Press Release, 14.12.2021

Photo: Artur Gaiduk / Photo from Arthur Gaiduk’s Facebook page

Artur Gaiduk, MP of the Pskov Regional Assembly, considers the demands of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office to liquidate the Memorial human rights organisation unlawful and essentially unconstitutional, and calls on Igor Krasnov, Public Prosecutor General, to abolish the law suit against Memorial.

In his address, Artur Gaiduk listed in detail the legal grounds on which the demand of the Public Prosecutor General to liquidate Memorial (recognised in Russia by a “foreign agent”) is unlawful, including even by virtue of the norms of repressive Russian laws, as well as a special resolution of the Constitutional Court of Russia adopted in 2014.

“I believe that the motives for the liquidation of Memorial are political and pose a direct threat to the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens.

For more than thirty years, Memorial has been preserving and perpetuating the memory of the victims of political repression. Members of the [human rights] society conduct historical and archival research, assist in the rehabilitation of the repressed [in the USSR, especially during Stalin’s period] and help their families, carry out extensive human rights work, including protection of human rights today, create educational programmes, conduct legal consultations for refugees and political prisoners.

Memorial encourages the Russian state to fulfill its obligations to protect the rights of the repressed and their family members.

Memorial’s activities are of exceptional importance for the Russian state and society, and for intrenational human rights work in general.

Memorial is a real hope for justice for the innocently convicted victims of Soviet political terror. For all those who were killed, who went through the camps and psychiatric hospitals, for all those who suffered from the monstrous GULAG machinery.

Memorial is an opportunity for relatives of the repressed to learn about the fate of their innocently convicted relatives in many generations and a chance for public rehabilitation of victims of political repression.

Memorial is the memory of the people, which cannot be eliminated,” Gaiduk wrote.

It should be noted that on 9 November, Russia’s Public Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court to liquidate the International Memorial society and its structural divisions. The first hearings of the court took place on 25 November. The Supreme Court continues considering the claim on 14 December.

Academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, more than 70 cultural figures of international importnace, the Council of Europe, Nobel Peace Prize laureates – ex-President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev and Editor-in-Chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov – spoke in defence of Memorial. The petition in support of the society has already been signed by over 126,000 people.

ARTUR GAIDUK

is deputy of the Pskov Regional Assembly, the Yabloko faction. Bureau member of the Pskov regional branch of Yabloko. Ambulabce doctor of the Pskov Ambulance Station