The Ministry of Justice asked to liquidate the Moscow Helsinki Group

The leadership of the Moscow Helsinki Group received a liquidation lawsuit from the Ministry of Justice. It was decided to liquidate the organization after an audit carried out at the request of the prosecutor’s office. The liquidation card is posted on site Moscow City Court.

The main claim of the Ministry of Justice to the Moscow Helsinki Group is that the group is primarily a Moscow regional organization, so it should work only within Moscow. “Yes, they filed a lawsuit to liquidate it, on the formal basis that it is allegedly regional, but participated in events in other regions,” said Eva Merkacheva, a member of the HRC, to Interfax.

The Moscow Helsinki Group is the oldest human rights organization operating in Russia, it has been working since 1976. The organization set itself the goal of promoting the practical implementation of all international legal obligations of Russia in the field of human rights.

In 2014, the organization curtailed most of the projects due to lack of funds. According to the executive director of the group, Svetlana Astrakhantseva, this happened because most of the Western donors left Russia after the law on foreign non-profit organizations came into force.

Later, the organization completely abandoned foreign funding. Lyudmila Alekseeva, a Soviet dissident and human rights activist who has led the group since 1996, told Novaya Gazeta that the organization she controls would not accept foreign grants. Lyudmila Alekseeva died in 2018 at the age of 91.

Anastasia Larina