On December 29, following the International Memorial, the Moscow City Court decided to liquidate the Memorial Human Rights Center. This is stated on the website of the organization.

The court's decision will be challenged.

Later, Interfax reported that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) demanded that the Russian authorities suspend the liquidation of Memorial, since the ECHR is considering a complaint from 11 NGOs, including Memorial, against the law on “foreign agents ”, which was filed back in 2013.

A week ago, the Moscow City Court upheld the decision to fine the organization for 300 thousand rubles.

In October 2021, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow fined the Memorial Human Rights Center 300,000 rubles for the absence of the “foreign agent” label, which was absent in the appeal that Vitaly Ponomarev , head of the Central Asian Program of Memorial, sent to the electronic reception of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the appeal, several human rights organizations called on the Russian authorities to grant political asylum to the Turkmen blogger Rozgeldy Choliev , who is being persecuted in his homeland for his publications on the Internet.

Below is the story of Ponomarev about the meeting, during which the appeal of Memorial Human Rights Center in the case of the fine was considered.

The decision is paradoxical: the prosecutor's office and the court have no complaints against me as the author (co-author) and sender of the letter, but the human rights organization, whose colleagues have nothing to do with the letter, was found guilty of an administrative offense.

Lawyer Stanislav Zhigalov filed a motion to question me as a witness, but it was rejected by Judge Lyudmila Sumina.

So I had to spend all 40 minutes while the court hearings were going on in the corridor. However, the speeches of the participants in the trial were clearly audible through the loosely closed door.

In the meantime, I look into the text of the contested judgment of the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow dated October 4, 2021 (judge Alexander Merkulov) and find a lot of surprising things.

In particular, the court's decision states that among the signers of the collective letter I am listed as the “director of Memorial” (of course, there is no mention of such a nonexistent position in the letter). It is also alleged that I allegedly stated in court that there is no reason to consider the collective appeal in the Choliev case sent to the state bodies as collective. It is difficult to understand what is meant here. One gets the impression that Judge Merkulov did not bother to carefully study the case materials.

Since it was not possible to find evidence confirming the involvement of Memorial as a legal entity in sending the letter to the Foreign Ministry, the prosecutor's office and the court went to obvious falsifications. In particular, in the statement of claim of the Prosecutor's Office of the Central Administrative District it is stated without reference to the source that I sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the evening of March 8 from the office of the organization (although I conducted all the correspondence on this case from home, and the prosecutor's office did not provide evidence to the contrary). My testimony, refuting the prosecutor's version, was not taken into account by the court, since “the judge believes that the testimony of this witness is based on his incorrect assessment of his actions, as well as on a subjective perception of the events that took place”. The “incorrect assessment” probably consisted in the fact that I referred to the provision of Article 33 of the Constitution, guaranteeing the right of citizens to send individual and collective appeals to state bodies, and also stated that mentioning the author's affiliation with Memorial in a letter does not turn any such document into an appeal on behalf of a legal entity. As for the testimony of Aleksandr Cherkasov, chairman of the Council of the Memorial Human Rights Center, the court, as it turned out, excluded them from consideration altogether, stating that Cherkasov allegedly had not been explained the rights provided for by the Code of Administrative Offenses and Article 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It is not clear, however, why the court itself did not provide an explanation of these rights before interrogation in the course of court hearings? As a result, what is the collective guilt of Memorial, except for the indication in the text of my belonging to this organization, remained unclear.

Another interesting point is the position of the court on the question of whether there was a "dire need" to send a letter from human rights defenders in the case of the Turkmen asylum seeker. In the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses (Article 2.7), the concept of "urgent need" includes, in particular, actions aimed at "eliminating a danger that directly threatens the person and the rights of the person ... if this danger could not be eliminated by other means." Given the previous events related to Choliev, and the fact that Turkmenistan is one of the most repressive countries in the world, an urgent appeal in defense of the rights of an asylum seeker who is on the verge of deportation at the airport can be considered as an action in a situation of extreme necessity caused by a demonstrative failure to comply with the requirements of the law by employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Russian border service. But,

Also, according to the court of first instance, “there are no grounds for recognizing the committed administrative offense as insignificant”. However, he did not explain what the "public danger" of contacting the Foreign Ministry is.

Unfortunately, the appellate instance simply rubber stamped the decisions first, leaving inconsistencies and controversial issues without clarification. At the same time, it turned out that the appeal was to be considered in February 2022. But on December 16, the court unexpectedly made a decision to schedule the hearing on the 21st. This is probably due to the desire of the prosecutor's office and the structures behind it to have a new decision on violation of the labeling requirements for foreign agents on the eve of the proceedings on the liquidation of the Memorial Human Rights Center, which will begin this week.

The Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights expresses its solidarity with Memorial Human Rights Center, an organization that has played a decisive role in the formation and development of, albeit a small, but proactive and active human rights community in Turkmenistan.

We are grateful to Memorial for invaluable assistance in protecting the rights of citizens of our country, both in Turkmenistan and abroad, and we are confident that one way or another, Memorial Human Rights Center will continue its undoubtedly important work and are ready to assist in every possible way.

Source: Chronicles of Turkmenistan