Memorial (human rights organization)

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Международное историко-просветительское, правозащитное и благотварительное общество "Мемориал
" Memorial for International Human Rights and Enlightenment »
logo
Purpose: Human rights , coming to terms with the Stalinist tyranny
Chair: Jan Zbigniewich Raczynski
Date of establishment: January 28, 1989
Dissolution date: December 28, 2021
Seat : Moscow , RussiaRussiaRussia 
Website: https://www.memo.ru/en-us/ (English)

The International Society for Historical Clarification, human rights and social welfare "Memorial" ( Russian Международное историко-просветительское, правозащитное и благотворительное общество "Мемориал" Meschdunarodnoje istoriko-proswetitelskoje, prawosaschtschitnoje i blagotworitelnoje obschtschestwo "Memorial" ), shortly Memorial International , is an international human rights organization with headquarters in Moscow . It is affiliated with over 80 decentralized regional human rights organizations throughout Russia , other post-Soviet states and parts of Europe. The focus is on the historical reappraisal of political tyranny, advocating compliance with human rights and social welfare for the survivors of the Soviet labor camp system ( Gulag ). The human rights organization founded in January 1989 has received numerous awards for its commitment, including the 2004 alternative Nobel Prize ( Right Livelihood Award ).

In November 2021, the Russian public prosecutor's office applied for Memorial and its regionally active institutions in Russia to be closed. The Supreme Court finally liquidated it on December 28, 2021. Memorial's independent entities outside of Russia continue to exist.

story

Emergence

Memorial was created in the autumn of 1987 at the time of the policy of glasnost and perestroika propagated by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as a movement, initially in Moscow and then in other parts of the country. It did not come about as a result of a decision from above , but as a form of political and social self-organization from below .

In January 1989 Memorial was constituted as a social organization during a meeting of the Moscow Aviation Institute, initially as a scientific association, but Memorial was not officially registered as a human rights organization until 1991.

An initial goal was to erect a memorial for the victims of Stalinism in the Soviet Union (after its collapse , the CIS emerged ) . Andrei Sakharov was the founding chairman . It was the first non-governmental organization on the territory of the former Soviet Union. The memorial was inaugurated on October 30, 1990 in front of the former KGB headquarters in Moscow, the Lubyanka .

The organization soon set further goals. The volunteers visited GULag survivors, wrote down their life stories and tried to give them a voice in public. At the beginning of the 1990s, around 70 memorial associations were established in Russia. There are now over 80 groups internationally, including in Ukraine , Latvia , Germany , Italy and France .

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
The allegations of financial support are not supported by evidence, only links to the said organizations are given which do not give any indication of the alleged funding.

Memorial's work is regularly financially supported by the Soros Foundation (USA) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Germany). The organization also receives funding from the UNHCR and the Council of Europe for its refugee counseling program.

Conflicts with the Russian authorities

Memorial has been under pressure from Russian authorities for some time (e.g. with searches and tax proceedings) and is classified as a " foreign agent ". The association was a. Searched in March 2013 . "In recent years, our attempt to counter the official opinion has been met with incredible agitation: we would speak out to the enemies of Russia," said Irina Scherbakova from Memorial.

On January 28, 2015, the Constitutional Court of Russia dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Russian Ministry of Justice . The Ministry of Justice wanted to obtain a ban on the organization on the grounds that the organizational structure did not comply with the legal requirements, in fact more with the aim of disciplining it and improving its controllability. On October 4, 2016, the Ministry of Justice put the association on its " foreign agent " list. This was justified by the fact that Memorial was financed from abroad and that representatives of Memorial criticized Russian laws and spoke of Russian "aggression" in the Ukraine conflict. On the first working visit of a German Federal President to Moscow since 2010, Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Memorial, paid tribute to its work and expressed concern about the NGO law.

Memorial also investigates kidnapping, torture and deaths in the Russian Autonomous Republic of Chechnya under the Ramzan Kadyrov government . A head of the office there was kidnapped and murdered in 2009. The head of the local branch in January 2018 was arrested on the basis of fabricated allegations. Drugs were so poorly foisted on him that the police had to repeat depositing “his” drugs in his car in order to ensure that the drugs could be used as evidence that could be used in court. His family was also harassed. On January 17, 2018, the head of the Autonomous Republic of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov announced in a speech that “human rights defenders have no place in the Chechnya Republic” and that he will “ break the backbone of the people's enemies ”. According to critics, the process was full of absurdities .

