RantCrush Top 5: November 3, 2016

That the Russian government is no friend of human rights activists is nothing new, and now it seems like it has taken steps to prevent some of them from doing their jobs.

When Amnesty International employees went to work in Moscow yesterday, they realized someone had changed the locks and put a seal on their office doors, proclaiming the group needed to contact the city authorities. Alexander Artemyes said, “Our neighbors told us that five men came around 9.30am, broke in and then changed the locks. When asked what they were doing, the men said it was a rent issue.”

Офис Amnesty International в Москве опечатан pic.twitter.com/eLVh2sSsRR

— Sergei Nikitin (@Amnesty_Nikitin) November 2, 2016

Artemyev said they called the number on the seal all day without getting a response, so they went to the authorities in person. They were then told that they couldn’t access their property due to unpaid rent, which is not true. The climate for civil rights workers in Russia is cold to say the least.

Amnesty’s #Russia office pissed off Kremlin for years, was raided by prosecutors in 2013. Highly unlikely it was a city decision to seize it

— Maxim Tucker (@MaxRTucker) November 2, 2016

But according to Amnesty International in Europe it is still too early to draw any conclusions about exactly what happened.

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