From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 12/26/2005 1:53 AM
CAUCASIAN KNOT / NEWS
23/12/2005
NGO leaders hope for president
"It is not just a crime, it is a mistake." Mr Alexander Auzan, director
general of the People's Assembly foundation and president of the
national project Public Accord, used this utterance of the prominent
French politician Talleyrand to comment to Caucasian Knot's
correspondent on the passing in the third reading today of the law
toughening control of non-profit-making and nongovernmental
organisations (NPOs and NGOs).
"This law fails to achieve those objectives which the potential
customer, the president of the Russian Federation, would like to
achieve, and in doing so, it creates a huge number of negative external
effects. Therefore, I say that this is not the end yet. The Federation
Council is, of course, a zero chance that the law might not be passed,
with the existing political regime. However, I would fight for the
president not to sign this law. And after the president, one should
look for potential to apply to the Constitutional Court," Mr Auzan
thinks.
"This law establishes a reverse order. In normal countries, the civil
society controls officials, but we have it on the contrary. This law is
a slipknot around the neck of the civil society without which the state
cannot function properly. I would like to hope that the president will
not sign it," Ms Liudmila Alekseyeva, Chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki
Group, told Caucasian Knot's correspondent. According to her, earlier
today she had a meeting with Ms Ella Pamfilova, Chairwoman of the Civil
Society Development and Human Rights Council for the Russian president,
at which Ms Pamfilova promised to ask Mr Putin not to sign draft law No
233364-4.
"Considering that formulae in this law are not always accurate, this
will provide a basis for arbitrariness. As some provisions are to be
interpreted by the government, there is a risk that the provisions
infringing on the position of public organisations which had been
removed by the second reading may now emerge again in the form of
government directives. The procedure and frequency of reports to the
registration authority have not been defined yet. If these are to be
submitted, for example, as we spend, we will simply get drowned in
papers," Public Verdict Foundation Director Natalia Taubina tells
Caucasian Knot's correspondent. "The law prohibits prisoners from being
founders of public organisations. One of our sponsors, Open Russia,
will now face the dilemma of either ceasing its activities, or
re-registering without the founder Khodorkovsky. Accordingly, this will
also affect our work."
"We as participants in the protest campaign Days of United Action in
Protection of NGOs are not very much, mildly put, pleased with the
Duma's passing of the NGO bill today. The thing that irritates me most
is that we must report on the plane of content of our operations under
this law. The state says openly, 'We want to know what you do and if we
don't like it, we will close you,'" Mr Dmitry Kokorev, one of the
initiators of the protest campaign of public organisations against the
passing of the law on the activities of non-profit-making organisations
and a fellow with the Joint Action Institute, expresses his indignation.
"The conceptual fault of this law is that the area of freedom is
eliminated which has to date been protected by the 1996 law 'On
non-profit-making organisations.' All NGOs are facing the need of
registration upon permission instead of registration upon notification,
and they are facing sweeping control of bureaucracy. The law encloses
the entire non-profit-making sector with barbed wire. This is the main,
all-through keynote of the bill. A new version of the law 'On
non-profit-making organisations' is being passed actually," Mr Lev
Levinson, an expert with the Human Rights Institute, told Caucasian
Knot's correspondent.
http://eng.kavkaz.memo.ru/newstext/engnews/id/909760.html
