The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OMCT) released a press statement Friday urging Russia to refrain from designating Indigenous Peoples’ and national minorities’ rights organizations and other groups as “extremist organizations.”

The press statement follows the Russian authority’s decision of July 25 to classify 55 Indigenous or minority human rights groups as ‘extremists.’

According to the OMCT, authorities cited the reasoning behind their classification as compliance with the supreme court’s decision to ban actions comprising an “Anti-Russian Separatist Movement,” defined as an “international public movement to destroy the multinational unity and territorial integrity of Russia.” Involvement in the movement alone can result in a sentence of up to six years in prison.

Human Rights Watch, however, stated that “participating in or financing an extremist organization is punishable by up to 12 years in prison.” Thus, the group members will now be susceptible to even larger prison sentences due to the official classifications. 

The human rights groups were each actively fighting against the continuous oppression of Indigenous peoples within Russia, which the OMCT stated are subjected to infringements of their civil rights, “including freedom of expression, the right to self-determination and cultural rights, as well as racism, structural discrimination, and xenophobia.” The injustices are systemic, with Russian law stating that “larger Indigenous groups, such as the Yakut (Sakha) and Komi people, are … “ethnic minorities” or “titular nations”’, which negates their populations that exceed 50 thousand and are not ‘legal categories’ either.

These Indigenous groups ‘have been particularly targeted by Russian mobilization efforts’ which organizations now listed as extremists, such as ‘Aborigen-Forum‘, have attempted to combat. 

The repression of minority groups has been a continuous action of Russian authorities, with December 2023 seeing LGBTQ+ individuals targeted. The ‘international LGBT movement’ was similarly classified as ‘extremist’, effectively banning any LGBTQ+ activity in Russia.