On November 25, 2021, the trial to ban “Memorial” began in Moscow, the charges of which co-founder Irina Scherbakova described as “absurd, ridiculous and purely politically motivated”. Russian observers and activists see the process as a sign that registration as "foreign agents" is only a preliminary stage to the complete elimination of non-governmental, critical organizations (especially human rights organizations), the media and civil society activists.

resolution

On December 28, 2021, the Russian Supreme Court passed a ruling banning the Moscow-based umbrella organization Memorial International and its regional organizations in Russia. The reason given was that Memorial violated the "Foreign Agents" Act. The public prosecutor's office had accused Memorial, among other things, of not having made it sufficiently clear in its publications that it was an "organization co-financed from abroad". Memorial denied the allegations and called the court ruling a "purely political decision".

Internationally, the judgment met with sharp criticism and caused consternation. Amnesty International Germany, the Center for Liberal Modernity , the Federal Foundation to Cope with the SED Dictatorship , the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the German PEN Center published a joint statement in which Memorial is both the “moral backbone of Russian civil society” and a Organization that seeks “reconciliation within its own society and with its neighbors”. With the ban, the Russian state is preventing “dealing with its own history of injustice”.

Focus

Historical work-up

Memorial collects documents from the labor camps of the Soviet Union in its own libraries and archives. This includes: victim cards, prisoner reminders, trial documents, pictures and samizdat publications. Scientific information centers, in which the system of repression is researched, are attached to the libraries. The results are published by the association's own publishing house.

The organization tries to erect memorial stones or plaques on the sites of earlier camps and mass graves . Once a year Memorial organizes an expedition to the Solovetsky Islands in northern Russia, where the first prison camp for political prisoners was built as early as 1920.

Human rights

Meeting on Konyushennaya Square in St. Petersburg in June 2012

In Memorial's Moscow human rights center, information on the human rights situation in Russia is processed and initiatives for conflict resolution are prepared. There are programs against ethnic discrimination , the protection of refugees and the sending of observers to war zones. The organization publishes its analyzes in brochures, on its own radio program and on the Internet. After the memorial worker Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped and murdered in Grozny in July 2009 , the organization temporarily stopped its work in Chechnya .

A memorial youth group campaigns against right-wing extremism in Russia . She deals with the history of European fascism, organizes demonstrations and press work, publishes the magazine Tumbalalajka . Because of its preoccupation with right-wing extremism, the Saint Petersburg Memorial Group has been the victim of various attacks since 2003. In 2004, Memorial member Nikolai Girenko was shot after appearing as an expert witness in neo-Nazi trials.

In 2013, the organization first published its list of political prisoners in the Russian Federation. With the view that there are political prisoners in today's Russia, she is not alone and in spring 2018 the cases of 64 Ukrainians alone were described as political.

Social help

Survivors of the GULag system often live in great poverty in old age. Years of incarceration in a forced labor camp do not count towards the prisoner's pension. Because of the social stigma associated with being held in the camp, the former prisoners can only do poorly qualified and poorly paid jobs. Memorial therefore supported this group of people in cases of hardship.

Healthy members looked after former inmates in need of care. Their own pharmacy in Saint Petersburg tried to provide them with the necessary medication. There have been grants for repairs and basic services when otherwise impossible to survive. For former prisoners who died penniless, the organization partially covered the funeral costs.

Last address

The Citizens' Action Last Address uses the Memorial archives to create memorial plaques for victims of Stalinism. The project is based on the idea of stumbling blocks .

Structures

Protest event with Adam Michnik in Warsaw in November 2021 over legal proceedings for the dissolution in Russia

The association is organized on a decentralized basis. In addition to Memorial International, there are legally independent regional memorial organizations in many cities in Russia. There is also an independent legal center “Memorial” ( Правозащитный центр ) and a research and information center “Memorial”. There are also groups in Ukraine , Kazakhstan , Latvia , Poland , Germany , Italy , France and, since 2016, the Czech Republic . Memorial Germany describes itself as a member of the international Memorial Network (Moscow) and is a registered association based in Berlin.

