As of 2 December 2021, The Change.org petition (below) gathered 118,000 signatures. By the end of February 2022 the total number of signatories expressing their opposition to the closure of a major Russian historical and human rights NGO had risen to 144,309.

Started on 15 November by Dinar Idrisov (St. Petersburg)

Sign in Russian / English / French / German / Spanish / Italian / Czech / Ukrainian / Polish / Belorussian / Hebrew / Estonian / Latvian

Hands off «Memorial»!

Stop the legalised shut down of Russia’s key human rights defenders!!

On 11 November 2021 it was announced that the Russian prosecutor general has filed an administrative lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking to liquidate the charitable organisations of the international historical and educational NGO “International Memorial” that had been previously declared “foreign agents” and that the Moscow city prosecutors have filed an identical case with the Moscow city court requesting the “Memorial” Human Rights Centre to be liquidated.

This has prompted an urgent debate about the ability of civic society to resist such attacks on the organised defenders of its history, its essence, the rights and freedoms of citizens amid the current reality of overt political repressions perpetrated by the Russian government. Harnessing public opinion into a petition is an important task, a potential part of a civic campaign to protect human rights defenders legally employed by these NGOs in the interests of preserving the past, the present and the future of all Russian citizens.

Collage listing Memorial’s values

The Memorial group of non-commercial public organisations, created and developed thanks to the vision and hard work of Russian’s greatest human rights campaigner and civil activist Andrei Sakharov, are the cornerstones of Russia’s human rights community and of its civic society as a whole.

Their liquidation could lead to the closure of the most important historical, educational and human rights projects, such as OVD-Info, the information and human rights project that aims to support citizens suffering politically motivated persecution at the hands of the state. The liquidation of legal organisations and organisational structures might not completely destroy but will significantly limit the scope of legal activity of historians, educators, journalists and human rights activists who work in the interest of Russia’s civic society, and whom the current hostile environment brings into active conflict with the realpolitik of the Russian state, and in practice, with the interests of the minority of Russian citizens who hold political power.

You can read about Memorial’s cultural and educational work and its human rights organisations and projects in the Wikipedia article here — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_(society)

or on the English webpages of International Memorial and the Memorial Human Rights Centre, the two organisations that Russian prosecutors are currently seeking to liquidate through the courts. I call on you to join the public campaign to save and protect these organisations.

Hands off «Memorial»!

Let’s stop the legalised shutdown of Russia’s key human rights organisations!!!

And If you have good ideas for saving Memorial, contact me at dinarspbru@gmail.com OR @DinarSpbRu in social networks.

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