The story of Memorial, the human rights organization that stood up to the Russian authorities and was shut down

The Russian organization Memorial, what was settled today by the Supreme Court, has dedicated the last 30 years to investigate both Soviet political repressions until 1991 how to report the abuses of human rights committed in Russia since the fall of the USSR.

“We have a very complicated past, but the present is no less so. In Russia’s past there are no less horrible secrets than in the Latin American countries that lived under a dictatorship. That is to say, terror, disappearance of people and summary executions “, commented to the agency EFE Alexandr Cherkasov, director of Memorial.

It was formally founded in 1991, although it had been operating since the previous year, coinciding with the disintegration of the USSR, with the In order to keep alive the memory of the millions of people who were retaliated by the communist totalitarian state.

Its founders include the Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, father of the hydrogen bomb and precursor of the defense of human rights in this country.

The voice of the victims of Stalinism

Since the beginning, Memorial emphasized the rehabilitation and defense of the victims of Stalinism, for which it created a database of reprisals, which can be consulted by any interested party.

Memorial succeeded even before the fall of the USSR to pass a law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, from which Hundreds of thousands of people have since benefited.

In addition, thanks to their efforts, a memorial to the victims of the GULAG, Soviet labor camps.

That rock, which was expressly brought from the archipelago of Solovki, considered the first GULAG in history, stood for nine months next to the statue of the founder of the KGB, Felix Dzerzhinski, that it would be finally withdrawn.

Historical memory archive

Already in the 21st century created an archive that includes all those who fought in the ranks of the Russian Army, whose objective is that Veterans’ relatives learn about the fate of those killed or missing in action.

Its historians have investigated matters that are very sensitive to the authorities, as the massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers in Katyn, which was denied for decades by the Kremlin, for which they have demanded the declassification of the secret documents.

The Oldest NGO in Russia also organized an international conference on the Swedish diplomat Raoul wallenberg, kidnapped by the KGB after save the lives of 50,000 Jews in Budapest during World War II and that, supposedly, he died in Moscow in 1947.

Memorial is dedicated to denouncing abuses by the authorities throughout the national territory, but also in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Georgia, among other countries, in addition to violations of humanitarian laws during conflicts.

Criticism of Putin’s authoritarianism

Defender of the rule of law in Russia against the return of totalitarianism, has been very critical of the growing authoritarian tendencies in the Kremlin, especially since the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, returned to the Kremlin in 2012.

The organization has especially criticized the law restricting freedom of demonstration, the one that limited international adoptions or the one that persecuted homosexual propaganda.

Too a questioned the Russian role in the war in Ukraine, which has earned him some vandalism attacks by ultranationalists.

Criticisms of the situation in Chechnya cost the life of the director of its subsidiary in Grozny, Elena Estemírova, who was assassinated in 2009, a crime of which many directly accuse the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The murder forced Memorial to close its offices in Chechnya, where Kadyrov has established a police state where reprisals and kidnappings are common currency, according to his critics.

He has clashed with the Russian authoritiesboth in local courts and in the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the forcible repatriation of migrants to Central Asia, where they would most likely be imprisoned or tortured.

Foreign agent

In 2016 it was classified as a “foreign agent” by the Ministry of Justice for carrying out political activities with foreign funding, as happened before with prestigious organizations such as the Levada Center or Golos.

Justice accused him of receiving funding from organizations considered unwanted by the Russian Government such as the United States National Endowment for Democracy.

Its activists participated in the anti-government protests against government fraud that broke out after the legislative elections of December 2011, the largest since the fall of the USSR.

Memorial, which received the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament in 2009, had been promoted on numerous occasions for the Nobel Peace Prize, among others by the former Polish president Lech Walesa.

Last November, the Russian Prosecutor’s Office addressed the Supreme Court with a demand for liquidation for alleged violations of the Constitution and the breach of his duties as a foreign agent.

(With information from EFE)

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