The Memorial Human Rights Center, one of Russia’s most prominent human rights groups, announced its closure on Tuesday in a statement posted online, CNN reports.
Russia’s Supreme Court ruled to close the Memorial in December last year as part of a campaign of legal and administrative attacks on civil society and human rights organizations in the country.
“Today, April 5, 2022, LR” Memorial “will be liquidated,” – said in an official statement, according to which “a return to the totalitarian past is possible, it is happening now, in front of the world.”
Memorial, one of the country’s oldest human rights organizations, monitors political repression in modern Russia and documents the crimes of the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union.
The Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, along with other human rights monitoring groups, condemned the court’s decision to close the center.