Solidarity with Memorial: Russia’s most prominent civil rights group in danger
Solidarity with Memorial
Russia’s most
prominent civil rights group in danger
Russia's Justice
Ministry recently labeled the international branch of the human rights group Memorial as
a “foreign agent”. Memorial needs your solidarity and
financial help to pay for judicial assistance to defend itself against this
egregious stigmatisation.
Who and What Is Memorial?
The freedoms of speech
and assembly and the work of independent civil society organisations have been
curtailed in Russia for several years. Critical voices are marginalised as
being “non-Russian”. Non-conformist NGOs receiving international support are
branded as “foreign agents” and have to declare themselves as such. The concept
and practice of self-accusation are in the direct tradition of Stalinist
persecution and are an assault on the dignity of man.
To date, this form of
state repression has hit more than 140 organisations, including representatives
of small indigenous people in the north of Russia, associations like Women
on the Don, environmental groups like EcoDefense, the refugee organisation Civic
Assistance created by Svetlana Gannushkina, laureate of the
Alternative Nobel Peace Prize 2016, or the renowned Levada social research
centre.
Most recently, persecution has reached the International
Memorial Society, the umbrella organisation of the Memorial network, after
the previous individual targeting of five of its 60 member organisations. The
democratic social development of Russia is inconceivable without free working
conditions for independent civil society organisations like Memorial. Memorial
is a cornerstone of Russian civil society.
Memorial was founded
in 1988, in the years of Gorbachev’s perestroika. From the beginning, the
organisation set itself the task of dealing with the terror and systemic structures
of the Stalinist dictatorship and the Gulag, to help victims of political
persecution, seek their rehabilitation and increase their visibility in Russia
and abroad. This is a precondition for the enforcement of and compliance with
human rights today, which Memorial is advocating in an exemplary way.
For Memorial, an
open debate on the Soviet past, based on the quest for truth, is a fundamental
step towards making Russian society more open and democratic. At the same time,
it is impossible to deal with the totalitarian past of the Soviet Union and
Russia without pointing out today’s human rights violations.
The work of Memorial is
not limited to Russia. By documenting the fate of hundreds of thousands of
Soviet men and women deported to Germany for forced labour during World War II, Memorial has
given an essential impulse to the political debate in German, making it
possible to enforce compensation claims for the victims.
At the same time, Memorial has
highlighted the deportation of more than 7000 innocent women and men after
World War II from the Soviet occupation zone in Germany to the USSR, where they
were executed. In close cooperation with Polish historians, Memorial has
also published seminal research shedding light on the Katyn massacre. Several Memorial experts
have received Polish awards for their work. These are just a few examples of a
great list of achievements, guided by the aim of a free and democratic Europe
in which Russia also finds its place.
Over 25 years, Memorial has
built up a unique archive compiling the witnesses and legacies of tens of
thousands of people who became victims of terror and repression. This
collection is an incomparable documentation of human suffering, human
assertiveness and human resistance. Memorial’s building in
Moscow houses a part of the cultural legacy of mankind. Memorial has
also carried out comprehensive research work and published biographical
reference books and source editions on the history of Stalinism and the USSR.
This work is widely recognised in the academic world. With public exhibitions
on the history of the Gulag, Memorial is also reaching wider audiences in
Russia and European neighbour countries.
With its school
history competition “Man and History – Russia in the 20th Century”, Memorial
has collected more than 30,000 essays from pupils from all over Russia over the
past 15 years. These essays give Russian children and youngsters a unique and
personal voice and make up an important contribution to an authentic culture of
remembrance in Russia.
The Human Rights
Centre of Memorial is also one of the most important
independent sources of information in Russia on the situation in the North
Caucasus, particularly Chechnya, the Donbass and Crimea after the Russian
annexation. Memorial scrupulously documents the human rights
situation in Russia today and also keeps a list of political prisoners based on
international criteria.
Last but not least,
the national network of Memorial - especially the Memorial
Centres in Moscow - are an indispensable catalyst for mutual civil society
support and democratic social debate in Russia and the whole post-Soviet space.
Memorial needs our support and solidarity – as we need
Russian voices defending truth and human rights. We declare our solidarity
with Memorial and all the forces in Russia standing for a
policy of non-violence, openness and peace in Russia and abroad.+
We
call for financial donations for Memorial under the reference
“For the Work of Memorial” to the trust account:
Name: Memorial
International
Bank: GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG
Account: 130 227 27
IBAN: DE 89 4306 0967 0013 0227 27
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Bank: GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG
Account: 130 227 27
IBAN: DE 89 4306 0967 0013 0227 27
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Donations are
tax-deductible in Germany and possibly beyond (please check local tax laws) and
will be transferred in full to Memorial with no administrative costs.
