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Russia’s Supreme Court rules to liquidate For Human Rights movement over technical faults

The decision was prompted by the breaches in the organization's papers
The Supreme Court of Russia Sergei Savostyanov/TASS
The Supreme Court of Russia
© Sergei Savostyanov/TASS

MOSCOW, November 1. /TASS/. Russia’s Supreme Court on Friday sustained a claim of the Justice Ministry on winding up the For Human Rights movement on the grounds of flagrant and irremediable breaches in its papers.

The court ruled to liquidate the movement and its structural divisions. The ruling has not taken legal effect and can be challenged with the Supreme Court’s judicial board, the organization’s representative told TASS.

"After we challenge the ruling we will turn to the European Court of Human Rights," lawyer Sergei Andropov said.

The Russian Ministry of Justice on Thursday requested the court wind up the movement due to flagrant and irremediable breaches in the papers concerning its activities. The reported breaches included incorrect legal address; "collective membership" in the organization despite the fact that such legal notion was no longer in place; and the improper name for its division in the Kemerovo region — the Kuzbass division. Apart from that, the ministry claimed that the movement had violated its charter and laws when it convened its previous congress.

At the request of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, the Ministry of Justice conducted an extraordinary check of the For Human Rights movement in a period from January 14 to February 8, 2019 to arrive at a conclusion that it was infringing upon laws in its activities and violating its own charter. The ministry issued a warning to the movement, which failed to correct those violations in due time.

Lev Ponomarev, the movement’s leader, told TASS that the lawsuit had been prompted by the fact that the charter did not comply with the new requirements of the law. Another claim, in his words, was that the movement had violated the law on foreign agents as it did not notify about its being listed among foreign agent NGOs in social networks. He said these violations were technical and could be easily corrected.

The organization’s representatives asked the court to turn down the suit and promised to convene a congress on November 30 to "remove the violation exposed by the Ministry of Justice and settle legal controversy."

The movement was put on the register of non-profit organizations acting as foreign agents on February 12, 2019. It was already recognized as a foreign agent in December 2014 to be crossed out of it a year later after the Ministry of Justice had found out in an extraordinary check that it was no longer performing the function of a foreign agent.