SW News: The main watchdog for religious and philosophical freedom in Russia has lost its status as a company and has been liquidated. The SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis's appeal against being liquidated was denied by a Moscow Appeal Court on August 17.
The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis was dissolved after an appeal judge in Moscow upheld the liquidation order imposed by a lower court four months ago.
According to the Moscow Justice Department, the organization itself committed gross violations of the law by holding events outside Moscow, which is prohibited. Russian law limits the geographic scope of a particular organization's operations. Aleksandr Verkhovsky, SOVA's director highlighted the extreme selectivity of the Justice Department's claims against human rights groups.
Verkhovsky is dissatisfied with the choice. He shared with Forum 18 that no one had ever informed him that his group was breaking the law. The majority of the organization's work was done in Moscow despite the fact that it took part in the Human Dimension Conference remotely in November.
He said the Justice Department also did not offer the company a chance to correct any potential errors. Verkhovsky said it claimed that they were uncorrectable because they had already occurred. He claims that the department specifically chooses human rights organizations. The Sakharov Centre, the Moscow Helsinki Group, and the collective Individual and the Law are additional targets of the same policy.
Even though the SOVA Centre disagrees with the judgment, it must follow the ruling. Because of this, the organization declared on its Telegram channel that the Centre would halt its activities and be liquidated. The team does not, however, want to leave completely and has decided to work as a community of independent researchers called the "Research Centre' SOVA."
Forum18 has reported that the Russian authorities have been bothering human rights groups, especially since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Monitoring human rights abuses brought on by Russia's anti-extremism law, such as the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, was the focus of SOVA's work. Additionally, it has brought attention to religious groups that were penalized for breaking Russia's anti-missionary statute. The SOVA has also given careful attention to those who were charged with participating in anti-war demonstrations, some of whom had religious motives.