The Russian government rushed a law through parliament on Friday which will tighten controls on civil rights groups and has strained relations with the United States, which fears a crackdown on opponents of President Vladimir Putin.
In defiance of criticism this week from the US State Department, curtly dismissed by Russia's Foreign Ministry as "gross interference", the lower house overwhelmingly backed the bill in second and third readings under accelerated procedures. The rapid passage underlined the importance Putin attaches to a law which will force foreign-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that engage in "political activity" to register with the Justice Ministry as "foreign agents" and to file a report on their operations to officials twice a year.
Critics say the term "foreign agents" echoes back to the Cold War, and that organisations which carry the tag will be seen by many Russians as traitors. They say it aims to starve such groups of funds and to intimidate them into silence.
"The law is harmful to the process of developing a civil society. It does not support the opening up of our country," Yelena Zhemkova, a director at Russian human rights group Memorial, told Reuters. "Put simply, this law has just one goal and that is to provide a formal reason for labelling your opponents enemies of the state."
Boris Nemtsov, a former minister and one of the organisers of protests against the president, said: "The law was inspired and pushed by Putin himself as a repressive law on rallies." Putin, a former KGB spy, has been in power for 12 years as prime minister or president. He returned to the Kremlin in May and could rule the world's largest country for the next 12 years if he is re-elected in 2018.
In the past seven months he has faced the biggest protests since he first rose to power and he has already pushed through a law that increased potential fines for demonstrators, while police have raided the homes of some of the protest organisers.
Parliament is also considering a new law tightening controls on the Internet, used by the opposition for distributing news about protests, as well as legislation tightening defamation laws, which the opposition fears could also be used against it. The US State department expressed its "deep concern" about the NGO law on Wednesday but the Russian Foreign Ministry hit back shortly after the State Duma lower house approved the law. In a response that showed the impact the bill is having on already frayed foreign relations, it said in a statement: "We note that such comments cannot be seen as anything other than entirely inappropriate attempts at gross interference in the activities of the Russian state authorities."
Comments
Comments are closed.