President Putin’s statement highlights bias of claims against “Memorial”*

A statement of Vladimir Putin on the need to consider the case of the “Memorial”* without bias came amid the accusations against human rights defenders of protecting banned organizations and the inclusion of Nazi criminals in the list of victims of political repression. The inclusion of a person on the list of political prisoners does not mean sharing his or her views, and the erroneous classification of Nazi criminals as victims of repression occurred due to the closed nature of the archives of the special services, human rights defenders argue.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on December 9, when commenting on the case on the liquidation of the “Memorials”* NGOs (the International Historical, Educational, Charity and Human Rights Society “Memorial” (International Memorial) and the Human Rights Centre (HRC) “Memorial”), President Vladimir Putin voiced two claims about the activities of the NGOs. The Russian President said that the “Memorial”* “was trying to defend” international organizations included in Russia in the list of terrorist and extremist organizations. Besides, earlier, persons involved in the Holocaust crimes were found in the list of victims of political repression compiled by the “Memorial”*.

Vladimir Putin did not specify which international organizations he had in mind. The website of the HRC “Memorial” contains the lists of those persecuted for belonging to the religious organizations “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, banned in Russia by the court as extremist, and “Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami”, which was banned by the court after being declared terrorist. In both cases, the HRC “Memorial” protects not the organizations themselves, but their individual members who have been included in the lists of political prisoners. Meanwhile, the website of the HRC “Memorial” contains a disclaimer stating that “the recognition of a person as a political prisoner does not mean that the HRC shares his or her views and statements.”

As for the classification of Nazi criminals as victims of repression, Yan Rachinsky, the chairman of the board of the international society “Memorial”*, explained that the mistake occurred due to the closed nature of the archives of the special services. “The fundamental problem due to which such errors occur in various databases devoted to the Soviet era is the inaccessibility of the archives of the special services, even now. Despite the law and God knows how many years passed,” Yan Rachinsky said.

*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 December 10, 2021 at 12:27 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.