Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May 14, 2013
Alexei Gorbachev
Yesterday, the Ministry of Justice initiated a new administrative case against the Golos Association for its refusal to register as a “foreign agent.” Golos told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the association might be closed in protest of the current situation. Inspired by the association’s example, the Levada Center has refused to register under the new regulations and is accusing the Kremlin of exerting unnecessary pressure. Nezavisimaya Gazeta found out what an NGO would face if it chose to register as a “foreign agent.”
In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Golos Executive Director Lilia Shibanova said that the association would possibly cease operating as a legal entity in the near future. In her opinion, this decision is the organization’s only possible reaction to the pressure by the police and security services, which are forcing it to register as a “foreign agent.”
“This is absolutely out of the question—we do not represent any foreign interests,” Shibanova said. “Unfortunately, the law is designed in such a way that if we continue to persist, fines amounting to thousands of dollars will be imposed on us, and the prosecution of our organization’s leadership could be changed from an administrative one to a criminal one. As a result, closing down Golos as a legal entity may be the only way out.” One should remember that the court fined the association and its management 400,000 rubles, which activists have been collecting through social networks and during the May 6 rally.
Yesterday, Golos made headlines again when the Ministry of Justice opened an administrative case against the association’s regional office for its refusal to register as a “foreign agent.” According to the ministry, the organization’s participation in the drafting process of the Election Code proves its involvement in political activity. Also, the 4 million rubles in funding that the organization received from the European Union is considered proof of its status as a foreign agent. As Grigory Melkonyants, deputy executive director of the Golos Association, underlined in his interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the regional office of the Golos Association is a separate legal entity; it did receive European grants and is chiefly involved in questions of local self-government. According to him, the work on the Election Code was finished two years ago, and in trying to make Golos register as a “foreign agent,” the authorities are not even formally complying with the law, since the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office to allow groups one month to “eliminate violations” reached the regional office only on April 26. Having disregarded the one-month grace period, the Ministry of Justice has already transmitted the case against Golos to the court.
Golos is prepared to go through all the courts. Last week, the association lodged an appeal against the decision to brand it as a “foreign agent.” According to Lilia Shibanova, Golos might be closed even before the lawyers go through all the Russian courts. If the Moscow District Court rejects the appeal, the decision to label the association a “foreign agent” will come into force and will give cause for new repressive measures against the organization. Golos emphasizes that even if it were registered as a “foreign agent,” it would still be impossible for the organization to continue its work, since the new status would mean unscheduled inspections and the media would call the association’s employees agents of a foreign state.
Levada Center General Director Lev Gudkov also recently announced to Nezavisimaya Gazeta the organization’s flat refusal to register itself as a “foreign agent.” According to the media, the Prosecutor’s Office has accused the polling center of receiving foreign funding. “This is totally out of the question,” Gudkov said. He stressed that the sociologists working at the center are looking for ways to keep their operations going without complying with the new law, but for the time being, Gudkov “does not want to reveal his hand.”
According to Gudkov, legal issues far more serious than a formal registration lay behind the adoption of the law: “The authorities equate foreign funding with conspiring against national security and believe that all criticism directed at the current government to be the same, as is customary amongst authoritarian or totalitarian regimes.” According to Gudkov, the meaning of the law has been distorted: “Researching into politics is not the same as being engaged in it, in much the same way that curing a disease is not the same as suffering from it.”
Earlier, sociologists at the Levada Center published opinion polls reporting that more than half of all Russians do not support United Russia party and do not back Putin’s decision to run for a second term. However, the president himself reacted coldly to the hype around the new law on NGOs. “The law does not prohibit anything. . . . Organizations financed from abroad are not forbidden to carry out any type of activities, including internal political activity. The only thing we want to know is who receives the money and where it goes. What’s wrong with that?” Putin wondered in an interview with the German media. He added that a similar law has been in force in the Unites States since 1938.
However, the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act does not concern public organizations and does not touch groups that are engaged in “religious, scholastic, academic, or scientific pursuits or of the fine arts” or those “not serving predominantly a foreign interest.” A major study of both the Russian and the American “foreign agent” laws by the Institute of Modern Russia emphasizes that in the United States, political NGOs that have foreign origins or funding have no obligation to register as foreign agents, since they do not act “in the interests of a foreign principal.” The Institute’s senior policy advisor, Vladimir Kara-Murza, sums up the differences: “No one in his or her right mind would declare Reporters Without Borders an ‘agent’ of France, or Amnesty International an ‘agent’ of the United Kingdom.”
Experts also underline another fundamental difference between the Russian and the American laws. In order to place an organization in the FARA database, the government has to prove that the organization is acting “under . . . control of a foreign principal” and is engaged “in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal.” Vladimir Kara-Murza notes that “among the organizations currently registered as foreign agents in the United States are such groups as the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, Switzerland Tourism, and other [similar] entities.” The U.S. government does not include the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation or the Center on Global Interests, which are financed by Russian sources, on its list of foreign agents, because these organizations are engaged in scientific activities and do not aim to represent the interests of any specific country.
