We are deeply alarmed by the Russian Supreme Court’s recent decision to label the Russian Nobel prize winning rights group Memorial as “extremist.”
The decision, which came following a closed-door hearing that Memorial’s own lawyer was not allowed to attend, has banned Memorial’s activities in Russia, under threat of criminal penalty. It was made under Russia’s “extremism” legislation, which allows authorities to ban organizations and criminalize those who are associated with or support them.
For nearly four decades, Memorial has done essential work: preserving the memory of Soviet repression, documenting political persecution, and defending human rights in today’s Russia by advocating for political prisoners. This work is not extremism. It is the work of conscience, courage, and moral clarity.
This latest decision is the latest in the Kremlin’s years-long attack on Memorial, and marks a new phase of oppression in the regime’s systematic destruction of independent civic life in Russia. Independent media have been shut down or driven out, censorship is pervasive, journalists are harassed and detained, and the remaining space for truth, documentation, and historical memory is being deliberately erased.
Memorial represents everything the authorities in Putin’s Russia most fear: truth about the past, moral responsibility, reflection instead of propaganda, and the belief that human life matters more than the power of the state. The current regime does not want its crimes to be seen, named, or remembered. It wants silence, fear, and total control.
We echo UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk’s call on Russia to annul this draconian decision and to ensure that the exercising of fundamental human rights is no longer criminalized in Russia, including freedom of expression and association.
We express our full solidarity with Memorial, its staff, and all those in Russia who continue to defend human rights under enormous pressure. We also stand with the people inside the country who are living through repression, censorship, isolation, and fear, including over 2,000 political prisoners.
This latest draconian decision only reinforces our commitment to drawing attention to the Putin’s regime’s crimes and continuing assault on truth, memory, and human dignity.
The attack on Memorial is not only an attack on one organization. It is an attack on memory itself, on the possibility of documenting state crimes, and on a society’s ability to confront its past honestly.
We are also deeply concerned by the broader escalation of repression in Russia, including searches at leading independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the detention of journalists, who continue to do their work despite extraordinary risks.
The designation may also have harmful implications for transnational repression, as the Kremlin has sought to apply its extremism laws beyond Russia’s borders.
We stand with Memorial.
Memory is not extremism.
Human rights are not extremism.
Truth is not extremism.
“If the suffering is not remembered, it will be repeated.” — Alexander Etkind, Warped Mourning (2013)
“A traumatic past that people refuse to remember becomes a ghost.” — Aleida Assmann, Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (2016)