UPDATE: Moscow authorities lock down Amnesty International office

RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:23 UTC

© Maxim Zmeyev / Reuters

The office door of rights group Amnesty International is sealed off in Moscow, Russia, November 2, 2016.

The office of Amnesty International in the Russian capital, Moscow, has been sealed off by municipal authorities without prior notification, the group says.

Staff found out that the office was sealed at 10am Moscow time (07:00 GMT) on Wednesday, the organization said in a statement.

A photo of the entrance to the office has been posted on the group's website.

Amnesty says it did not receive any warning from municipal officials and that the office was sealed in their absence.

City officials "changed the locks in the office and turned off the alarm, plus some wires are seen via the keyhole," the statement said.

The paper seal on the door of the office, placed there by the City Property Department of Moscow, reads: "The site is the property of a constituent unit of the Russian Federation." No one at the telephone numbers written on the note is answering, Amnesty says.

The organization says it has been paying rent regularly for 20 years.

Amnesty International, a London-based organization, is focused on human rights. Founded in 1961, it has over 7 million members and supporters worldwide.

Comment: Perhaps Russia is finally fed up with hosting a clearly biased Western-backed NGO?

• Dodgy Amnesty report claims Russian raids in Syria may amount to war crimes
• Hardly neutral: NGO's concealing crimes of the West while demonizing Russia
• Amnesty International: US State Department Propaganda Machine, Betrays Real Human Rights
• Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch publish biased report on eastern Ukraine, making them accomplices to human rights violations

UPDATE: Maybe the check was lost in the mail:

The conflict between Moscow City's municipal property department and Amnesty International's Moscow office over rent payments is purely technical and will soon be resolved, the head of Russian's presidential human rights council said.

Amnesty was evicted from its Moscow office on Friday. The premises are rented from the Moscow city government, and the department handling municipal property said the rights organization was late paying the rent. Sergey Nikitin, director of Amnesty Moscow, said the eviction caught the organization by surprise on Wednesday.

"We have no idea why it happened. We rent the office directly from [the city] and always pay our rent in time. We received no advance notice," he told Interfax.

"Technically, the department was absolutely right," Mikhail Fedorov, the chairman of the Russian president's Human Rights Council, told Rossiya 24 news channel on Friday, as cited by TASS. "Their data said Amnesty International was overdue with rent. The organization's data said otherwise. They should have compared notes."

"I don't doubt that this issue will be resolved," he added.

Earlier Fedorov told Reuters that he had reported the situation to President Vladimir Putin and that Amnesty employees will soon be able to return to their Moscow office.

John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Europe director, confirmed to the news agency that the eviction was result of a mix-up, citing a phone call from the head of the property department.

The department earlier told TASS news agency that according to their records Amnesty owed over $7,000 to the city.