Strasbourg, France, Dec 16 (AFP/APP):The European Parliament on Thursday urged the EU to sanction Russian officials behind a legal onslaught against the country’s most prominent rights group Memorial that could see it dissolved.
Russia’s Supreme Court is currently weighing a case against the group — a symbol of democratisation that built a huge archive of Soviet-era crimes — for alleged violations of its designation as a “foreign agent”.
EU lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a non-binding resolution condemning “the repeated persecution and the recent politically motivated attempts to shut down” Memorial.
It called on “the Russian authorities to immediately drop all charges against Memorial and ensure that Memorial can continue to safely carry out their important work without interference from the state”.
The resolution asked Brussels to “impose sanctions under the EU global human rights sanctions regime on Russian officials involved in the unlawful repression of Memorial and in the judicial proceedings against its organisations and members”.
The trial of Memorial — which was suspended by the Supreme Court on Tuesday until the end of the year — is one of the highest-profile moves in Moscow’s sweeping crackdown on civil society and opposition groups.
Supporters of the group say its closure would signal the end of an era in Russia’s post-Soviet democratisation process.
After the trial began on November 25, activists asked President Vladimir Putin to intervene.
But Putin told his human rights council that Memorial had been advocating on behalf of “terrorist and extremist organisations”.
Memorial has been compiling a list of political prisoners that includes members of religious minorities banned in Russia and Putin’s most prominent critic Alexei Navalny, whose political organisations were closed this year.
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