The General Prosecutor’s Office applied for the dissolution of the largest Russian human rights organization “MEMORIAL”.

ISHR URGENTLY APPEALS FOR SOLIDARITY WITH MEMORIAL

Russia wants to destroy the last bastion for human rights. According to a letter from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on November 11, 2021, the General Prosecutor’s Office applied for the dissolution of the largest Russian human rights organization “MEMORIAL”. Find, sign, forward the online petition for MEMORIAL of the German Association for East European Studies.

When the organization founded in 1987 under the Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov was banned, the last great bastion for the victims of Stalinism and today’s dictatorial Russia fell.

11.11. The human rights organization MEMORIAL was sent a letter from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation informing them that the Supreme Court had filed for its liquidation. This was justified with repeated violations of the law on “Foreign Agents” with which one has been trying in an ever-expanding form since 2012 to nip any opposition in the country in the bud.

This year in particular, against the background of the Duma elections in September, the steady expansions of this law turned into grotesque high forms that marked the end of many well-known human rights organizations. The “soldier mothers”, who have received many international awards for their work and with whom the ISHR has been closely associated for decades, had to give up their sails in October.

MEMORIAL, the largest Russian human rights instance, has so far survived despite defamation, persecution, searches, numerous imprisonment and fines. But just in this year, the year in which its first chairman, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, would have turned one hundred years old, it became the target of the Russian central power. Exhibitions in honor of the anniversary were banned and recently they were declared from victim to perpetrator in a massive violence attack by right-wing extremists.

And obviously the “MEMORIAL question” should be resolved this year and – if all repression doesn’t help, then with a legal ban. This would mean that the last great bastion for the victims of Stalinism and today’s dictatorial Russia would fall in Russia.

The ISHR, whose founding history 50 years ago is directly linked to the dissident movement of the Soviet Union, therefore appeals very deeply and urgently to solidarity with MEMORIAL.

Against this background, the ISHR reported in more detail at the beginning of the year.