Petersburg: Two human rights organizations are recognized as foreign agents

The register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent included St. Petersburg human rights organizations "Open Petersburg" and "Humanitarian Action". Information about this appeared on the website of the Ministry of Justice. The report said that the list of foreign agents is supplemented "in fulfillment of the requirements of the current legislation of the Russian Federation."

The Interregional Public Organization "Open Petersburg" is headed by an opposition politician, executive director of Open Russia Andrei Pivovarov. According to him, he learned about the introduction of the organization to the register of foreign agents from the press messages. On Tuesday, he intends to go and get a decision of the court and the Ministry of Justice, and then challenge them. “All three complaints, more precisely, denunciations, the director of Prigozhinsky RIA Fan wrote to us. The first two inspections of the Ministry of Justice found nothing, and the third found violations, but which was not informed. The foreign agent should receive foreign funding, but it is simply impossible for us to send a donation from a Russian card without being a Russian citizen,” Andrei Pivovarov emphasizes.

The Humanitarian Action Foundation helps people suffering from drug addiction, to small people with HIV, is engaged in medical and social accompaniment of people with HIV, hepatitis and drug addiction, and helps homeless children. Fund Director Sergei Dugin, for him the news that his organization is now a foreign agent was a surprise. According to him, the Fund receives foreign financing, but an unscheduled audit of violations has not identified, and the humanitarian action did not receive any notifications.

The senior lawyer of the 29 team Maxim Olenichev believes that it can be recorded in foreign agents, which is also dealing with Russian sources only. “If a foreign source transferred the money of any Russian organization, and it transferred it to NPOs, then a sign of foreign financing will be observed. This provision is in the law on NKO-foreign agents, and this is a big problem: the world economy is so arranged that it is impossible to be sure that this or that company has never received funds from foreign sources, and NKO cannot trace it,” said Olenichev.

According to him, this has already brought many NPOs to the register of foreign agents, and it is impossible to protect against this, as well as from the second criterion, mandatory for entering foreign agents - political activity for which the state considers any public speech, including a post in social networks.

The register of foreign agents also included the Oryol Regional Public Organization for the Combating of AIDS "Phoenix Plus" and the Yekaterinburg autonomous non-profit organization of social and legal services "Accent". The Czech Medium-Orient news agency is entered in the register of foreign media that perform the functions of a foreign agent, it became the 12th on this list.

• The law on foreign agents was adopted in Russia in 2012. It allows the authorities to recognize any non-profit organization or social movement to the “ino-agent” if they receive financial support from abroad and conduct political activities. The criteria for which such activities are determined are not clearly defined in the law, therefore it became possible to persecute organizations working in the field of education, healthcare and ecology.
• In December last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that allows citizens of citizens to recognize.