Posts Tagged ‘Vladimir Putin’
April 2nd, 2013
Russian non-governmental organisations are facing a wave of state inspections, which some believe are taking place as revenge for united protests against a law classifying international NGOs as “foreign agents”.
The list of NGOs visited by prosecutors and other inspectors during last days, is impressive: Transparency International, Amnesty International, Memorial, Moscow Helsinki Group, Human Rights Watch, Agora, For Human Rights (Za prava cheloveka), GOLOS, and numerous regional NGOs.
Even regional organisation Shield and Sword of Chuvashiya, which actually appealed to the Ministry of Justice seeking “foreign agents” status, has received a notification of an inspection.
According to the law, an NGO that receives financing from abroad, has to register as “foreign agent” or face criminal charges. “Foreign agents” are obliged to mark the literature and online content they produce as “distributed by foreign agent”. The law stipulates that they have to report to inspection bodies far more often than organisations that do not receive financing from abroad. The frequency of “foreign agents” inspections is not limited by the law. Russian authorities have gained a legal tool for paralysing NGOs they don’t like simply by swamping them with inspections.
Several human rights NGOs unanimously concluded the law doesn’t comply with justice and the constitution and made a decision to boycott it by not registering as foreign agents.
Many of them came through planned inspections by the Ministry of Justice this winter – not as “foreign agents”, just as NGOs – to face extraordinary prosecutors’, tax, sanitary and other authorities’ inspections in March.
Russian veteran rights activist, head of “For Human Rights” organization Lev Ponomarev refused to provide prosecutors with the organisation’s documentation. He says, according to the law about, prosecutors had to provide him with information about violations of law by his organisation – such information being supposedly the only purpose for their sudden extraordinary inspections.
Prosecutors still haven’t provided NGOs with this information.
But the General prosecutor’s office representative Marina Gridneva has said the prosecutors “act in compliance with the law”.
President Vladimir Putin, replying to Russian ombudsman Vladimir Lukin concerns over the inspections, said these “are routine measures linked to the desire of the law enforcement agencies to bring the activities of organisations in line with the law.”
Political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin told Index on Censorship that the authorities aim to emphatically close one of Russian human rights NGO “or make it hysterical” in order to chill others.
“The authorities think the problem will be solved, when someone shuts down in fear” said Oreshkin. “Lev Ponomarev has survived the Soviet era fighting for human rights, he knows the law better than law enforcement bodies, and he is not likely to be the one to fulfill the authorities’ expectations by fearing them.”
The authorities, according to Oreshkin, are demonstrating incompetence and incapability.
“The NGO boycott obviously enraged the Kremlin. Human rights activists, more than anyone else, now how crucially solidarity is.”
The state’s inconsistence, demonstrated during the ongoing NGOs inspections is based on a wrong perception of the word “law”, Oreshkin claims:
“The law concerns a citizen and an authority; the authorities have passed laws against citizens hoping they won’t have to keep within the law themselves”.
February 5th, 2013
Russian authorities not only have narrowed the rules regarding NGOs’ activities, but they also subject civil society activists to direct repression, Andrei Aliaksandrau reports
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August 17th, 2012
Three members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot were today found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” by a Moscow court, and sentenced to two years in prison.
Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship, said:
“In Putin’s Russia, free expression has become a crime. The women of Pussy Riot should be released immediately — and should never have been put through this absurd case. Artistic expression is not a crime — it’s a right, and an integral part of all free societies. The PussyRiot verdict is the latest indication that Vladimir Putin’s Russia does not respect human rights and is sliding backwards to dictatorship”.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevic were arrested in March, after performing a 40-second “punk prayer” against Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Church. The case has been condemned by activists as being politically motivated, and has drawn criticism from well-known musicians from across the globe.
