[RFERL] A Moscow court has ordered the closure of the Memorial Human Rights Center, one day after another court shut down the group's main parent organization, capping a year of administrative moves by the state to throttle civil society across the country.
The widely expected ruling on December 29 by the Moscow City Court was based on the finding that the organization had violated the country’s draconian "foreign agent" law, which has been used with growing frequency against rights groups, journalists, lawyers, civil society activists, and others.
Among other things, the law requires organizations deemed to be "foreign agents" to include an intrusive label on everything they publish or broadcast.
Outside the court building, a crowd of several dozen stood in freezing temperatures chanting "Shame! Shame!" after the ruling was announced.
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Says Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
...they have been considering a complaint from foreign agents for 8 years.
And now, apparently, it is necessary to wait another 8 years so that Memorial is not closed.
In general, if you think about it, some international body located on the territory of a military-political bloc pursuing an aggressively hostile policy against the Russian Federation requires the Russian Federation to obey its decisions in matters of the internal policy of the Russian Federation.
De facto, these are echoes of external political dependence, rooted in the 90s and which have not yet been completely eliminated. Hence, such impudent demands, as if now are 2001 or 2011, and not 2021, when there are practically no special illusions left in the relations between the intentions of the United States and its European satellites regarding the Russian Federation.
So this demand, of course, is not a reason to cancel the liquidation of Memorial, but rather a reason to think about the current format of relations with the ECHR.