HRC “Memorial”* criticizes law enforcers after attack on its office

Law enforcers who arrived at the Moscow office of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) “Memorial”* after a report on an attempt to disrupt the screening, used force against employees of the HRC’s office and spectators and unreasonably kept them in the building for several hours, the NGO reported.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on the evening of October 14, a group of young people in masks broke into the Moscow office of the HRC “Memorial”* during the screening of a film about journalist Gareth Jones. They were chanting: “We’ll not forget, we’ll not forgive!” and “Shame!”

The screening of the film “Gareth Jones” was organized jointly with the Polish Cultural Centre within the “Documentary Environment” festival. The event was started at 7:00 p.m. Moscow time, but about 30 people broke into the building 20 minutes later.

The police arrived at 8:00 p.m., that is, 40 minutes after the attack on the HRC’s office. By that time, most of the people who broke into the building left it. The police managed to detain only several people.

The International “Memorial”* criticized the further actions of the law enforcers. “To put it mildly, the law enforcers (employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and the National Guard of Russia) were acting in a strange way. For some unexplained reason, they claimed that an ‘unsanctioned event’ was taking place at the International ‘Memorial’ (which was actually not correct) and failed to demonstrate due interest in finding and detaining people who were trying to disrupt the film screening,” the NGO reports in its statement.

According to the HRC “Memorial”*, law enforcers even used force against employees of the HRC’s office and spectators. “The employees who stayed at that time in the office and the spectators who came to see the screening were forbidden to leave the premises, and the law enforcers were harshly suppressing all people’s attempts to leave, sometimes with the use of physical force. All employees and spectators who stayed in the room were required to fill out an explanation form for the police, indicating detailed personal data and the presence of criminal records if any. The law enforcers used handcuffs to block the door of the working entrance to the building from the outside,” the human rights defenders note in their statement.

*The organization has been put on the register of foreign agents by the Russian Ministry of Justice.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on October 15, 2021 at 02:08 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.