Nobel Peace committee ‘deplores’ actions against Russia’s Memorial

Oslo, March 22 (AFP/APP): The Nobel Committee in charge of the Peace Prize on Wednesday condemned the legal actions and what it called “unfounded” charges against members of the prize-winning Russian human rights organisation Memorial.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee deplores the arrest of and legal actions taken against Jan Rachinsky and other leading members of Memorial,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the committee, said in a statement.

“The charges made against them are unfounded and must be dropped,” she said.

The rights group said Tuesday that Russian authorities had opened a criminal case against Oleg Orlov, the co-chair of Memorial, for “discrediting” the army.

The announcement came after security officials raided the homes of several Memorial employees including Orlov, 69, and Rachinsky, its 64-year-old co-founder, earlier in the day.

Memorial established itself as a pillar of civil society by preserving the memory of victims of communist repression and campaigning against rights violations in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

The raids took place after investigators accused Memorial staff of allegedly including World War Two-era Nazi collaborators on their list of victims of political terror, the organisation said.

Memorial was disbanded by Russian authorities in late 2021, just months before Putin sent troops to Ukraine.

“(I have) constant pain and shame for the horror that our army is creating in a neighbouring sovereign state,” Orlov told AFP last year.

Memorial received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize along with the jailed Belorusian activist Ales Bialiatski and Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties.

Rachinsky said last year that the prize came as a surprise and would give all Russian rights defenders “new strength and inspiration”.

After the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, Russian authorities expanded a crackdown on dissent, jailing or pushing into exile nearly all prominent Kremlin critics.

Public criticism of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.