Known members

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Memorial (society)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.memo.ru/en-us/memorial/international-memorial-board/
  2. ↑ https://www.memorial.de/index.php/7609-jan-raczynski-ist-neuer-vorsitzender-von-memorial-international
  3. ↑ ПРАВОЗАЩИТА (offline), Memo.ru dated March 5, 2007, archived in the WaybackMachine , accessed on December 30, 2021
  4. ^ Solidarity with the Russian non-governmental organization Memorial. In: DW.com (Deutsche Welle). December 14, 2021, accessed December 16, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Reinhard Veser: A ban with great symbolic effect. In: FAZ.net . November 12, 2021, accessed December 28, 2021 .
  6. ^ Memorial: Moscow dissolves Russia's most famous human rights organization. In: The mirror . December 28, 2021, accessed December 28, 2021 .
  7. ↑ Irina Scherbakowa : Prisons and camps in the Soviet system of rule . In: German Bundestag (ed.): Materials of the Enquete Commission “Overcoming the Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in the Process of German Unity”, Vol. VI: All-German forms of remembrance of the two German dictatorships and their victims. Forms of Memory - Archive , Nomos-Verl.-Ges., Frankfurt am Main, Baden-Baden, 1999, pp. 567–622, here p. 609.
  8. ↑ Berlin gives in to Moscow (Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov urges German Foreign Minister Steinmeier to hold on to the 2014 meeting of the 'Petersberg Dialog')
  9. ↑ taz.de of March 21, 2013: Authorities paralyze “Memorial”
  10. ↑ Irina Scherbakowa in conversation with Susanne Buckley-Zistel and Norbert Frei about Russia and human rights. In: Sources on the history of human rights. Working Group on Human Rights in the 20th Century, June 23, 2016, accessed on December 19, 2016 .
  11. ^ Repression and Integration , WOZ, November 13, 2014
  12. ^ Memorial human rights organization will be retained. Zeit Online, January 28, 2015, accessed October 5, 2016 .
  13. ↑ Register of Non-Commercial Organizations Performing the Function of Foreign Agents Ministry of Justice, October 7, 2016 (Russian)
  14. ↑ Russia classifies the human rights group Memorial as an "agent". Deutsche Welle, October 5, 2016, accessed October 5, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Steinmeier honors the work of the human rights group “Memorial” in Moscow , Deutsche Welle, October 25, 2017
  16. ^ Offensive against civil rights activists in Chechnya , NZZ, January 22, 2018
  17. ↑ Locked up without a trace , Novaya Gazeta, January 9, 2018
  18. ↑ Identified! , Novaya Gazeta, February 1, 2018
  19. ↑ "Memorial": Relatives of the detained Chechen human rights activist were driven into the street and their house keys were stolen from them , Novaya Gazeta, January 11, 2018
  20. ↑ "An independent investigator in Chechnya must be an orphan" , Novaya Gazeta, April 25, 2018
  21. ↑ Chechen Shame , Novaya Gazeta, July 27, 2018
  22. ^ ARD-Studio Moscow: Process start in Moscow. Memorial threatens to end. , November 25, 2021.
  23. ^ Roman Goncharenko: Russia's Supreme Court dissolves the human rights organization Memorial International. In: Deutsche Welle. December 28, 2021, accessed December 28, 2021 .
  24. ^ Horror after the ban on the human rights organization Memorial. In: Deutsche Welle. December 28, 2021, accessed December 28, 2021 .
  25. ^ Human rights activists back in Chechnya Greenpeace magazine online, December 16, 2009
  26. ↑ The List of Persons Recognized as Political Prisoners by Russia's Memorial Human Rights Center , on Institute of Modern Russia, January 22, 2014
  27. ^ Symbolic hunger strike in Russia , NZZ, May 29, 2018, page 3
  28. ↑ Dernière adresse connue ... au temps de la terreur stalinienne , Le Monde, February 16, 2015
  29. ↑ Author's broadcast С.Пархоменко , Echo Moskwy, December 22, 2017
  30. ↑ Russian NGO Memorial does not move to Prague Radio Prague, October 11, 2016 (German)
  31. ^ Homepage Memorial Germany
  32. ^ Memorial ( Memento of March 10, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Right Livelihood Award 2004
  33. ↑ Max van der Stoel Prize awarded to Memorial ( Memento from October 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Memorial.de
  34. ↑ Zeszyty Katyńskie , Vol. 24, Warszawa 2009, pp. 254–255 (Polish)
  35. ↑ who presented the award on December 16, 2009 to the then chairman of the Human Rights Center of Memorial Oleg Orlov and his comrades-in- arms Lyudmila Alexejewa and Sergei Kowaljow . Sakharov Prize honors Russian human rights activists European Parliament.
  36. ↑ Sakharov Prize for Russian human rights organization at nzz.ch, December 16, 2009 (accessed on December 16, 2009)
  37. ^ "Honorowa Odznaka 'Za Zasługi dla Ochrony Praw Człowieka' dla Olega Zakirowowa", March 10, 2010 ( Memento from April 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  38. ↑ Lista osób odznaczonych odznaką honorową "Za Zasługi dla Ochrony Praw Człowieka"
  39. ↑ "High Polish Award for Memorial International in Warsaw" ( Memento from October 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive )