The Moscow City Court upheld the claim of the Ministry of Justice for the liquidation of the Moscow Helsinki Group

The Moscow City Court upheld the claim of the Ministry of Justice to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), the oldest human rights organization in Russia. Mediazona reports this.

The department filed the claim in December 2022 after an unscheduled inspection at the request of the Moscow Prosecutor's Office. According to officials, the MHG committed “gross” and “irreparable” violations of the territorial scope of the organization’s activities: its human rights defenders participated in 11 “events” outside Moscow, to which the MHG allegedly had no right as a regional organization. The Ministry of Justice also announced claims to the wording of the charter and to the documents provided for verification.

The lawyers representing the MHG at the meeting indicated that the organization’s main office and main activities are conducted in the region of registration, and employees’ trips to court hearings and appeals to government agencies in other regions are not prohibited by law. They also stated that the punishment in the form of liquidation was disproportionate to the alleged violations.

On January 24, representatives of the MHG filed a lawsuit in the Gagarinsky District Court of Moscow to declare the unscheduled inspection illegal, and the “evidence” of violations obtained during it as unacceptable. They had previously been denied a similar claim for procedural reasons. Today, MHG lawyers unsuccessfully petitioned to postpone the meeting of the Moscow City Court until their claims against the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Justice were considered.

MHG executive director Svetlana Astrakhantseva said during the liquidation meeting: “In whose legitimate interests the Ministry of Justice is acting and whose interests are violated in the listed episodes - this remains a question. But in whose interests the MHG worked - it is in the interests of human rights and freedoms in the Russian Federation.”

• The Moscow Helsinki Group is the oldest human rights organization in Russia. The MHG was founded in 1976 by Soviet dissidents. The organization declared its goal to monitor the observance of human rights in the USSR in accordance with the Helsinki Agreements. Among the founders of the MHG is human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseeva. From 1996 until her death in 2018, she headed the organization. In 2017, MHG refused foreign grants so that the organization would not be recognized as a “foreign agent.”