Friday evening began with heading of RIA Novosti "Ministry of Justice asks Supreme Court to liquidate the organization "Memorial".
Well, the perfect time to touch off panic in the media. "Echo of Moscow" reprints scandalous news. I don’t know when the Board of the Russian Society "Memorial" will be able to give an official comment, so I think it is necessary to comment on the issue to answer questions.
Memorial is more than a hundred organizations; most of them are not legally bound with each other. The liquidation of one of them doesn’t affect the activity of others. I know about at least two cases of liquidation of the organization in the regions of Russia for quite trivial reasons: the founders grew old, or have moved, new activists didn’t come, and the Ministry of Justice liquidated it on formal grounds.
Today the situation is different, but there are also no reasons to shout about bloody regime. There were two large federal organizations: Russian Memorial and International Memorial. They were created in the USSR. Since then a lot of laws has changed, and originally established structure became inconsistent with applicable law. The main problem is that to be considered all-Russian, it is necessary to have branches in many regions, but de facto they were not the departments, but individual organizations.
General conference of Memorials is scheduled on November 20-24 in Moscow, where I was delegated from the Komi Human Rights Commission "Memorial". All this year there was reregistration or the establishment of Memorial's offices at the local level to bring the situation into conformity with the law. This is a long bureaucratic process.
Here is my assessment at the moment: the value of news is exaggerated. It's not about any harassment, it is the legal situation, the output of which is found and being implemented. Memorial, of course, will continue its work.
But yes, there is an obvious failure of activity of press-service and direction of Memorial.