Subject: Justice Ministry Threatens to Close Russian NGOs
From: Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 23 1999 - 17:13:51 EST
Xposted from Johnson's Russia List, #3640, 23 November 1999
<davidjohnson@erols.com>
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Moscow Times
November 23, 1999
Registration Law Poses Threat To Nongovernmental Groups
By Sarah Karush
Staff Writer
Russian officials are on the verge of shutting down thousands of
nongovernmental organizations that failed to meet a bureaucratic
registration requirement, in what activists said Monday is an attack
on human rights groups.
A 1995 law required all nongovernmental organizations to reregister
by June 30, 1999, and many - including prominent organizations such
as the Glasnost Foundation and environmental guru Alexei Yablokov's
Advocacy Center for the Environment and Human Rights - were denied
registration.
"We see that the rejections have been received by human rights
organizations and those groups that keep tabs on bureaucrats," said
Valery Nikolsky, head of the Voice of the People advocacy group.
"Organizations that are inconvenient to authorities, let's put it
that way," added Yury Dzhebladze of the Center for the Development of
Democracy and Human Rights.
Nikolsky said he had hoped that an amendment extending the deadline
for registration until July 1, 2000, would give organizations more
time to overcome bureaucratic hurdles, but the provision, earlier
passed by the State Duma, was rejected by the Federation Council, or
upper house of parliament.
The last hope for many organizations is for the Duma to take the rare
step of overriding the Federation Council's decision with a
two-thirds vote. Barring that, about 11,000 organizations may be
liquidated, the Justice Ministry said.
Vladimir Tomarovsky, head of the Justice Ministry's department for
religious and public organizations, said most of those groups simply
did not bother to re-register. He said outright rejections were
limited to "individual" cases.
The Glasnost Foundation and Yablokov's group appealed the rejection
of their registration in Moscow courts, but the appeals were turned
down. Both were staunch critics of the Federal Security Service,
which Yablokov blamed for the rejections.
But the trend seems to have touched less obviously controversial
groups, such as the independent political research center Panorama.
"We were refused for some little formalities, but when we corrected
them, they said, 'Now it's too late,'" Panorama director Vladimir
Pribylovsky said.
Pribylovsky said his organization likely fell victim to a general
tightening of rules that may have served as justification for
rejecting human rights groups or other enemies of officialdom.
He said the lack of registration could prove problematic if the
authorities close Panorama's bank accounts, thus making it difficult
to receive vital grant money.
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