The Ministry of Justice demanded the liquidation of the association of lawyers and human rights activists “Astrea”

The Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit demanding the liquidation of the NGO Astrea, an association of lawyers and human rights activists, which is the Moscow partner of the Legal Initiative human rights foundation, recognized as a “foreign agent.” Novaya Gazeta reports this.

The reason for the lawsuit was that when changes were made to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the founder of the fund, Lyudmila Polshikova, was not at her place of registration, but indicated the opposite in the documents. The department’s lawsuit describes all of Polshikova’s movements by car from March 2020 to March 2021 and what decisions she made during this year.

According to the Ministry of Justice, if the founder was away during the specified periods of time, this is considered a violation that has signs of “materiality, repetition and irremovability.” The lawsuit in the Basmanny District Court is dated September 14.

The association of lawyers, human rights activists, researchers in the field of Russian and international law “Astrea” was founded in 2007. During this time, the ECHR adopted 66 positive rulings on the foundation’s cases, filed in partnership with the Legal Initiative. People received compensation for moral and material damage.

• The Justice Initiative is a human rights project that provides legal assistance in connection with human rights violations related to armed conflict and counter-terrorism operations, torture and gender-based violence. In particular, the foundation's lawyers helped participants in Ingush protests.
• On December 13, 2019, the projectwas recognized as a “foreign agent” after an unscheduled documentation check by the Ingush department of the Ministry of Justice. In February 2020, the homes of human rights activists collaborating with the Human Rights Initiative were searched.