Berlin, 30/11/201
http://solidaritaet-mit-memorial.de/en.html
Who and What Is
Memorial?
Memorial is a movement
which arose in the years of perestroika. Its main task was the awakening and
preservation of the societal memory of the severe political persecution in the
recent past of the Soviet Union.
Memorial is a
community of dozens of organizations in different regions of Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Georgia.
Memorial is a group of
specialized research, human rights, and education centers in Moscow, St.
Petersburg, and several other cities.
Memorial is a museum,
a repository of documents, and a number of specialized libraries.
Memorial is the
Solovetskii stone on Lubianka Square in Moscow, placed across from the KGB
headquarters on 30 October 1990. On that date in 1974, prisoners in the
Mordvinian and Perm' political camps voted to declare a Day of Political
Prisoners in the USSR. In 1991, on the initiative of Memorial, the Supreme
Soviet of the RSFSR officially recognized this date as a Day of Remembrance of
the Victims of Political Repression.
Memorial is a great
number of different memorials reaching to the far corners of the former USSR –
from the gigantic monument of Ernst Neizvestnii close to Magadan to the modest
memorial signs at mass burial sites of the victims of the terror near Moscow.
It is the search for and preservation of the graves of our fathers and
grandfathers, killed anonymously by bullets in the cellars of the Cheka and by
forced labor in hundreds of camps throughout the former Soviet Union. It is a
unique museum, established on the ground of the last Soviet political camp
close to the town Chusovii in Perm' province.
Memorial is dozens of
books, newspaper and magazine articles, radio programs, and exhibits dedicated
to the tragedies of the past decades and to the current attempts to limit the
freedoms and dignity of citizens of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent
States.
Memorial is the Law on
Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression. Passed in 1991, it
reinstated civil rights to tens of thousands of living Russian citizens and to
tens of thousands of those who had already passed away. Memorial is a series of
corrections and additions to the Law on Rehabilitation that improved the
original text. Memorial is a consistent and sometimes successful attempt to
compel the government to fulfill all statutes of the Law pertaining to
compensation.
Memorial is a number
of regional associations of former prisoners of political prison camps and
members of their families. This encompasses tens of thousands of direct and
indirect victims of political repression.
It is the adequate assistance – legal, and sometimes also material – needed by the elderly who emerged from the hell of Soviet prisons and political prison camps.
Memorial is the
wide-ranging and simultaneous scrupulous historical research of topics that were
until recently inaccessible to Russian scholars: the GULAG, the history of the
security organizations VChK (the Cheka)-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB, statistics on
political repression in the Soviet Union, and dissidents' resistance during the
Khrushchev-Brezhnev era. Memorial is a number of international research
projects, in which internationally recognized research centers in the
humanities acts as partners. It is a support program for young researchers
throughout Russia. It is the struggle for free access to historical
information, to the past, which was hidden from us for so long.
Memorial is
information about the violation of human rights on the territory of the former
Soviet Union. This information is valued highly not only by international human
rights organizations, but also by international organizations such as the
United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Memorial is the
undertaking of risky observation missions to "hot spots" on the
territory of the CIS.
Memorial is mountains of factual material, collected in
regions of armed conflict. It is the painstaking verification and analysis of
the collected material, and the preparation and publication of reports on the conditions
in Nagorno-Karabakh, Tajikistan, Transdnistria, in the zone of
Ossetian-Ingushetian conflict, and, finally, in Chechnya. Memorial is the
initiator for the formation of an anti-war front, memorably uniting more than
100 social and political organizations in January 1995. Memorial is an
organization for social and legal counseling for refugees and displaced persons
in many regions of Russia. It is the collection of information about current
political prisoners on the territory of the former Soviet Union. It is an
ongoing struggle against ethnic discrimination. Memorial is protests, meetings,
and miscellaneous publications that seek to protect freedoms and peace.
And, finally, Memorial
is many very different people. What unites us?
First, we are friends.
Second, we respect one
another. We are very different: old and quite young; historians and legal
advocates; liberals and not so liberals; atheists, agnostics and believers;
democrats, anarchists, and monarchists. It sometimes seems that this Noah's Ark
is destined to sink to the bottom. But we have been afloat for more than ten
years already, and we do not intend to sink.
Ideologies do not
divide us, because ideology does not unite us. Rather, two main principles,
above all, guide us:
1. unconditional respect of human individuality, human life, and freedoms of fundamental human values;
2. the presentation of history as an unbroken whole of the past, the present, and the future.
We welcome to the
website of Memorial!
