Three times "foreign agent"

Within a day, the Ministry of Justice entered into the register of "foreign agents" all NGOs under the leadership of Lev Ponomarev

The misadventures of Lev Ponomarev, a human rights activist and leader of the For Human Rights movement, that began in December last year, continue. In less than two days, on February 13 and 14, the Ministry of Justice added to the list of “foreign agents” three non-profit organizations at once, in which Ponomarev is listed as the head. In addition to the movement "For Human Rights", it is also the Fund "In Defense of the Rights of Prisoners" and the regional public organization for the promotion of observance of human rights "Hot Line".

The Ministry of Justice made this decision based on the results of an unscheduled inspection, which was announced at the moment when Ponomarev was in a special detention center for a post calling for a rally “For our and your children” near the FSB building in support of the defendants in the “New Greatness” case.

Ponomarev was then publicly defended in the Human Rights Council personally before Vladimir Putin, to which he reacted with the phrase: “Do you want it to be like in Paris?”

The Movement for Human Rights was already entered into the register of "foreign agents" four and a half years ago. In 2014, the Ministry of Justice also considered that the NGO led by Lev Ponomarev had funding from foreign funds, but a year later the organization was excluded from the register. The current attack looks more serious. The Ministry of Justice claims that the Hot Line received a grant from the UN Committee against Torture, and one of the members of the For Human Rights movement trained members of public monitoring commissions in the regions with money from the Council of Europe. In the current Russian realities, for such “sins”, perhaps they don’t fry in a frying pan, but in fact the very motivation for the decision of the Ministry of Justice looks very doubtful, Lev Ponomarev tells Novaya Gazeta.

“The Ministry of Justice believes that if a person from the PMC for this project received money from the Council of Europe on his card and went to Moscow by train to speak at the congress of the For Human Rights movement, then our NGO indirectly received foreign funding,” retells the content of the inspection report human rights activist. - It is ridiculous that the delegates from the Council of Europe, who were also participants in the congress, are not considered "foreign agents", and a person who, without this money, of course, could not buy a ticket to Moscow with his card, sort of brought this "contagion". But this is basically impossible to foresee!

Earlier, Ponomarev regularly stated that he did not receive foreign funding for "For Human Rights", because he did not want to be included in any registers. The main source of money in this case was a regular presidential grant (in 2018 this amount was 15 million rubles). However, in 2019, the movement was not given a presidential grant, and the prospects for funding are now vague, Ponomarev himself admits, although he adds that he will try to “solve this issue.” At the same time, on February 12, the Ministry of Justice did not include the Memorial research and information and educational center in the register of “foreign agents”, which, from Ponomarev’s point of view, looks like some kind of attempt to “balance” against the background of the inclusion of his NPO in the register.

Few doubted that Ponomarev’s NGO would be included in the register of “foreign agents” following an unscheduled inspection, especially after it became known that the organization was cooperating with the UN Committee against Torture. “At that moment, I personally began to suspect that For Human Rights would be reduced to the status of a “foreign agent,” says political scientist Yekaterina Shulman to Novaya HRC member. - But since this is not the first time this has happened to them, I think that Lev Ponomarev's organizations will again fight for the removal of their status. There are also organizations that live with this status: for example, the Levada Center. It cannot be said that in general the existence of the concept of “foreign agent” is acceptable, the legislative framework itself is bad from a legal and political point of view. But now we have to deal with what happened and look for counter strategies.”

Shulman adds that since the death of the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alekseeva, last year, some "moral protection" of the organization, Lev Ponomarev, has disappeared. “It’s sad to think that there are people who waited for this moment and took advantage of it,” Shulman says. Ponomarev himself is sure that all the events, starting from the moment of his arrest for 25 days, are “the revenge of one of the circles” (which of the power circles, the human rights activist did not dare to say, although, we recall, the procession “For our and your children” passed at the Lubyanka).

“Now we see an aggravation of the situation [tightening the screws],” says Lev Ponomarev. - It's not just about the movement "For Human Rights", but in general about the situation in the country. The appearance of Vladislav Surkov's article is a political reactionary signal like Nina Andreeva's article "I can't compromise my principles." And the processes in relation to those about whom the president at the meeting of the Human Rights Council said that they should not be touched ( we are talking about the Jehovah's Witnesses organization banned in the Russian Federation. - Novaya ), they say that some structures are already defiantly challenging the president " . We add that at a meeting of the HRC at the end of last year, Vladimir Putin instructed Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika personally to check the legality of the persecution of Lev Ponomarev. As a result, no check was carried out (although its results were reported a day later), the human rights activist claims, and this is another proof that the real power in the country belongs to those same “circles”.