Attack on Research and Information Center 'Memorial'

Amnesty International is calling for a full investigation of the raid by Russian law enforcement officers on the office of an independent Research and Information centre Memorial in St Petersburg, amid concerns that serious violations of Russian law were committed during the process.

On December 4th, masked officers from the city prosecutor's office armed with truncheons raided the Research and Information Center Memorial and after a protracted search, confiscated all the computer hard drives and other materials collected over twenty years of research of political repression during the Soviet era. In violation of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code no record of the seized items or the content of hard drives has been made and the lawyer was not allowed onto the premises. The search was conducted without attesting witnesses and the Memorial representative was not given the record of the search to familiarize themselves with it.

The independent organization Memorial was founded during the 1980s to research and commemorate the victims of Stalin's crimes. It has been one of the most active and most visible human rights organizations of the Post-Soviet era, and has repeatedly confronted the Putin administration over human rights violations in Chechnya and elsewhere. Over the years, the staff at the Research and Information Centre has helped establish the fate of thousands of Stalin's victims, discovered execution sites and burial grounds, and researched unofficial movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

The material seized by authorities has immense historical value. It includes biographical data on over 500,000 victims of Stalinist repressions, a vast collection of photographs and documents related to the terror, and material related to the preservation of St. Petersburg's historic architecture.

According to official sources, the raid was part of an investigation into an article published in 2007 by a St. Petersburg newspaper, Novy Petersburg, which authorities claimed to contain "extremist" content inciting racial and ethnic tensions. The authorities reportedly suspected that Memorial had helped finance Novy Petersburg, though Memorial has issued a statement denying any connection with the newspaper.

Amnesty International considers this raid with its violations to be a further indication of the climate of harassment faced by civil society and human rights defenders in Russia. As the organization pointed out in its report Russian Federation: Freedom Limited - the right to freedom of expression in the Russian Federation, EUR 46/008/2008, published on 26 February 2008, there appear to be more and more limitations on the right to freedom of expression, as well as the rights to freedom of assembly and association in the Russian Federation. Memorial, as one of the more visible organizations in support of human rights in Russia, in the past had generally been spared such direct attacks. The space for dissenting views, independent media and independent organizations to operate is shrinking.

Eurasia Cogroup,
Amnesty International, USA