RUSSIA: Bill to Regulate NGOs Has Critics Within and Without

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Dec 20 2005 (IPS) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered amendments to a controversial bill on non-governmental organisations, saying the legislators must take into account the concerns expressed by the Council of Europe, the newly created Public Chamber and Russian NGOs – but warned against their role in political activities.

He said that foreign-funded NGOs played a key role in helping citizens in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan organise the mass protests that ushered opposition leaders into power.

Putin has instructed the head of his administration to sum up all the recommendations made by a group of European experts and the concerns expressed by members of the Public Chamber in relation to the bill on NGOs and to submit draft amendments to the State Duma.

It was unclear what specific changes would be made, but Putin’s instructions indicated that the Kremlin might soften its earlier stern approach toward NGOs.

“It’s absolutely evident that Russia’s main asset is its democratic process and the achievements of our civil society. We can’t allow ourselves to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said.

“We need this law only in order to protect our political system from external intervention and to protect our society and our people from anyone under the cover of this or that organisation from spreading any sort of terrorism and harmful political ideologies.”

“Unfortunately, we encounter various religious extremist tendencies,” he said.

He said he hopes that during their next debates on the bill, Duma deputies will find “a balanced solution” and avoid hurting civil society in Russia. “The bill should not undermine relations between Russian NGOs and their counterparts abroad,” he added.

The bill on NGOs, which has been approved by the State Duma in the first of its three readings, would require all such foreign groups to re-register as de facto Russian entities. They would be subject to stricter financial and legal restrictions.

Foreign NGOs warned this week that they might have to shut down their Russian branches if the bill is passed into law.

The Council of Europe, the continent’s leading rights watchdog, said in an official statement that the bill being debated could violate the European Convention on Human Rights. In a five-page provisional statement, it said that while the thrust of the bill was compatible with Russia’s international obligations, changes were needed to protect NGOs from being closed solely because the state dislikes their activities.

“Frankly speaking, it looks to us as if some aspects of these are too restrictive,” the council’s general-secretary Terry Davis said. “To comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, any restriction on the freedom of assembly must not go beyond what is necessary and proportionate to achieve these legitimate goals.”

Parliamentary deputy Sergey Popov, one of the bill’s sponsors, maintained that the bill would not endanger the development of democratic process but would rather help the government to monitor NGO activities that are financed from abroad, identify sources of financial flows and expenditure patterns.

He also said the law is necessary to control money laundering and international terrorist activity.

“The main aim of the draft law is to give the federal authorities greater powers to carry out supervision of non-governmental and non-profit organisations. As we have made very clear, the aim of this supervision is to combat money laundering and terrorism, and these are legitimate objectives that are in accordance with the convention on human rights,” he said.

Popov explained that if the bill became law, the 450,000 NGOs currently registered in the country would have a year to re-register with the Justice Ministry. Their financial records could be checked periodically by the tax authorities to make sure that funds are not redirected into “revolutionary” politics.

“We thought that by discussing it to our satisfaction the bill was constitutional and even more after it passed easily through the first reading,” Popov told IPS.

Members of parliament’s Lower House from all four political parties drafted the bill, and the 450-seat chamber approved it in a 370-18 vote, with 48 abstentions.

All abstentions were from Communist deputies, who criticised the version that had been submitted for the vote and promised to propose significant changes before the second reading.

Popov said the second reading of the document is scheduled for autumn session, since parliament needs to rewrite some important aspects dealing with the functioning of Russian NGOs and to incorporate the interests and opinions of experts into the bill.

The Public Chamber also responded to concerns about the looming crackdown on NGOs, insisting that the legislation must not hinder the development of civil society and the new democracy.

The 84 members already nominated to the newly created Public Chamber, which is tasked to act as a bridge between the state and the civil society, asked the State Duma in an official letter to delay a vote on the bill until they had time to thoroughly study it and propose amendments. But one-third of the chamber’s members have yet to be named.

The letter expressed full support for an earlier appeal made by members of the presidential council for the promotion of civil society and human rights.

“We have expressed our views and called for a review of the bill, although everybody understands that some kind of order needs to be maintained, and this could be done under a specific law,” Yelena Zelinskaya , vice-president of the Media Union and an executive member of the Public Chamber, told IPS.

The Public Chamber, she acknowledged, has the primary task to collect and collate views on significant issues, like this effort which would give the authorities more powers over the NGOs.

“Now we will see how lawmakers react to our objective initiatives. These organisations are playing an increasing role in our society by generating new ideas and therefore constitute an integral part of the democratic and development process which we can’t simply ignore,” she said.

“The situation is that the chamber will continue to encourage the organisations’ efforts directed towards building a genuine civil society, promoting civil education and democratic values such as popular opinions and expressions,” Zelinskaya said.

Ella Pamfilova, who heads the Kremlin’s Council on Developing Civil Society, says she fears the new law will hand too much power to the bureaucrats.

“I don’t see the need for such a controversial, raw, bribe-inducing bill that gives government officials a lot of leeway for lawlessness,” she says. “When any official gets criticised, he’ll now have 10 times more ways to shut down an organisation by accusing it of being engaged in political activities.”