Russian Public Chamber comes to defence of NGOs under attack

(Interfax – April 29, 2013) More than ten members of the Russian Public Chamber have signed a statement in support of yet another NGO being checked in Russia in which they slammed the ongoing mass checks of non-profit organizations in the country in general, saying they lead to significant infringement of civil liberties, Russian news agency Interfax reported on 29 April, quoting the petition published on the website of the presidential human rights council on the same day.

“Mass NGO checks are already leading to undermining the credibility of Russians in ‘the third sector’ as a whole and, eventually, to the narrowing of free public space,” the statement said.

“For the past few months we have witnessed unprecedented pressure put by the state controlling bodies on non-profit organizations, the majority of which enjoy merited confidence both in Russia and abroad,” the statement said.

They expressed harsh criticism towards their colleague Georgiy Fedorov’s request to check the activities of yet another NGO, the Civic Assistance fund, which, in his words, “brings to Russia Muslim extremists under the pretence of Coptic refugees from Egypt.” The authors of the statement noted that the fund is “a highly respected organization which provides assistance (and sometimes simply saves lives) to refugees and other categories of immigrants, protects victims of crimes committed due to inter-ethnic hatred and adapts foreigners for living in Russia.”

“The activities of the organization are transparent and totally legal and this, by the way, was confirmed by a check conducted the day before. Svetlana Gannushkina (the head of the fund) herself has a crystal-clear reputation and enjoys huge confidence among the rights activists,” the statement underlined.

The members of the Public Chamber also defined all the charges brought against the fund as “groundless and defamatory.”

A separate Interfax report on the same day quoted the spokesman of the Agora human rights organization, Dmitriy Kolbasin, as saying that for the time being, 267 NGOs in 56 Russian regions have undergone checks on the part of the prosecutor’s office.

In particular, Kolbasin said the law-enforcers had paid visits to the offices of 44 NGOs in Moscow, 36 in St Petersburg and 10 in Rostov Region.

“At present the Russian NGOs are receiving prosecutor’s warnings and orders about alleged violation of the law on ‘foreign agents’, NGOs and counteraction to extremism, complaints about the charters and internal business correspondence, unregistered symbols, improperly processed documents, incorrect protocols of board meetings and the absence of the fire alarm logbooks,” Kolbasin said.

Agora is ready to provide legal help to all the checked NGOs, Interfax quoted Kolbasin as saying.