Checks at Russian NGOs seek to identify ‘foreign agents’ – Justice Ministry

(Interfax – Moscow, March 25, 2013) The Justice Ministry has explained that mass checks at NGOs are being carried out to uncover the organizations that fall under the definition of “foreign agents”.

“If breaches of the laws of the Russian Federation are uncovered, including the provisions of the Federal Law “On the introduction of changes to legislative acts as regards the regulation of activities of NGOs which perform the functions of foreign agents”, the Justice Ministry applies legal response measures set out by law,” the press service of the Russian Justice Ministry has told Interfax.

The spokesman for the ministry said that specialists from the Justice Ministry and its territorial subdivisions were being asked to join the checks carried out by Russian prosecution services. “In the course of the checks, the activities of noncommercial organizations are examined within the Justice Ministry’s remit,” the spokesman told the agency. He said the object of the checks was the conformity of NGOs’ activities with their statutory goals and Russian legislation.

The law which obliges NGOs with foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” officially came into force in Russia on 21 November 2012. All the leading NGOs announced their boycott of the law, including MHG (Moscow Helsinki Group), Memorial, Golos (Voice/Vote), Civil Assistance and For Human Rights.

On Monday, staff from the prosecution service, the Justice Ministry and the tax service visited the Moscow offices of the human rights organizations Amnesty International and the movement For Human Rights. Last week, a check was carried out at the Memorial human rights society.

Russia’s oldest human rights campaigner, MHG head Lyudmila Alekseyeva, fears that many well-known NGOs will be closed following the check carried out by law-enforcers. “I don’t know what they look for. Probably some evidence of how nasty we are,” the 85-year-old activist told Interfax last week.

On 21 March, members of the presidential council for human rights wrote to Prosecutor-General Yuriy Chayka in connection with complaints from NGOs from a number of regions of the country against massive checks by the prosecution service. “An unending stream of complaints has been coming to our council in recent days from Krasnodar, Perm and Maritime territories, Orenburg, Penza and Rostov regions, Moscow, St Petersburg and other regions of the Russia, from heads of NGOs, against totally unprovoked mass checks by prosecution services,” the letter says.

(A later Interfax report quoted the Agora human rights association as saying at least 43 NGOs in 16 regions of Russia were subjected to prosecutors’ checks between 6 and 25 March.)