Paris-Geneva,
July 17, 2015.In the past months, new laws
were adopted by legislative bodies to further restrict the space of civil
society, including human rights work conducted in the country. The Observatory
expresses its utmost concerns over these new developments, in particular the
drawing up of a “patriotic stop list” by the Parliament, the labelling of the Committee
Against Torture (CAT) as “foreign agent” and the introduction of two new pieces
of legislation providing police and security forces with new means to suppress
and repress social dissent.
On
July 8, 2015, the Upper Chamber of the Russian Parliament (Federal Council)
requested the Prosecutor General and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to check
the compliance of 12 foreign non-profit organisations with the new law on
“undesirable foreign organisations”. The law bans the activities of foreign
NGOs that “threaten the constitutional order, security of the State or its
defence capacity” and criminalizes those who work for them. The Federal
Council's list includes several American organisations such as the Open Society
Foundation (OSF), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Freedom House,
the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic
Institute (NDI), two NGOs uniting Ukrainian diaspora around the world, and an
informal group monitoring human rights in Crimea. The inclusion of the latter
unregistered group with no organisational structure or staff demonstrates the
clumsiness of the Russian decision makers in their efforts to silence all
critical voices.
On
the same day, the Regional Court of Nijegorod (Nijegorodskaya oblast) upheld
the previous city court decision to include the Committee Against Torture
(CAT), OMCT member organisation, into the list of 'foreign agents'. The law
aims at further stigmatizing civil society organisations, forces NGOs to
register as 'foreign agents' if they receive foreign funding and engage in so
called “political activity aiming to change state legislation”. The
organisation defended itself in vain.
“The
aim of the authorities is to form a mass of obedient citizens isolated from the
rest of the world, deprived of independent sources of information and without a
possibility to stand up for their rights”,
declared OMCT Secretary General Gerald Staberock.
In
addition, a legislative amendment proposed on July 3, 2015, by members of the
Federal Council would render any form of civil society protest even riskier
than before. If passed, the amendment to the law “on the Federal Security
Bureau” (FSB - former KGB) will allow agents to use lethal weapons “to prevent
mass disorder”, “to deliver to police stations persons who committed an
administrative offence” and “to arrest any person” who undermines the ability
of security officers to perform their duties.
“These recent events attest of a particularly gloomy picture for human rights
defenders. New legislative initiatives might further restrict freedom of
assembly and any form of social dissent”,
said FIDH President Karim Lahidji.
The Observatory for the Protection of
Human Rights Defenders (OBS) was created in 1997 by FIDH and OMCT. The
objective of this programme is to intervene to prevent or remedy to situations
of repression against human rights defenders.
For more information, please
contact: ·FIDH: Lucie Kroening/Arthur Manet: +
33 (0) 1 43 55 25 18 ·OMCT: Miguel Martín
Zumalacárregui: + 41 (0) 22 809 49 24