Organisers of event where names of victims are recited say withdrawal of permission is outrageous

Moscow city authorities have refused permission for an annual ceremony honouring victims of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, according to Russia’s most prominent human rights group.

Memorial, the country’s oldest rights group, has held a 12-hour ceremony every year on 29 October for the past 11 years. Hundreds of people read out names of those killed during Stalin-era repressions at a memorial in Lubyanka Square, outside the headquarters of the current security service and its Stalin-era predecessors. Historians estimate about a million people perished in Stalin’s Terror, also known as the Great Purge, in the 1930s.

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The group said Moscow city authorities had refused permission this year for “The Return of Names” ceremony. “Today, 19 October, that is 10 days before the ceremony was due to go ahead, permission was withdrawn by the Moscow city hall,” the group said in a statement, adding that the authorities had previously promised that construction work would not prevent the ceremony going ahead.

“This action is outrageous not only because of the Moscow authorities breaking promises that they had many times given and confirmed,” Memorial said. “The officials did not consider it necessary to apologise in any form whatsoever.”

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Memorial said an alternative venue was proposed at a Moscow memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions unveiled by the president, Vladimir Putin, last year, but it viewed this as “unacceptable.”

Memorial, which also speaks out about current human rights violations in Russia, has come under increasing pressure from the authorities in recent years. In 2016, Russian authorities labelled it a “foreign agent” under a 2012 law that obliges groups deemed to have “political” activities and international funding to submit documents every three months outlining their finances.