A Russian court has ordered the closure of the Sakharov Center, one of the country’s oldest human rights groups, Interfax reported Friday.
The center, which was founded to honor the memory of Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, had been an iconic place for exhibitions and discussions about human rights since its opening in 1996.
According to Interfax, the Justice Ministry filed a court order to shutter the group for alleged “systematic gross and irremediable violations of the law” in connection with its staging of an exhibition dedicated to Sakharov in regions of the country where it did not have a branch.
The organization was also accused of publishing videos without a “foreign agent” stamp, as is required under its status as a “foreign agent” organization.
The Moscow City Court on Friday approved the Justice Ministry’s request, Interfax reported.
The Sakharov Center said it did not acknowledge the violations.
"It's disheartening, yet it mirrors reality. The public commission on Sakharov's legacy and the contemporary Russian Federation cannot coexist...And everything that is happening today is exactly the opposite of what Sakharov fought for,” Sergei Lukashevsky, the director of the Sakharov Center, said in a Facebook post Friday.