Just over 20 minutes were enough this Wednesday for a Moscow court to liquidate Russia’s oldest human rights NGO, the Helsinki-Moscow Group, created in 1976 by Soviet dissidents.
The closure of this organization is the last in a few years in which power has managed to silence the most critical voices, from the structure of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexéi Navalni to independent media and NGOs such as Memorial, awarded in 2022 with the Nobel Prize. peace. This process accelerated last year, since the beginning of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine.
The court accepted the claim of the Russian Ministry of Justice, which alleged that the Helsinki-Moscow Group had carried out human rights activities in various parts of Russia when, according to its statutes, its scope of action is the Moscow region.
Among these activities, the prosecution cited attendance at trials as observers or participation in human rights events. According to the organization, this argument is “absurd”.
The Helsinki-Moscow Group was founded in Soviet times and its first objective was to promote the application in the USSR of the Helsinki Agreements (or Helsinki Final Act), a pact reached in 1975 between East and West to reduce tensions in full cold War.
Later, however, he dedicated himself to defending civil rights and democracy. Since its creation in 1976, the group has produced annual reports on the human rights situation in Russia.
In an appeal to the court, the group’s co-chairman Valeri Borshov told the judges and Justice Ministry representatives that they were winding up decades of work.
“You are committing a great sin. You are destroying a human rights movement. It is a serious blow not only for the human rights movement in Russia, but for the entire world,” he alleged.
The NGO’s lawyers announced that they will appeal. “Life is long, every decision could be reviewed and I hope to live until the day the Moscow Helsinki Group is reborn,” said lawyer Genri Reznik.
For decades the NGO was led by Ludmila Alexéyeva, a leading figure in Soviet dissidents who died in 2018.
After the closure of Memorial, in 2021, it was one of the few remaining human rights NGOs in the country.
In fact, both processes are comparable, because the two organizations were leading figures in human rights activism. Memorial, in addition, kept the memory of the victims of Soviet crimes.
