissent, from Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's opposition groups to
independent news outlets and rights organizations. State prosecutors argued
that the group systematically refused to label itself as a “foreign agent” on
its website and other published materials as is required. Memorial has
maintained that there was “no legal basis” for the case against it and called
the law a tool to crack down on independent groups. For Memorial’s supporters,
the move to liquidate the organization is a hammer blow to Russia’s already
beleaguered civil society, and to efforts to come to terms with the country’s
traumatic 20th century. “Shutting down Memorial is worse than a crime,” Vyacheslav
Igrunov, a Soviet-era dissident and founding member of the organization, told
The Moscow Times. “It’s a terrible
mistake that will come back to bite the authorities.”
Exposing repressions Founded
in the twilight of the Soviet Union by nuclear physicist turned anti-communist
dissident Andrei Sakharov, Memorial aimed to support human rights in
contemporary Russia while highlighting historical abuses in the U.S.S.R. As
Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform program opened the door to discussions of Stalin-era
repressions, Memorial took a leading role in publicizing many of the Soviet
Union’s worst excesses, including the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish prisoners
of war. In a joint statement last month, Gorbachev and Novaya Gazeta editor and
2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov warned against Memorial’s
closure, saying the case has “caused anxiety and concern in the country, which
we share.”
Among the countries of the former Soviet
Union and wider communist bloc, the fate of Memorial — which investigated
Soviet repressions against their citizens — has prompted unease. Amid an
earlier hearing in November, the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia issued a joint statement condemning efforts to shut down the group. A
petition in support of the organization had been signed by over 138,000 people.
In the hours before the verdict was announced Tuesday, a group of around
200 Memorial supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court to show their
support, despite the December cold. For 23-year-old economics graduate student
Artemy Korulko, Memorial’s fate was personal. Korulko’s great-grandfather was
shot as a Polish spy during Stalin’s 1937 purges, and Memorial had investigated
his case upon its founding in the perestroika years. “I’m here to register my
opinion. Memorial has helped my family, and it’s my duty to return the favor
now.” As well-wishers outside the courtroom waited for the verdict, a string of
supporters were arrested for mounting solitary pickets, eliciting shouts of
support from the gathered crowd.
Memory wars For some
observers, it is Memorial’s work in the historical field that has placed it in
the Kremlin’s crosshairs. With President Vladimir Putin presiding over a
limited rehabilitation of the Soviet past, including defending Josef Stalin’s
wartime leadership and foreign policy, Memorial’s investigation of the totalitarian
past has fallen out of official favor. With Russia’s modern-day security
services — the heirs to the Stalin-era NKVD secret police — widely thought to
have the president’s ear, aspersions cast on their predecessor organizations
can be politically perilous. Ahead
of the ruling, a state prosecutor argued in court argued that Memorial had
blackened the Soviet Union's wartime legacy, asking, "Why do we, the
offspring of victors, have to repent and be embarrassed, instead of being proud
of our glorious past?" “Memorial has become the primary opponent of
the official position on history,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the
Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. “The authorities imagine that if you
destroy the organization, you can destroy its narrative too.”
But as Russia’s post-Soviet
political system took a more authoritarian turn, Memorial’s focus shifted
toward exposing modern-day abuses. The organization’s work documenting human
rights abuses in war-torn Chechnya implicated the Russian army, Chechen
separatists and the local pro-Russian regime of Ramzan Kadyrov in atrocities.
The 2009 murder of Natalia Estemirova, a local Memorial representative, was
widely seen as retaliation for the group’s work. Meanwhile, Memorial helped set
up OVD-Info, a Moscow-based service that provides legal assistance to those
jailed at protest rallies, and which recently joined its parent organization in
being designated a foreign agent. For founder Igrunov, Memorial’s political
work is likely what attracted the Kremlin’s ire amid a thoroughgoing crackdown
on Russia’s opposition and civil society groups. “The authorities have come to
fear the things Memorial says,” he said. “This kind of work isn’t acceptable in
Russia anymore.”
In 2014, Memorial became one of
the first organizations targeted under Russia’s 2012 law on foreign agents,
under which groups accused of receiving foreign money are obliged to make
lengthy financial declarations and include the status on all materials they
produce. Though the charges filed against Memorial officially relate to the
organization’s failure to label books sold at a Moscow event with the
disclaimer required of “foreign agent” organizations, many of Memorial’s
supporters suspect the charges are motivated by revenge for its human rights
work. The Meduza news website has reported that Memorial’s violations of the
foreign agent law were reported by the local FSB office in Ingushetia, a small
North Caucasus region with close ties to neighboring Chechnya.
'We'll start from scratch' However,
despite the bleak legal outlook, Memorial veterans insist that the organization
— which is highly decentralized and includes more than 60 branches across
Russia’s 85 regions — will continue to exist, in one form or another. “In
the worst-case scenario, we’ll start everything again from scratch,” said Elena
Zhemkova, executive director of International Memorial, at a recent press
conference. “We’ll find the money all over again, and we’ll find the
facilities all over again.” However, recent actions against those
cooperating with Memorial suggest the organization’s difficulties will not end
with today’s ruling. Over the weekend, Russian authorities blocked the
website of OVD-Info for allegedly promoting “terrorism and extremism.” In
2016, Yury Dmitriyev, a historian who worked with Memorial to investigate
Stalin-era mass graves in Karelia, near the border with Finland, was arrested
on charges of pedophilia. His 2020 conviction and sentencing to 13 years
in prison was seen by some commentators as a warning shot against those looking
to unearth the dark side of the Soviet past, and a harbinger of what might yet
be in store for them.
^ Memorial survived the Soviet
Dictatorship from 1987 to 1991 and it will survive Putin’s Dictatorship (2000-Present)
despite the actions of Putin and his minions to silence them. Putin doesn’t
want his modern-day abuses (in Crimea, in eastern Ukraine or around Russia) to
be made public and so has gone after Memorial. The ordinary Russian sees and
understands what is going on and what has been going on within their country
and what their country has done and continues to do around the world. In public
they have to follow Putin’s Cult of Personality, but in private they speak the
truth as Russians have for Centuries (during Czarist Times, during Soviet Times
and now during Putin’s Time.) It’s how Russians have survived the different
repressions, murder and Dictatorships that have always plagued Russia. ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.