The Russian authorities on Monday (May 19, 2025) outlawed Amnesty International as an “undesirable organization,” a label that beneath a 2015 legislation makes involvement with such organizations a prison offense.
The choice by the Russian Prosecutor General’s workplace, introduced in a web based assertion, is the latest in the unrelenting crackdown on Kremlin critics, journalists and activists that intensified to unprecedented ranges after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The designation means the worldwide human rights group should cease any work in Russia, and it topics those that cooperate with it or assist it to prosecution, together with if anybody shares Amnesty International’s stories on social media.
Amnesty International didn’t instantly remark on the transfer.
Russia’s record of “undesirable organizations” at the moment covers 223 entities, together with distinguished unbiased information shops and rights teams. Among these are distinguished information organizations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty or Russian unbiased outlet Meduza, suppose tanks like Chatham House, anti-corruption group Transparency International, and Open Russia, an opposition group based by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled tycoon who turned an opposition determine.
After Open Russia was declared undesirable in 2021 and disbanded to guard its members, its chief, Andrei Pivovarov, was arrested and convicted on costs of finishing up actions of an undesirable group. He was sentenced to 4 years in jail and launched in 2024 in the biggest prisoner change with the West since Soviet instances.
Amnesty International was launched in 1961. The group paperwork and stories human rights violations across the globe and campaigns for the discharge of these it deems unjustly imprisoned. It has launched stories on Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, accusing Moscow of crimes in opposition to humanity, and has spoken out in opposition to the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent that has swept up hundreds of individuals in latest years.
Amnesty International’s latest statements on Russia included decrying a jail sentence handed to distinguished election monitoring activists Grigory Melkonyants as a “brazen and politically motivated clampdown on peaceful activism.”
It additionally spoke out in opposition to a collection of arrests of publishing professionals in Russia final week over alleged “LGBTQ+ propaganda” in books. “This shameless heavy-handed use of state apparatus against literature is as absurd as it is terrifying,” mentioned Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Russia director.
In its assertion, the Prosecutor General’s workplace accused the group of operating “Russophobic projects” and activities aimed at Russia’s “political and economic isolation.”
Published – May 19, 2025 06:37 pm IST
