RUSSIA Moscow also wants to close the Helsinki Group

It is the most glorious Russian association for the defense of human rights. The Ministry of Justice challenges its actions at the national level because it is only registered in the capital of the country. Human rights dead and buried in Putin’s Russia.

Moscow () – The Ministry of Justice has appealed to the courts to request the liquidation of the capital’s Helsinki Group (MHG, Mekhaghe according to the Russian pronunciation), the most glorious association for the defense of human rights. It was created in 1976 after the Helsinki agreements, which had also been signed by the Soviet Union the previous year. According to the head of the State Council for Human Rights, Eva Merkačeva, “it’s just a formality, because the Moscow group is registered at the regional level but actually operates throughout the federal territory, which is quite strange.”

Indeed, the representatives of the MHG act in the courts of all the regions, although they do not assume direct responsibilities but rather “offer support” to all those who feel deprived of their rights. The organization’s director of the legal sector, Roman Kiselev, explained that the lawsuit stems from an unplanned inspection that was carried out at the request of the prosecution in November. The inspectors found on the MHG website a notice referring to the presence of its members as observers at a trial in the Sochi court on the Black Sea.

Since then, the checks have been carried out directly by the Ministry of Justice, which found 11 “initiatives” of MHG members outside the territory of Moscow, attendance at trials, complaints about non-admission to court and seminars with regional partners (most of them virtual), and a request to the governor of Saint Petersburg to lift the ban on public demonstrations. A member of the MHG, Boris Altušer, confirmed that the fundamental claim of the ministry refers to the regional limits of the Mekhaghe, which must be respected “according to the statutes”, and the detected violations “make its liquidation inevitable”.

The MHG is the oldest humanitarian organization in the country, whose fundamental mission is “to support respect for human rights and the construction of democracy in Russia.” The 1975 Helsinki agreements were a historic crossroads between Brezhnev repressions and dissident protests, and had a very special international resonance. The US did not trust the Soviets, their translation of the text into Russian and the commitments they proposed to assume, and the representation of the Holy See offered itself as a guarantor of the USSR, in a very special intervention by the Vatican Ostpolitik.

Since 1997, already in the middle of the post-Soviet era, the association has published an extensive and detailed annual report on the human rights situation in the country, and since 2009 it has awarded the “MHG prize” to those who dedicate themselves to humanitarian causes, the most prestigious of Russia in this field. Since 2017, when the first variant of the law on “foreign agents” was approved, the Group has refused all foreign funding.

Among the 11 founders was the “mother of dissent” Ljudmila Alekseeva, who led the MHG from 1996 until her death in 2018. President Putin had visited her the previous year to congratulate her on her 90th birthday. On that occasion, Putin thanked her for “her life dedicated to others,” and said he was convinced that in all this time “she had dealt with what was most important.”

The president also attended Alekseeva’s funeral afterwards and is now preparing to celebrate the final funeral of the entire Russian community committed to the defense of human rights, who are also already dead and buried in Russia today.