Russian non-governmental organisations are facing a wave of state inspections, which some believe are taking place as \u00a0revenge for united protests against a law classifying international NGOs as \u201cforeign agents\u201d.<\/p>\n
The list of NGOs visited by prosecutors and other inspectors during last days, is impressive:\u00a0Transparency International, Amnesty International, Memorial, Moscow Helsinki Group, Human Rights Watch, Agora, For Human Rights (Za prava cheloveka), GOLOS, and numerous regional NGOs.<\/p>\n
Even regional organisation Shield and Sword of Chuvashiya, which actually appealed to the Ministry of Justice seeking \u201cforeign agents\u201d status, has received a notification of an inspection.<\/p>\n
According to the law, an NGO that receives financing from abroad, has to register as \u201cforeign agent\u201d or face criminal charges. \u201cForeign agents\u201d are obliged to mark the literature and online content they produce as \u201cdistributed by foreign agent\u201d. 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 \u201cforeign agents\u201d inspections is not limited by the law. Russian authorities have gained a legal tool for paralysing NGOs they don\u2019t like simply by swamping them with inspections.<\/p>\n
Several human rights NGOs unanimously concluded the law doesn\u2019t comply with justice and the constitution and made a decision to boycott it by not registering as foreign agents.<\/p>\n
Many of them came through planned inspections by the Ministry of Justice this winter \u2013 not as \u201cforeign agents\u201d, just as NGOs \u2013 to face extraordinary prosecutors\u2019, tax, sanitary and other authorities\u2019 inspections in March.<\/p>\n
Russian veteran rights activist, head of \u201cFor Human Rights\u201d organization Lev Ponomarev refused to provide prosecutors with the organisation\u2019s documentation. He says, according to the law about, prosecutors had to provide him with information about violations of law by his organisation \u2013 such information being supposedly the only purpose for their sudden extraordinary inspections.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors still haven\u2019t provided NGOs with this information.<\/p>\n
But the General prosecutor\u2019s office representative Marina Gridneva has said the prosecutors \u201cact in compliance with the law\u201d.<\/p>\n