Moscow Helsinki Group head says law on NGOs must be cancelled

(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 2, 2013) Head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alexeyeva said she disagreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said he was opposed to toughening or liberalizing the law on non-governmental organizations (NGO) – foreign agents.

“I think that this law must be cancelled over its absurdity,” Alexeyeva told Interfax on Friday. “We, NGOs, do not have foreign agents,” she said.

“Even if there is a couple, it is not necessary to make new laws for this, it is possible to sort things out with them under the existing laws,” Alexeyeva said.

Putin said earlier on Friday when meeting participants of the Seliger youth camp that the law on NGOs-foreign agents should not be toughened or liberalized.

“Should we improve something? Perhaps yes. But not from the viewpoint of toughening something and not even with the view of liberalizing something but with the intention of establishing order,” Putin said when asked whether the relevant law should be toughened. There should be clear and unambiguous criteria of what can be defined as political activities, he said.

It concerns fair distribution of funds the state allocates to human rights organizations, the Russian president said.

“We have agreed that human rights organizations themselves will set up an organization to which the state will give this money, and this very organization will distribute this money among human rights organizations regardless of whether they receive grants from abroad or not. But those, who receive (funding from abroad) and are engaged in politics, will have only to be registered as foreign agents,” he said.

This is the fairest way to distribute state funds, so that no one could criticize the state for “paying and ordering the music,” Putin said.

“We want our human rights organizations to work as independently of the state as possible but, of course, have the opportunity to enjoy support,” Putin said.