Russian court bans Nobel-winning rights group
Russia’s Supreme Court has effectively criminalized the activities of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning rights group Memorial, the latest step in a relentless crackdown on dissidents and non-governmental organizations in the country amid the war in Ukraine.
After a closed-door hearing on Thursday, the court accepted the justice ministry’s petition to designate what it calls the “Memorial international civil movement” as extremist and ban its activities in Russia.
Memorial said in a statement that no such entity existed, but the decision would still “allow authorities to put pressure on Memorial projects, participants and supporters.”
Memorial is one of the oldest and most famous human rights organizations in Russia.
Less than a year after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, then-imprisoned Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Ukrainian civil liberties organization Center.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee condemned the actions against the group in a statement on Wednesday, calling them “an insult to fundamental values such as human dignity and freedom of expression” and called on Russia to “stop all harassment against Memorial and its members.”
The Memorial was founded in the late 1980s to commemorate the victims of the Soviet Union’s political repression and has grown into a network of smaller organizations both in Russia and abroad.
The group was declared a “foreign agent,” a designation that requires additional government scrutiny and carries strong derogatory connotations, and was ordered to pay large fines for allegedly violating the “foreign agent” law over the years.
Russian courts ordered the closure of two main units (human rights center and International Memorial) in December 2021.
The group continued its work without giving up.
In 2023, its members founded an international Memorial association in Geneva.
In early 2026, this association was banned in Russia as undesirable; This was a label that subjected anyone associated with this organization to investigation.
An extremist designation puts even more pressure on the group, as participating in extremist activities is a crime punishable by long prison sentences in Russia.
