Amnesty International: Reacting to the news that the Russian authorities have arbitrarily designated prominent human rights group Memorial as “extremist” and banned its activities in the country, Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Deputy Regional Director, said:

“For close to 40 years, Memorial’s tireless commitment to documenting past and ongoing repression in Russia has ensured that violations against millions of people are not forgotten. These include the victims of Stalin’s GULAG, unlawful acts and human rights abuses in conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine, and the arbitrary detention of hundreds of the Kremlin’s critics and political opponents today. A frontline human rights organization, Memorial has bravely defended human rights in the face of horrific reprisals, including the persecution, detention and killing of its staff.”

“By labelling Memorial as ‘extremist,’ the authorities are not just targeting one of Russia’s oldest civil society organizations and co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, they are criminalizing human rights work itself. From now on, liking or sharing Memorial’s social media and other materials, and any reference to them in publications without mentioning the organization’s ‘extremist’ status, may be prosecuted as a criminal act. These blatant attempts by the Kremlin to ban Memorial and erase its extensive archives of human rights violations from the public domain are deplorable.

Read the full article on Russia: “Extremist” label and ban of Nobel Prize winner Memorial criminalizes human rights work