READ MORE ABOUT PUSSY RIOT
For media enquiries on this story, please contact Padraig Reidy: padraig@indexoncensorship.org / @mePadraigReidy
August 2nd, 2012
With the opening of the Pussy Riot trial in Moscow this week, Elena Vlasenko explains why the feminist punk collective is a threat to the church-state axis of Putin’s Russia
July 13th, 2012
Russian parliamentarians have passed legislation that will establish a central register of banned websites. The new laws are ostensibly designed for child protection, but Andrei Soldatov says the real aim is to take control over the country’s burgeoning social networks
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Tags: Tags: Andrei Soldatov, censorship, Facebook, free speech, internet, livejournal, Russia, social networks, Twitter, Vladimir Putin,
June 21st, 2012
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Russian court has ruled that three members of political punk rock group Pussy Riot
will remain in prison until late July. The group of feminists performed an unauthorised “punk prayer” at the pulpit of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral
in February, calling for the fall of Vladimir Putin. The court judge ruled that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich will remain in detention until 24 July while a police investigation continues. Outside the court, police detained at least five people as supporters of the band chanted anti-Kremlin songs, and clashed with Orthodox activists calling for the feminists “to repent.”
May 15th, 2012
The Russian feminist collective tells Index’s Elena Vlasenko they will continue to speak out, in spite of arrests and harassment
A Moscow court has confirmed the legality of the pre-trial detention of alleged Pussy Riot members Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Semutsevich.
The women had appealed against the Tagansky court decision detaining them until 24 June — when they will face a criminal trial on charges of hooliganism for allegedly staging an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral in the run-up to recent presidential elections. But the court has turned down their appeal.
Two of the three accused Pussy Riot members are mothers of young children. The maximum sentence for their charges is seven years in prison.
Tolokonnikova, Alekhina and Samutsevich deny the allegations and are considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International and other leading human rights activists in Russia and abroad.
The women’s arrests triggered an emotional public discussion about the Orthodox church’s relationship with Russian authorities and society. Radical nationalist movement members have been preventing activists from protesting against Pussy Riot arrests. The Church, led by patriarch Kirill, who publically supports Vladimir Putin, performed a public prayer in April “against blasphemers”. Kirill’s support of the Pussy Riot prosecution has concerned many religious Russians, who have petitioned for the release of the women.
Pussy Riot members who have not yet been arrested are now in hiding and are difficult to reach. They gave this exclusive email interview to Index on Censorship.
– Did you expect these consequences — arrests, criminal proceedings, your supporters being beaten and insulted by radical nationalists — when you planned your cathedral performance? Would you repeat the performance if you knew how this would end?
– We didn’t expect the arrest. We are a women’s group which is forced to consume the ideas of patriarchal conservative society. We experience each process that happens in this society. Besides, we are a punk band, which can perform in any public place, especially one which is maintained through our taxes. That’s why we would definitely repeat our prayer. It was worth it: look at the awakened pluralism — political and religious!
– The state remains intolerant towards much artistic expression. What about broader Russian society?
– We are trying to educate society and will definitely take the importance of this process into account in our further actions. We expect people to at least look through Wikipedia after watching us on YouTube.
– What must you do now to avoid arrests?
– After Putin’s inauguration, just wearing a white ribbon on your clothes — a symbol of protest — has become a reason for arrest in Moscow. So we don’t wear them now.
– Will you continue performing? You said that anonymity helps you replace the band members in case they get arrested. Have many people offered to join you?
– Many people have expressed their wish to participate in our perfomances and we are planning them right now. We don’t consider the patriarch’s ignorant opinion and are not going to perform any protest songs against him personally.
– The Russian Orthodox church, according to notable human rights activists, has lost its right to establish moral standards after having severely condemned you, as did some intellectuals who preferred not to notice your persecution. Who, in your perspective, is likely to take their place?
– We think that one can learn moral values through literature, music and art, but definitely not in church. And as far as people are concerned, any human being who advocates humanistic ideas should support any prisoner who has lost her freedom because the authorities are afraid to give up their power.
