Russian court orders seizure of Nobel-winning rights group Memorial's HQ

A Russian court ordered the seizure of rights group Memorial’s headquarters in Moscow just hours after it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022. According to the Interfax agency, the ruling was announced by Tverskoy district court who said that the headquarters will "become state property".

The rights group was accused of "rehabilitating Nazi criminals and discrediting authorities and creating a false image of the USSR" in Russia, according to Reuters. The group was disbanded in December 2021 after documenting Stalinist crimes since its creation in 1989.

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While the problems continue for the organisation, Memorial has made it clear that they will not be accepting offers to move abroad and will instead continue to operate in Russia.

"The archive was collected here, and people gave us their documents not for us to take them somewhere," Memorial representative Yan Rachinsky said in an official statement.

"Our aim is to preserve the archive."

Earlier, the rights group, along with jailed Belarusian activist Ales Byalyatski and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work amidst the war in Ukraine.

"We believe that it is a war that is a result of an authoritarian regime, aggressively committing an act of aggression," Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen told Reuters.

"It is not one person, one organisation, one quick fix. It is the united efforts of what we call civil society that can stand up against authoritarian states and, or, human rights abuses."

Dan Smith, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, also lauded Memorial for their work and said that “it lives on as an idea that it's right to criticize power”.