The Helsinki Group has no place even in Moscow – Newspaper Kommersant No. 237 (7438) of 12/21/2022

The Moscow Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation demands the liquidation of the oldest human rights NGO in the country – the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG; has been operating since 1976). As Kommersant found out, the MHG is charged with 11 violations of the law “On NGOs”, all of them are somehow connected with “going beyond the limits of territorial activity.” The Ministry of Justice believes that human rights activists of a regional organization (that is, the territory of Moscow limited in their work) did not have the right to participate even in online events organized in other cities, and even more so to attend high-profile trials outside the capital.

The case card demanding the liquidation of the Moscow Helsinki Group is posted on the website Moscow City Court on Tuesday. Kommersant learned that the reason for the lawsuit of the Ministry of Justice was the participation of a representative of the MHG in an online conference organized by human rights activists from the Krasnodar Territory. Representatives of the Moscow prosecutor’s office were the first to pay attention to this event.

The organization has a regional, not a federal or international status, therefore, it has no right to work outside the capital, the supervisory authority indicated and demanded that the Ministry of Justice conduct an “unscheduled inspection”.

As a result of the audit, which ended in November 2022, 11 violations of the law “On NGOs” were recorded (identified in the activities of the MHG from October 2019 to October 2022). These episodes formed the basis of the liquidation lawsuit, MHG executive director Svetlana Astrakhantseva told Kommersant.

“No warnings to eliminate violations, no fines – they immediately decided to cut, as they say, without waiting for peritonitis, despite our official explanations about participating in an online event (organized by human rights activists from the Krasnodar Territory.— “b”),” Ms. Astrakhantseva explained. “In the lawsuit, the Ministry of Justice points to allegedly “systemic and gross” violations of the law in terms of working outside of Moscow, both online and in person.”

Ms. Astrakhantseva does not deny that members of the MHG were often participants in events held by partner organizations or acted as observers at high-profile trials. Thus, human rights activists were present at the trial in the case of Alexander Shestun (former head of the Serpukhov district of Moscow, sentenced in 2020 to 15 years of strict regime for “abuse of power”) in Podolsk. In Ingushetia, they watched the trial of seven elders who advocated “the return of their ancestral lands taken from the Ingush in 2018.”

“Observation in the courts is one of the areas of our work, in this way we collect information about violations of the rights to an independent court,” Svetlana Astrakhantseva emphasized in an interview with Kommersant.

The activities of the Moscow Helsinki Group began in 1976. It 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 had headed the group since 1996, then told Novaya Gazeta that the organization she controlled “would not take foreign grants.” For many years, Lyudmila Alekseeva was first a member of the Commission on Human Rights under the President, and then the President’s Council for the Development of Civil Society under the President, 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.

“We still do not have foreign funding, the only grant we have received over the past three years is a grant from the Potanin Foundation in 2020 to support NGOs during a pandemic in the amount of 4.9 million rubles,” said Ms. Astrakhantseva.— We could support the staff on it, but today we can no longer: there is no money left for salaries. The only employee registered in the MHG staff is me. The rest cooperate on a voluntary basis. There are 27 people with the status of “member of the MHG”, there is a circle of laureates – about 150 people, but there are even more supporters and friends. Nevertheless, we exist on donations, and this is very little money.

It should be noted that the card of the case on the lawsuit of the Ministry of Justice against the MHG appeared on the website of the Moscow City Court on Tuesday. The lawsuit was registered, follows from it, on December 19.

According to Svetlana Astrakhantseva, the department formulated a statement of claim even before receiving objections from the MHG to the inspection act with 11 episodes of violations.

“On December 1, the Ministry of Justice sent us an inspection report by mail, we had 15 days to respond, but already on December 14, as I see from the copies of documents we received, the Ministry of Justice formulated claims,” she explains. “We were not even expected, no one was interested our objections.

The Ministry of Justice did not respond to Kommersant’s request about the MHG’s objections to the inspection report, the details of preparing a lawsuit in court, and other claims against the human rights group.

A source close to the MHG told Kommersant that the organization has been “pressed from different sides for several months now.” According to him, the group received notifications from the prosecutor’s office of St. Petersburg about the check “for extremism” in the materials published on the site. Then the MHG office in Moscow was arrested as part of a “civil lawsuit from the government of Moscow.” “The authorities insist that the MHG illegally re-planned the premises it bought out ten years ago, which, according to my information, is not true – the office has not changed,” the interlocutor of Kommersant explained.

I found a case card about a “dispute related to unauthorized construction” in one of the buildings in Krasina Lane, between the Moscow City Property Department and the MHG “Kommersant” on the website of the Presnensky District Court of the capital. The process, according to open data, began in November 2022.

“Extremely original and clearly far-fetched” Konstantin Dobrynin, senior partner at Pen & Paper, called the claims to “online events” with the participation of representatives of the MHG and trips to courts in other regions. “Such activities cannot in any way violate the prohibitions associated with certain territorial restrictions, especially during the pandemic, the whole country worked this way, and this did not bother anyone,” reminds Mr. Dobrynin, adding that he had not previously “heard of such cases and claims.”

The expert points out that passive monitoring of court proceedings by an NPO, whose main goal is to collect information for its subsequent dissemination, is “the realization of the right to freedom to receive and disseminate information, guaranteed by Art. 29 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

“According to Art. 55 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, restrictions on this right are permissible only on the basis of a federal law and only to the extent necessary to protect the foundations of the constitutional order, morality, health, rights and legitimate interests of others, to ensure the defense of the country and the security of the state, – quotes Konstantin Dobrynin Fundamental Law. — As a legislator in the past, I can only note that the task of the law “On NGOs” is not to put human rights activists on a chain and not let them out of the region, but to protect the rights of people in the fullness of the law, and if to collect If information needs to be sent to Chukotka or Chechnya, then it must be sent.”

In 2022, the courts, following claims from the Ministry of Justice, have already liquidated at least three human rights NGOs: the Memorial human rights center (before the liquidation was included in the register of foreign agents), the Astreya organization, and the trade union of journalists and media workers.

Maria Starikova