"Voice": the law on NGOs will only anger people

This week the State Duma will consider in the first reading a bill on non-profit organizations financed from foreign sources and conducting political activities. According to this bill , such NPOs will be recognized as foreign agents and will be required to enter themselves into a separate register of the Ministry of Justice. If these conditions are not met, the NPO faces a fine of up to 1 million rubles.

A petition in support of the bill is being collected online . The authors of the petition among the NGOs that will presumably be affected by the new bill name the association “Voice,” which monitors elections. PublicPost spoke with Golos deputy executive director Grigory Melkonyants about NGOs, foreign funding and political activity.

- In your opinion, is there a need for this project?

- Organizations that receive foreign funding are already reporting differently. And the new bill, on the one hand, is designed to complicate the life of NPOs by introducing additional reporting, new checks, and secondly, to cause information and image damage to NPOs by calling everyone foreign agents.

- What is the size of foreign investments in “Golos”?

- This is a serious percentage, the overwhelming majority. Golos operates in 48 regions. In Russia it is difficult to find funds to finance network organizations. It’s still possible for actions and events, but for infrastructure, for equipment, for supporting centers of civil initiatives in the regions - no one has yet succeeded in doing this.

- What about government assistance to NGOs?

- We are not spoiled with presidential grants. None of our numerous requests were satisfied.

- To obtain the status of a foreign agent under the new law, you need to be involved in politics. "The Voice" is engaged?

- Any political activity implies coming to power. Now legislators are trying to do the same thing they did with legislation on extremism: using vague formulations to legitimize an extremely broad interpretation of extremism. Now anyone can be considered an extremist. And here they propose to interpret political activity extremely broadly and selectively. If they want to involve an environmental organization in political activities, then it will engage in political activities. They will also do a human rights one. Neither human rights activities nor election monitoring are political activities, since these activities are aimed at monitoring compliance with current legislation.

And they are trying to deprive them of sources of funding that are independent of them, that bothers them, that they don’t like. But this trend has been observed for several months - legislation on rallies, now on NGOs.

- And yet, will you apply to be included on the list as a foreign agent?

- No. We are not involved in politics.

- And if they still say that you are studying?

- We will challenge it.

- What, in your opinion, are the consequences of the adoption of the law?

- People will be angry. We will soon be launching a domestic fundraising campaign. I think there will be more people willing to help us.