"Memorial"* treats accusations of justifying terrorism as absurd

The Russian General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) has demanded to liquidate the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial"* for justifying extremism and terrorism. Human rights defenders have objected that recognition of a member of a banned organization as a political prisoner does not mean agreement with his views.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on November 11, the Supreme Court (SC) of Russia notified the "International Memorial"* that the GPO had filed a lawsuit demanding to liquidate the Centre due to the absence of marking of its status of a foreign agent.

The full text of the lawsuit was received by the HRC on November 12. It claims that HRC had failed to submit documents for inclusion thereof into the register of foreign agents, but was included there on the initiative of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) itself. Subsequently, the HRC received eight fines for the absence of the appropriate labelling of its materials.

The lawsuit also contains the grounds for the liquidation, which are different from the claims against the "International Memorial"*, namely: "linguistic and psychological attributes of justifying the activities of members of international terrorist and extremist organizations: 'Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami'**, 'Tabligi Jamaat'** and 'At-Takfir Wal Hijra'**, as well as the extremist organizations 'Artpodgotovka'** and 'Jehovah's Witnesses'**."

The HRC "Memorial"* has treated all these claims as absurd. "They accuse us of non-compliance with the requirements of the 'law', which was initially formulated in a very vague way. <...> The accusations of 'justifying terrorism and extremism' look no less strange. All our statements on recognizing convicts as political prisoners separately note that such recognition does not mean either the agreement of the HRC 'Memorial'* with the views and statements of the person, much less the approval of his statements and actions," says the statement posted on the website of the HRC "Memorial"*.

*The organization is included by the Russian MoJ into the register of non-commercial organizations (NCOs) performing the functions of a foreign agent.

**The organizations are banned in Russia by the court as terrorist and extremist ones.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on November 12, 2021 at 07:59 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.