Russia wants to dissolve one of the oldest human rights organizations | abroad

“The Ministry of Justice in Moscow has submitted an application to the court asking it to dissolve the Moscow Helsinki Group and ban its activities on Russian soil,” the NGO said in a statement. According to the NGO, the organization is accused of carrying out activities outside the Moscow region in violation of its territorial status, including sending observers to court cases or attending events in other parts of the country for its members. A Moscow court spokesman confirmed on Tuesday that an investigation had been opened.

The Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) was founded in 1976 in the apartment of later Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov. The organization wanted to check whether the Soviet Union had complied with the Helsinki agreements, which had been concluded a year earlier in the Finnish capital. 35 countries from East and West pledged to respect human rights from now on. Since then, MHG has published an annual report on the state of human rights in Russia.
MHG was actually banned in the 1980s, but was revived with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In recent years, the group has had a more difficult time due to repression under President Vladimir Putin’s regime. For example, as of 2012, MHG refuses foreign donations so as not to be classified as a “foreign agent”. Well-known activist Lyudmila Alexeeva led the organization for years, until her death in 2018.

The charge against the Helsinki Moscow Group is reminiscent of the Memorial organization’s dissolution last year. Then the Russian Supreme Court banned Russia’s oldest human rights organization, Memorial. The organization had violated the rules for foreign agents. Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last October, with the participation of the Ukrainian human rights organization “Center for Civil Liberties” and Belarusian human rights activist Alice Bialiatsky.

In recent months, Vladimir Putin’s regime has accelerated its crackdown on its critics in the wake of the Kremlin’s attack in Ukraine. Therefore, the authorities passed a law prescribing up to 15 years in prison for any publication of information about the Russian military deemed “false”. Most opposition members are now in exile or in prison.

look. Shows Putin who is the president in Belarus