World News | Russia Shuts Down Human Rights Group That Preserved the Legacy of Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov

Tallinn, Aug 18 (AP) A Russian court on Friday ordered the liquidation of a human rights organisation that preserved the legacy of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, in the latest move in a widespread crackdown on dissent.

Sakharov, who died in 1989, was a key figure in developing the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb programme but later become renowned for his activism in promoting human rights and freedom of conscience.

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He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1975 but was not allowed to travel to Norway to receive it.

In 1980 he was sent into internal exile, which lasted six years.

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The organisation founded in his honour operated the Sakharov Center museum and archives in Moscow. Authorities declared it a “foreign agent” in 2014 and this year ordered the eviction of the center from its premises.

The court ordered the organisation liquidated at the request of the Justice Ministry, Russian news agencies reported.

Independent journalists, critics, activists and opposition figures in Russia have come under increasing pressure from the government in recent years, which has intensified significantly during the conflict in Ukraine. Multiple independent news outlets and rights groups have been shut down, labelled as “foreign agents,” or outlawed as “undesirable." Activists and critics of the Kremlin have faced criminal charges.

On Thursday, authorities charged Grigory Melkonyants, a leader of Golos, a prominent independent election monitoring group, with being involved with an “undesirable” organisation.

Melkonyants' lawyer, Mikhail Biryukov, said his client was scheduled to appear in Moscow's Basmanny District Court on Friday.

He faces up to six years in prison.

Golos has not been labelled “undesirable” — a label that under a 2015 law makes involvement a criminal offense.

But it was once a member of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organisations, a group that was declared “undesirable” in Russia in 2021.

Golos was founded in 2000 and has since played a key role in independent monitoring of elections in Russia.

Over the years it has faced mounting pressure from the authorities. In 2013, it was designated a “foreign agent” — a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations. Three years later, it was liquidated as a non-governmental organisation by the Justice Ministry.

The authorities have also banned popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter, and have targeted other online services with hefty fines.

On Thursday, a Russian court imposed a 3 million ruble (USD 32,000) fine on Google for failing to delete allegedly false information about the conflict in Ukraine. The move by a magistrate's court follows similar actions in early August against Apple and the Wikimedia Foundation that hosts Wikipedia.

According to Russian news reports, the court found that the YouTube video service, which is owned by Google, was guilty of not deleting videos with incorrect information about the conflict — which Russia characterizes as a “special military operation.”(AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)