Police detaining a demonstrator outside the Russian Supreme Court during the hearing. Image: Alamy Stock Photo Police detaining a demonstrator outside the Russian Supreme Court during the hearing. Image: Alamy Stock Photo RUSSIA’S SUPREME COURT has ordered the closure of Memorial, the country’s most prominent rights group, which chronicled Stalin-era purges and symbolised post-Soviet democratisation.
During today’s hearing, a prosecutor said Memorial “creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state and denigrates the memory of World War II”. Memorial is a loose structure of locally registered organisations, with Memorial International maintaining the network’s extensive archives in Moscow and coordinating its work.
The move against Memorial caps a year that has seen authorities jail President Vladimir Putin’s top critic Alexei Navalny, outlaw his organisations and crack down on independent media and rights groups. Supporter Maria Biryukova said Russia needed Memorial to make sure the country did not repeat mistakes of the past.Another supporter, author Leonid Bakhnov, whose grandfather was executed at the peak of Stalin-era purges in 1937, said the group’s closure was “a tragedy for Russia”.Memorial’s founders have denied any serious violations, saying that only an insignificant number of documents may have been missing the tag.
On Monday, a court in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk increased a prison sentence for the head of Memorial in Karelia, Yury Dmitriyev, to a total of 15 years.
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