Interfax: Key human rights group: Russia must ditch ‘foreign agents’ law

MOSCOW. Nov 15 (Interfax) – A prominent Russian human rights group has called for repealing the law on “foreign agents,” Russia-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive funding from abroad and pursue political activities.

“This law cannot be amended. No amendment, not even one having the best of intentions behind it, would affect its essential concept but would serve to further consolidate unconstitutional and anti-legal practices in Russian society and the Russian state system. The only possible way out of this situation is the earliest possible abrogation of the law on foreign agents,” Memorial said in a statement made available to Interfax on Friday.

According to Memorial, not a single independent NGO has sought registration as a “foreign agent,” a wave of prosecutorial inspections has resulted in numerous litigations, and complaints have gone to the Russian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

“We assume that no partial change would be able to correct this essentially illegal and anti-constitutional law. In essence, the law on foreign agents is not based on the principle of supremacy of law. There exists no problem that this law can solve. Its initiators had purely political and opportunistic goals to pursue, and its formulas are patently indeterminate from the legal point of view,” the group said.

It confirmed that courts in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novocherkassk, Ryazan, Perm, and other cities were dealing, or getting ready to deal, with cases of NGOs that refuse to register as “foreign agents.”

On Monday, the Zamoskvoretsky Court in Moscow is due to hear a series of “foreign agent” cases.

It will hold its final session in dealing with complaints from the For Human Rights group about March’s order of the Moscow prosecutor’s office to find out rights organizations that meet “foreign agent” criteria but have not registered as “foreign agents.”

The same day it will look at a protest from Memorial against a demand from prosecutors that it register as a “foreign agent.”

Memorial told Interfax that, also on Monday, the same judge would hear similar statements from the Public Verdict and Golos (Voice) rights groups.