Against the past and present: trials for the liquidation of Memorials begin. What do these human rights organizations do?

The material was prepared jointly with our colleagues from DOXA magazine.

On November 23, a preliminary hearing in the case of liquidation of the Memorial Human Rights Center was held in the Moscow City Court. At the trial, it turned out that a representative of the Moscow prosecutor’s office could not explain on what basis the prosecutor’s inspection of the human rights organization was carried out at the end of last year. Therefore, the judge decided to postpone the hearing to November 29, thereby extending the pre-trial stage of the proceedings. By this date, the prosecutor promised to provide all the necessary documents.

The inspection of the Memorial Human Rights Center began on December 3, 2020. In the morning, employees of the prosecutor's office, the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Tax Service arrived at the office of the human rights organization. They demanded the provision of constituent, charter and financial documents, as well as detailed information on program activities. At the same time, the grounds for the inspection were indicated only formally , and a specific reason was not given.

“The demands of the documents are absolutely monstrous, exceeding all conceivable limits even at the first cursory glance,” Anna Dobrovolskaya, executive director of the Human Rights Center Memorial, commented on the actions of the prosecutor’s office at the time.

Almost a year after the inspection , it became known that the Moscow Prosecutor's Office filed a lawsuit for the liquidation of the Memorial Human Rights Center, and the Prosecutor General's Office filed a lawsuit for the liquidation of the International Memorial.

Dissernet co-founder Andrei Zayakin published material in Novaya Gazeta about mathematics teacher Natalya Kryukova and translator Alexander Tarasov, who “conducted a psychological and linguistic study” on which the lawsuits for the liquidation of Memorials are based.

Security forces regularly order expertise from Kryukova and Tarasova on high-profile political cases, including religious studies, sexology, cultural studies and anthropology. The lack of specialized education among the teacher and translator does not bother the prosecutor's office. Memorial's lawyer Maria Eismont argued that Kryukova-Tarasov's examination contained borrowings from student essay websites.

Hundreds of Russian and foreign organizations and public figures opposed the liquidation of Memorials, signatures are being collected for petitions , and pickets are being held. For one of them, journalist Victoria Ivleva was fined 150 thousand rubles.

History and human rights

Memorial appeared in 1987 as an organization to study political repression in the USSR and perpetuate the memory of its victims. The first honorary chairman was academician Andrei Sakharov. Leading Russian human rights activists took part in its work: Sergei Kovalev, Arseny Roginsky, Lev Ponomarev, Svetlana Gannushkina and others. In 1991, the Memorial Human Rights Center was established, and later other structures. Thus, several legal entities operate under the general name “Memorial”.