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Russia orders top rights group shut, capping year of crackdowns -Breaking

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© Reuters. The verdict was delivered by a judge from the Russian Supreme Court during an hearing on the closing of International Memorial, a Moscow-based human rights organization. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina

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MOSCOW (Reuters).-Russia’s Supreme Court has ordered Tuesday’s liquidation of the nation’s most prominent human rights organization for violating a law requiring foreign agents to register. This caps a year-long crackdown on Kremlin critics that was unprecedented since Soviet times.

Memorial has been closed down. This follows a year where the Kremlin’s most prominent critic was arrested, his political group banned, and many of his comrades forced to flee. Moscow claims that it enforces laws in order to protect the country and prevent extremism.

Jan Raczynski of Memorial Board stated, “This is a negative signal that shows our society as a whole are going in the wrong direction.” According to TASS news agency Jan Raczynski was quoted saying.

Maria Eismont (one of Memorial’s attorneys) stated that closing the group could increase Russia’s risk of total repression during Tuesday’s final hearings.

Memorial has said that the lawsuit was politically motivated. Interfax quoted the Interfax news agency as reporting that the lawyer of the group stated it would appeal both to Russia and the European Court of Human Rights.

Memorial began as a memorial to the Stalinist era’s crimes.

The group was Russia’s principal rights group during two Chechnya War in the 1990s. It has recently spoken out against the repression of its critics by President Vladimir Putin.

This group was placed on an official “foreign agent” list by the authorities in 2015. Its activities were restricted.

The Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Centre was accused by prosecutors of violating Foreign Agent Law.

Prosecutors claimed that Memorial International violated regulations by failing to mark all publications with the label, even social media ones. The Moscow-based center was accused of supporting terrorism and extremism.

According to TASS, the state prosecutor claimed that Memorial had staged large-scale media campaigns designed to discredit Russian authorities during Tuesday’s hearing.

It denied that there were any grave violations of its rights and called the lawsuits politically motivated. The group stated that its members will continue to work even after it dissolves.

Putin, who was once a spy for the Soviet KGB security services, stated that Memorial had protected terrorist organizations and that it included Nazi collaborators on its list of Soviet-era victim of repression.

In the past year, Putin’s most vocal critic Alexei Navalny was also jailed for charges that he claims were made up. He had returned from Germany to receive treatment for poisoning. Western countries refer to this as an attempt at assassination. Navalny’s political network, which was deemed extremist by the authorities, was also banned and several of his associates were jailed or exiled.

Russia claims its independence and that its laws regarding extremism, foreign influence and other matters are comparable to those of other countries. Russia denies that it was involved in the poisoning of Navalny.

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