The United States denounces the Russian Supreme Court's decision to grant the request of the Prosecutor General's Office to shut down Memorial International (recognized as a foreign agent in Russia), a human rights organization studying political crimes and repression in the Soviet Union, Ambassador in Moscow John Sullivan said on Tuesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th December, 2021) The United States denounces the Russian Supreme Court's decision to grant the request of the Prosecutor General's Office to shut down Memorial International (recognized as a foreign agent in Russia), a human rights organization studying political crimes and repression in the Soviet Union, Ambassador in Moscow John Sullivan said on Tuesday.
"AMB Sullivan: The Russian Supreme Court's decision today to shut down International Memorial - one of Russia's oldest & most prominent human rights organizations - is a blatant and tragic attempt to suppress freedom of expression and erase history," the US embassy wrote on Twitter.
The request to close Memorial International was submitted to the Supreme Court last month on charges of violating Russia's foreign agents law.
On Wednesday, a Moscow court will hold a hearing concerning a similar request from Russian prosecutors against Memorial Human Rights Center, an affiliate group charged with justifying terrorism in its publications, along with allegedly violating the "foreign agents" law by repeatedly failing to mark its publications with a relevant warning.
According to prosecutors, International Memorial distorts the memory of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and "creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state."
The NGO's defense team, for its part, requested that they not be shut down outright, noting that the group had already paid relevant fines and adapted its activities to the law on "foreign agents" by labeling its publications with relevant warnings.
