Stop persecution of non-governmental organizations

The new movement “Civil Federation,” which united social activists and political activists, issued an appeal in which it called for stopping the campaign to inspect non-governmental organizations launched by the Prosecutor General’s Office in a number of regions.

In an appeal signed by the co-chairs of the movement’s council, the former deputy chairman of the Angarsk branch of A Just Russia Oleg Antipenko, the White Ribbon movement activist Igor Bakirov, the executive director of the United Civil Front Olga Kurnosova, the leader of the For Human Rights movement Lev Ponomarev and a representative of the movement Resistance" by Alexander Shcherbakov, says:

“Every day brings reports of new inspections of non-governmental organizations. The number of affected organizations amounts to many hundreds, and they are spreading to more and more regions.

These checks are often carried out in an unusually harsh, humiliating manner. In fact, they resemble searches. In those organizations with which the authorities do not dare behave this way, they demand a huge amount of materials, many of which, for example, copies of statutory documents or financial reports, are already at the disposal of government agencies and their demand is obviously redundant, and can only be explained by the reluctance of some officials enter into correspondence with other departments. The checks are initiated by the prosecutor's office and are carried out under a variety of pretexts. The tax authorities, consumer supervision and even the anti-extremist department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are involved in the inspections.

The very style of such frontal checks is most reminiscent of the “attacks” of corrupt officials on entrepreneurs who have become victims of extortion or raiding.

At the same time, some representatives of the Central Election Commission made a factual denunciation to the Association for the Protection of Voter Rights “GOLOS”. Citing absolutely false data, they demand registration of this organization as a “foreign agent.”

We are extremely outraged by what is happening, and we consider this as a deliberate intimidation by the authorities of independent civil society structures. We draw your attention to the fact that these checks, which have already taken the form of a real raid, began after Vladimir Putin’s speech at the expanded board of the FSB in early February.

The fact that the regional prosecutor’s offices initiated the checks is an obvious consequence of the fact that after the Ministry of Justice officially stated that human rights activities are promoting the state policy to protect civil rights and freedoms proclaimed in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and not a desire to change it, those. in itself does not fall under the criteria of “political activity”, the authorities are feverishly looking for other levers of pressure on public organizations.

We consider it fundamentally important to note that the prosecutor's office has the right to check the legality of the activities of non-profit organizations only if there are serious grounds for this - information about facts of violation of the law. In other cases, only the registration authority, that is, the Ministry of Justice, has the right to conduct inspections of non-governmental organizations. Moreover, these checks must be planned; they must be warned about in advance by publishing a schedule. Unscheduled inspections must also be justified. Therefore, the current checks do not comply with the law, and we call for them to be challenged in the courts, of course, with the prospect of appealing to Strasbourg.

We draw the attention of the Council of Europe, OSCE, PACE and the UN Human Rights Council to the fact that in the Russian Federation there is a deliberate persecution of civil society, primarily human rights and environmental organizations.

We demand that the Russian authorities immediately stop all forms of persecution of non-governmental organizations.”

At the moment, it is known that the Prosecutor General's Office initiated inspections in the Krasnodar Territory, Saratov Region, Moscow, Rostov Region, Perm Territory, Chuvashia, Penza Region, St. Petersburg, Volgograd and other cities.

The Presidential Council for Human Rights sent an appeal to Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika asking him to explain the conduct of inspections of non-profit organizations in Russian regions. The appeal published on the council’s website says: “It seems that the purpose of the inspections is to find at least some violations at the NPO: an expired fire extinguisher, a business trip report filed in the wrong folder, etc. As a result, information will accumulate for the inspection report , and violators of the law will be identified and punished.”

On the same day, representatives of the prosecutor's office, the tax service and the Ministry of Justice came to the office of the International Society "Memorial". An NTV film crew came along with them, ostensibly on their own. Memorial employee Anna Karetnikova wrote on Twitter that an NTV correspondent asks all employees whether they receive money from abroad. As representatives of the Human Rights Center “Memorial” report on Facebook, a police squad has been called in and a comprehensive inspection has been suspended. The police asked NTV employees, producer Pyotr Dorogovyaz and cameraman Alexander Belyaev, to leave, and they left the building. However, this did not stop them from airing a story, the headline of which categorically states: “Memorial is hiding income from the prosecutor’s office.”