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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 9/18/2005 7:08 PM
International Herald Tribune

Russia puts clamps on rights unit
By Steven Lee Myers The New York Times
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2005

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia The Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a small human rights organization sponsored by American taxpayers, is a rare independent source of information about Russia's war in Chechnya. The authorities here are hounding it out of existence.
 
The federal tax service accused the nonprofit society of evading taxes, though its financing from foreign grants is supposed to be tax-free, and billed it for $35,000 in back taxes and fines. In late August, the service froze the organization's bank accounts.
 
The Justice Ministry has scheduled a hearing in late September to nullify its registration on the ground that by law it cannot use "Russian" in its name.
 
On Sept. 2, the society's director, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, was charged with inciting ethnic and religious animosity by publishing commentaries by two Chechen separatist leaders in the group's newspaper more than a year and a half ago.
 
One passage cited as evidence said, "So far it is not too late to come to an understanding, but for that the Russian people should get rid of those for whom peace means the loss of power."
 
Russia has long been wary of organizations that highlight the kidnappings and killings that blight Chechnya. But the fate of the society has repercussions that reach far beyond this city on the Volga River, where it has offices. The action threatens foreign support for groups like it and confronts the United States with a diplomatic quandary.
 
President Vladimir Putin warned this summer that Russia would not tolerate "foreign financing of political activities" by private organizations. The legal assault here appears to be the first to make good on that threat, which echoed one he made a year earlier.
 
Putin did not single out the society or the United States, but the State Department, through the National Endowment for Democracy, has given the group $170,000 since 2001 - money that was not supposed to be taxed under a 1992 agreement between the United States and Russia, but is now part of the tax evasion case.
 
Officials in the U.S. Embassy and at the State Department declined to discuss the matter for the record. But John Squire, who oversees grants to Russia and Ukraine for the National Endowment for Democracy, said he feared that this would not be an isolated case.
 
"The range of stuff you can do in criticizing the government is getting more and more narrow," he said by telephone from Washington.
 
Dmitriyevsky, who remains free pending trial but is under orders not to leave Nizhny Novgorod, said the authorities were bent on stifling organizations like his, just as Putin's government has reined in news organizations, businesses and the political opposition.
 
"They want to do to us what they did to Khodorkovsky," he said, referring to the prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yukos, the oil company he founded. "They want to send a message to others. They started the criminal case, the tax claims, to show to others what can happen to them."
 
 
Officials in Nizhny Novgorod denied that the government actions had been coordinated, but a prosecutor, Konstantin Moiseyev, underlined the political aspects of the criminal case.
 
He said that Dmitriyevsky used the society's monthly newspaper, Rights Defender, to publish criticism of the Kremlin's policies in Chechnya and the Northern Caucasus.
 
The criticism, he said, amounted to fomenting hatred - paid for by the United States, as well as the European Commission and Norway, which also provided grants.
 
"We think that he is receiving grants from abroad - not only from the United States," Moiseyev said, "but also from other countries that are interested in the Chechen war and reflect the interests of Chechen extremists. They pay for that."
 
The society, established after the second Chechen war began in 1999, found itself mired in legal challenges soon after the terrorist siege of Middle School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia, a year ago by armed militants from a separatist group in nearby Chechnya.
 
Oksana Chelysheva, another employee, said the authorities were retaliating for the society's efforts to promote a negotiated end to the siege, which ended in violence that left 331 dead.
 
In January, officers of the Federal Security Service, the successor of the KGB, searched the society's cluttered three-room office in a drab apartment block and seized copies of the newspaper.
 
The charges involved open letters published in 2004 by Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen leader killed by Russian forces in March, and by Akhmed Zakayev, the separatist spokesman who received political asylum in Britain.
 
The society's troubles, including the tax claim against it, could force the United States and other countries to curtail financing or face a confrontation with Putin's government. American officials appear eager to avoid that.
 
The United States provided nearly $900 million in assistance to Russia in 2004, the vast majority for programs to destroy or secure nuclear and other weapons. But $45 million went to groups that promote democracy and civil liberties. The State Department says the money is intended to address "Russia's inconsistent transition toward a democratic system."
 
However, in the wake of political uprisings in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, former Soviet states where the United States promoted similar programs, Putin has evidently grown more impatient with foreign support of groups viewed as political.
 
"Let us resolve the internal political problems of Russia ourselves," he said in July.
 
The society's 23 employees continue to gather and publish information about the war and to defend themselves. But with its bank accounts frozen, the society has no resources to pay for lawyers and auditors to challenge the charges.
 
Its members have been questioned and, they say, threatened - by security officers and by unknown people.
 
IHT Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/18/news/chechnya.php