For 25 years, Memorial has uncovered communist era repression and modern day discrimination. Now, the justice ministry is calling for it to be shut down. RFE/RL reports

Russia’s justice ministry has asked the supreme court to close Memorial, the country’s best-known human rights organisation which groups together more than 50 agencies nationwide.

Founded in 1989 under the auspices of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, Memorial is celebrated for leading efforts to uncover communist-era repressions and fight discrimination in modern day Russia.

However, a lawsuit filed by the ministry on 24 September was accepted by the Supreme Court the next day, according to reports from Russian news agencies last week.

Russian prosecutors had earlier attempted to have Memorial officially registered as a “foreign agent” under a new Russian law, but a Moscow court struck down that request.

A hearing in the lawsuit to liquidate the group is set to be held on 13 November, according to the supreme court’s website.

Reports did not mention on what grounds the Justice Ministry is seeking to have Memorial closed.

Yan Rachinsky, a member of Memorial’s board, said the lawsuit was groundless. He said that the group planned to file a complaint to Russia’s constitutional Court.

“The justice ministry is restricting citizens’ rights to associate,” Interfax cited Rachinsky as saying. “Furthermore, the justice ministry doesn’t have a solid constitutional basis. [It] does not have the authority to interfere with citizens’ constitutional rights.”

Created in the late 1980s by a group of Soviet-era dissidents, including Sakharov, Memorial has served as a rights watchdog and an important source of Soviet-era records for historians for a quarter of a century.

This week, the head of Russia’s presidential Human Rights Council said there are “no grounds” to close the organisation.

Mikhail Fedotov told the Interfax that the supreme court hearing should be postponed until after a planned Memorial conference on 19 November, when it is expected to announce changes to its organisational structure.

Memorial chairman Arseny Roginsky, a former prisoner in a Soviet gulag, said the ministry had not formally informed the organisation about the lawsuit. Instead, it received a telegram from the supreme court stating that the lawsuit would be heard.

Roginsky said the ministry has long had problems with Memorial’s organisational structure; instead of having a head office that opens local branches across Russia, Memorial consists of dozens of independent grassroots organisations that joined up after they were founded.

Roginsky said if the supreme court does rule in favour of closing Memorial, it would not mean these organisations will all be shuttered.

“Some will have to re-register, and then we will figure out a way to unite once again,” he told RBK news agency.

Memorial’s memorable campaigns

Soviet era crimes: The organisation’s founding goal was to document the crimes of Soviet totalitarianism, which is believed to account for the deaths of up to 20 million people. Memorial began by erecting a monument in 1990 dedicated to the victims of political repression. The so-called Solovki Stone – a slab of rock taken from a Soviet labour camp in the White Sea’s Solovetsky Islands – stands on Lubyanka Square, the site of the headquarters of the KGB and its current successor, the FSB. Memorial also played an essential role in passing the 1991 law on rehabilitating victims of political repression, and the creation of an annual day of remembrance on 30 October. The group has helped countless Russians and others discover the fate of relatives who died or vanished under the communist regime, building over 20 years what is thought to be the country’s most comprehensive database of victims, which features more than 2.65m names. In 2008, police raided Memorial’s St Petersburg office, confiscating the group’s entire digital archive. The database has been restored, part of the group’s exhaustive online resources.



Backing critics: Throughout its existence, Memorial has provided legal and moral support to jailed government opponents in Russia and post-Soviet countries, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Alexei Navalny, Belarus’s Ales Byalyatski, and Andrei Barabanov, Aleksei Gaskarov, and other participants in 2012’s Bolotnaya Square protests. Memorial also maintains a closely watched list of political prisoners - the latest additions include Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko - and has penned open letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin stating its objections to the conflict in Ukraine.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Natalya Estemirova, a Russian human rights activist pictured here in Grozny in 2004, was found dead in 2009. She had been investigating cases of kidnapping and murder for Memorial. Photograph: Memorial/AFP/Getty Images

North Caucasus: Memorial’s human rights centre opened in 1991 and has since been one of the leading rights watchdogs in the North Caucasus. It opened an office in Grozny in 2000, when thousands of civilians were falling victim to kidnappings, torture, and so-called “sweeping-up” operations by both Russian federal forces and local militia groups. Memorial was forced to close its Grozny office after the 2009 slaying of activist and board member Natalya Estemirova, who was personally investigating “hundreds” of highly sensitive cases of kidnapping and murder. Oleg Orlov, head of the human rights centre, was sued for defamation after accusing Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of orchestrating Estemirova’s assassination, but was eventually acquitted. At a time when virtually no independent voices remain in Chechnya, Memorial continues to publish near-daily bulletins on human rights abuses in the North Caucasus, including the recent arrest and beating of one of Chechnya’s last remaining activists, Ruslan Kutayev.

Fighting xenophobia: In 2003, Memorial announced the creation of an anti-discrimination centre (ADC) aimed initially at promoting the rights of Russia’s Romany population. The first bulletin issued by ADC Memorial trumpeted an innovative elementary school in St Petersburg’s Pushkin district that had successfully integrated Romany children into its classrooms with the help of an on-staff psychologist and an emphasis on cultural diversity. Since then, the group has broadened its scope to include the plight of labour migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus. In a 2012 study submitted to the UN, the Petersburg-based centre alleged that Roma and migrants were routinely subjected to police torture. Prosecutors launched a suit against ADC Memorial the following year, and it became the first major Russian NGO to receive a liquidation order for failing to register as a foreign agent. The centre continues to operate, however, most recently focusing on Russian persecution of ethnic Tatars in Crimea and hosting roundtable talks on racism in soccer ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.



Terror tours: At a time when Stalin’s political legacy is gaining in popularity, Memorial has made public education a key aspect of its mission. In addition to sponsoring numerous films and documentaries highlighting totalitarian crimes, the group offers regular “terror tours” of Moscow’s Lubyanka district, reminding audiences of the brutal efficiency of the Soviet regime’s secret police and the continued failure of Vladimir Putin’s Russia to account for the repressions of the past. Daisy Sindelar

A version of this article first appeared on RFE/RL