Human rights defenders were not read their rights – Newspaper Kommersant No. 11 (7456) dated 01/23/2023
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The Gagarinsky Court of Moscow did not consider the claim of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG; has been operating since 1976) against the Moscow Department of the Ministry of Justice. MHG lawyers tried to challenge the procedure for appointing an unscheduled inspection of the organization in November last year. The audit established eleven episodes of the participation of representatives of the MHG in conferences outside the capital – the Ministry of Justice considers this a violation of the “limits of territorial activity” and demands the liquidation of the MHG. The meeting of the Moscow City Court on the claim for liquidation is scheduled for January 25; Henry Reznik, vice-president of the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers, will also defend the human rights organization.
The lawsuit of the MHG against the Moscow Ministry of Justice, follows from the case file on the website of the Gagarin Court, was registered on January 16. On January 19, the plaintiff was “refused to accept” the application, and the publication of the court ruling was “prohibited”. The court only proposes to get acquainted with the law on access to judicial information, which, among a number of reasons for closing judicial acts from the public, names, among other things, “affecting the security of the state.” MHG Executive Director Svetlana Astrakhantseva indicates that she and her colleagues do not understand the reasons for such secrecy and the motives for refusing to consider the claim.
The MHG is the oldest human rights organization operating in Russia. The MHG declares its goal as “assistance in the practical implementation of all international legal obligations of Russia in the field of human rights.” In 2014, the vast majority of MHG projects were curtailed due to a lack of funding – a significant part of Western donors left Russia after the laws on NPOs-foreign agents came into force. Later, the organization completely refused foreign funding: the Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alekseeva, who led the group since 1996, told Novaya Gazeta at the time that the organization “won’t take foreign grants.” For many years, Lyudmila Alekseeva was first a member of the Presidential Commission on Human Rights, and then a member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society, and met with Vladimir Putin on several occasions. She died in 2018 at the age of 91, after which three co-chairs were elected to the MHG.
In the lawsuit in question, MHG lawyers demanded that the “unscheduled inspection” of the organization be recognized as illegal. In November 2022, at the initiative of the prosecutor’s office, it was carried out by the Moscow Department of the Ministry of Justice, revealing 11 violations of “territorial activity”: since the human rights organization “Moscow”, the department believes, its representatives did not have the right to participate in conferences in other regions. Among the violations, as previously reported by Kommersant, there is an online event of human rights activists from the Krasnodar Territory and monitoring of high-profile trials in Podolsk and Ingushetia. Gathering information about human rights violations in the course of legal proceedings has been the main activity of the MHG since its founding in 1976.
The results of the check formed the basis of a lawsuit by the Ministry of Justice. The department’s capital department demanded in the Moscow City Court to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group for “systemic and gross” violations of the law “On NGOs”. If the Gagarinsky Court had accepted the MHG’s claim against the Ministry of Justice and started the process to establish the legality of the appointment of an “unscheduled inspection”, this would have affected the course of the process in the Moscow City Court. On the basis of a lawsuit against the supervisory authority, MHG lawyers previously asked the Moscow City Court to postpone the liquidation process. The rejection of the claim in the Gagarin court, Svetlana Astrakhantseva believes, the liquidation process can speed up: “We do not rule out that they want to liquidate us in one court session,” she said.
From the information on the website of the Moscow City Court, it follows that the hearing on the liquidation claim is scheduled for January 25. According to Kommersant’s information, lawyers Mikhail Biryukov, Marina Agaltsova, Maria Eismont and Henry Reznik will participate in the defense of the MHG. Honored Lawyer of Russia Henry Reznik, we note, is the first vice-president of the Moscow Bar Association and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. A year ago, being at that time vice-president of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers (FPA) and a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC), he participated in the defense of the International Memorial (recognized as a foreign agent and liquidated at the suit of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation). Last fall, Henry Reznik stopped working on the FPA council and filed an application for resignation from the public council under the Ministry of Justice, and in December 2022 announced his resignation from the HRC.
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