The turn of the screw against Memorial worries the public

Russian justice dissolved Tuesday, December 28 Memorial, one of Russia’s best-known NGOs, notably for its work on Stalinist repression. For some demonstrators, questioned in a muscular way, and a part of the opinion, it is a new attack on democracy. “It’s a humiliation and an insult. We all have in our families people who were victims of the repression “, confides a woman.

Founded in 1989 in the twilight of the USSR, Memorial investigates, among other things, the millions of dead during the Soviet era. She has collected thousands of documents in order to tell the story of the victims of terror and the gulag. Iraida Nechepourenko, descendant of victims of Stalinism, learned that her grandfather and her uncle were shot dead. The authorities had told him that the disease had killed them. Authorities accuse Memorial of portraying Russia as a terrorist state. Gathered at their headquarters, the members of the NGO promised to resist and to continue their work of memory. The United States and France have expressed their concern.