The dissolution of the oldest Russian NGO, Memorial, labeled “foreign agent” by the Russian government and accused of having broken the law which obliges it to present itself as such is looming. The trial is due to resume on December 14, and the mobilization is growing to save this organization which defends human rights. On Wednesday the French branch of Memorial organized a support conference at the Paris city hall,
The disappearance of Memorial would be a loss not only for Russia but also on a larger, even universal, European scale. University journalists and students present at the Paris City Hall on Wednesday evening were unanimous.
Specific national context
The repression of the NGO targets human rights defenders but also the right to information and knowledge of the past, and it is part of a nationalist rewrite of history. Memorial was qualified as a foreign agent by the government of Vladimir Putin years ago, and for historian Nicolas Werth, president of Memorial France, the acceleration of the repression is part of an international context. particular.
“Unfortunately, it is again bloc against bloc, and there is a very striking national leap if we look at the Russian media today, there is a kind of xenophobic hysteria against the United States, against the Europe, and we have a real return to the cold war ”, he explains.
Thirty years of research
The oldest Russian NGO counts thirty years of research to his credit, and despite the threat of dissolution, his work is acquired by posterity, considers Nicolas Werth. “This work is done, is digitized and put on the internet and therefore to delete all this work is something a little impossible. ”
In addition to the International Memorial and the Human Rights Center, Russia has sixty local branches of the NGO, legally autonomous, which will continue their activities while waiting to be in turn the subject of legal proceedings.
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