Russia Profile
June 22, 2009
Loosening the Leash, a Little
Medvedev’s Message to Law Enforcement is “Don’t be Nasty to NGOs, as Long as They Behave”
By Sergei Balashov
When Sergey Nikitin of the Russian branch of Amnesty International attempted to fly out of St. Petersburg last fall to attend the General Assembly of the United Nations, customs officials took four hours to seize and scrutinize his luggage, citing a tip-off from a state service that was responsible for non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. His laptop and iPod were confiscated, only to be returned a few weeks later after nothing was found.
One of his foreign colleagues was subject of the same kind of treatment when she got in trouble with the authorities for leaving Moscow and going to a tourist camp in Bashkortostan, which was deemed a violation of her work visa. “For some time we didn’t make these incidents public, thinking of them as coincidences, but this chain of events that we’ve been involved in makes us think there is some hidden pattern there,” Nikitin said at a press conference last week.
This kind of harassment has indeed become the norm for human rights activists and NGOs operating in Russia. Such organizations have always been under pressure, but things got really hot three years ago after Putin made it clear that NGOs would now be kept under control. The message was backed up by new legislation providing the authorities with tools to crack down on human rights activists, placing virtually everyone under suspicion of being agents of the West, or, in the words of Putin, “scavenging jackals” hanging out at foreign embassies in the hope of getting their hands on foreign money.
“Independent organizations that are financed from abroad are routinely checked and warned by the Ministry of Justice; it involves sudden inspections of their offices by the militia. Human rights activists or groups that breed protest sentiments run the risk of being subject to anti-extremist legislation and legal prosecution,” said Matthew Schaaf, an NGO Liaison at Human Rights Watch in Moscow.
The Russian Human Rights Resources Center opened a crisis line for NGOs a little over a year ago, taking calls from any human rights activists and members of NGOs that had something to complain about. Over 24 percent cited troubles with registration, a direct result of Putin’s legal amendments. The new legislation allowed the state to refuse registration if an organization was thought to pose a threat to Russia’s sovereignty or its national identity.
One of the latest threats to Russia’s security and sovereignty came from a Russian cheerleaders’ organization that attempted to change its official address, but received a statement from the Ministry of Justice that argued their name did not reflect the kind of activities the organization was undertaking. “This is like asking a person to change their name and last name,” said Maria Kanevskaya, the head of the Russian Human Rights Resources Center.
In many cases, a denial of a registration application entails considerable financial losses, as the application fee could reach 3,000 rublesnot that much for Moscow, but a considerable amount for those attempting to register as an NGO in the regions. “Another problem is that our citizens have developed strong psychological stress associated with registration. They’re even scared of filing their documents, knowing beforehand they’d be refused,” said Kanevskaya.
Securing foreign grants has also been made more difficult. The number of foreign organizations whose grants are exempt from taxation was recently slashed from 101 to just 12.
Human Rights Watch released a report last week describing how the “practices regulating nongovernmental organizations” were “stifling independent civic activism,” and called for reforms. President Dmitry Medvedev publicly acknowledged the problem in May, and assembled a taskforce with the purpose of softening the regulations to encourage public activism.
Changes have been delivered. The taskforce proposed amendments to current legislation which would oblige NGOs to undergo checks every three years and file their annual financial reports in accordance with a new simplified procedure, basically eliminating this obligation for organizations with smaller budgets. Medvedev sent the bill to the State Duma last week, and it is now set to be reviewed on June 24.
A second round of reforms has already been proposed, this time addressing the economic activities of NGOs, including charities. Yet the changes have been met with skepticism, as they have failed to eliminate state control over NGOs altogether. The Human Rights Watch report stated that only a limited portion of the law was amended and that further changes were needed.
Medvedev’s latest friendly gesture toward NGOs has been spun as a message to the law enforcement and the justice system to ease the pressure organizations have been under since 2006. Back then Putin’s drive to stiffen the state’s control over NGOs was also taken as a message, and led to excessive checks, repressive actions toward NGOs and even physical attacks on human rights activists and NGO members.
Whether the campaign to soften control over civic organizations will bear any results remains to be seen, but it’s already clear it will do little to fix the current legislation that arms the state with all the tools it needs to suppress public activism and nongovernmental organizations, should they start getting out of control. “The work of this task force should not end with this first step. This law deals only with particular problems that NGOs have to face. Many problems are left out. If you take groups that include foreign citizens or are financed from abroad, these reforms are rather useless for them,” said Schaaf.
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