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Human Rights Center ‘Memorial’ fined for violating ‘foreign agents’ law
Human Rights Center “Memorial” has been fined 300,000 rubles ($4,500) for violating the law on “foreign agents.”
A Russian court ruled that Memorial violated the law by publishing and distributing materials without including the mandatory disclaimer stating they are officially a “foreign agent.”
Representatives of the Memorial human rights office have announced that the materials in question were distributed by the historical society “Memorial,” which is a separate organization.
“These are two different organizations. The Human Rights Center ‘Memorial’ has nothing to do with these materials. There has been a bureaucratic mistake,” said Memorial's lawyer, Kirill Koroteyev.
- The law on “foreign agents” was passed in 2012. It requires NGOs that receive funding from abroad to enter a registry and submit themselves to debilitating levels of bureaucratic scrutiny and to label their work and their publications as the work of “foreign agents.”
- There are currently 68 organizations on the list, including 20 media outlets, as well as the Russian office of Transparency International and the Sakharov Center.