Press Release, 27.01.2023

Photo: Valery Borshchyov, Co-Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group / Photo by Kristina Kormilitsyna, Kommersant

The Moscow City Court, on false “grounds” made up by the Ministry of Justice, decided to liquidate the oldest human rights organisation in Russia – the Moscow Helsinki Group, established in 1976. Co-Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group has been Valery Borshchyov, a member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko.

“This is a legally ungrounded and politically motivated decision taken by those who are restoring a state in which there is no place for human rights. The Yabloko party expresses its unconditional support for the Moscow Helsinki Group,” Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov said.

On 25 January, Rybakov attended the hearings of the Moscow City Court so that to support human rights defenders.

The key argument of the Ministry of Justice is that the Moscow Helsinki Group is a Moscow-based regional organisation, but its members participated and held events not only in Moscow, but also in other regions, for example, in the Moscow Region (including the events conducted online).

“I myself have been heading a non-governmental organisation – the Bellona Environmental and Human Rights Centre – for eight years. We have many colleagues and partners among NGOs, not only environmentalists and human rights activists. And I can assure you that according to the criterion offered by the Ministry of Justice, absolutely ALL really working regional public organisations can be closed now. They have started with large and backbone NGOs,” Rybakov wrote in his Telegram channel.

“The decision to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group is another demonstrative step by the authorities aimed at final abandoning of the principle of the priority of human rights as a foundation for the entire Russian legal system,” Grigory Yavlinsky, Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko, commented on the decision of the court.

Yavlinsky also emphasised that the Moscow Helsinki Group had been playing a vital role in the formation and support of civil society.

According to Yavlinsky, the course towards the elimination of the slightest manifestations of the independence of civil society was taken by the Russian authorities not in recent years, but in the beginning of the 2000s. In particular, he spoke about this at a conference dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Moscow Helsinki Group in 2016 saying that the state .

Valery Borschyov

Is Co-Chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group. Co-Chairman of the Human Rights Faction of Yabloko. Member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko.