CURTAINS

Russia Shutters Prominent Human Rights Group, Citing Illegal Conferences

A court said the Sakharov Center had been closed for illegally hosting conferences and exhibitions.

A Russian court on Friday ordered the closure of the Sakharov Center, a respected human rights organization with a museum and cultural center in Moscow, the latest purge as the Kremlin cracks down on dissent. The Moscow City Court sided with the Ministry of Justice, which demanded the center be dissolved last month. In January, the center received an eviction notice from Moscow city authorities, ordering it to vacate its longtime home by April. In a statement on Friday, the court said the Sakharov Center was being fully liquidated for illegally hosting conferences and exhibitions, according to the Associated Press. The center, which opened nearly three decades ago, is named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Soviet exile Andrei Sakharov, who died in 1989. The Washington Post reported that center director Sergei Lukashevsky decried the decision in a private Facebook post, writing, “Everything that is happening today is the exact opposite of what Sakharov fought for.”