Officials sealed the Moscow office of Amnesty International and changed locks

Officials sealed the Moscow office of the international human rights organization Amnesty International, replaced castles in the room and turned off the electricity. This was reported on November 2 to Reuters with reference to the representative of Amnesty International Alexander Artemyev.

Artemyev pointed out that no preliminary notice from the authorities was received to the organization. In the Department of Urban Property, Moscow has not yet commented on the situation.

As Meduza said to Artemyev, five people who sealed the Amnesty office explained their actions “lease issues”. “We talked with our neighbors who start work earlier than us. And they said that at 9:30 five people came, opened the door, and to the question of what was happening, they answered: “Lease questions”. This is the only thing that is known at this moment, ”he said.

Another Amnesty International employee Ivan Kondratenko in his Facebook said that the organization’s employees were invited to contact the capital's city property department in order to take their things out of the office, but in the department itself is not yet aware of what was happening.

“We paid the bills carefully for twenty years - this was the first and so far the only Amnesty office in Russia,” Kondratenko said.

The director of the Russian representative office of Amnesty International, Sergei Nikitin, told Interfax that the organization has no idea what the actions of officials are related to.

“We rent the office directly from the Mosgority, the rental was carefully paid and paid, we did not receive any warnings,” Nikitin emphasized.

In turn, the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said that the Kremlin does not have information about the sealing of the Amnesty International office. Peskov suggested that "here is some information, perhaps the office employees have."

In February of this year, in its annual report, Amnesty International criticized the situation in compliance with human rights in Russia. According to the organization’s experts, the country was limited to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and associations, and non -governmental and non -profit organizations were subject to pressure.