From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 10/20/2006 10:10 AM
NWAnews.com :: Northwest Arkansas Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Human-rights agencies in Russia grind to a halt

BY HENRY MEYER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted on Friday, October 20, 2006

URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/170197/

MOSCOW — Russia brushed aside U. S. objections Thursday and forced nearly 100 foreign nongovernmental organizations, including leading human-rights groups, to suspend operations for missing a deadline for re-registration under a tough new law.

Those who had to stop work included Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have been persistent critics of President Vladimir Putin, and some accused the authorities of deliberately keeping them in legal limbo.

Kim Reed, an nongovernmental organization lawyer who is advising several foreign groups, said the Federal Registration Service was creating constant delays by insisting on minor changes to documents that the head offices had to prepare from scratch.

“It appears that if you are an organization involved in human rights or democracy activities, then your application gets much harsher scrutiny. Even if you are not sending police and court bailiffs to shut down their office, by not registering them, you are effectively doing that,” she said.

Alexander Petrov, deputy head of the Moscow office of U. S.-based Human Rights Watch, said the group had to stop its research work Thursday, including interviewing rights victims, as well as participation in public events.

He said the organization hoped to resume its activities as soon as possible, but faced a bureaucratic deadline of the end of October to submit plans for 2007.

Putin, who has warned against foreign-financed groups interfering in domestic politics, has been accused of backsliding on democracy and freedom of the press since he took office in 2000.

Western governments have expressed strong concern about the law, which imposed strict limits on all nongovernmental organizations but especially Russian ones, as likely to curtail civil freedoms.

The State Department on Wednesday urged Russia to speed up the re-registration process and to allow all nongovernmental organizations to continue operating.

But Justice Ministry official Anatoly Panchenko said authorities were unable to process the registrations of 96 nongovernmental organizations by the midnight Wednesday deadline, although he promised they would do so as soon as possible.

He was later quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying that the number of pending applications had fallen to 93.

The Danish Refugee Council, an aid group active in Chechnya that has had uneasy relations with the Russian government, said it was told that its permit would be issued today.

Medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said it had to halt some of its humanitarian work in Chechnya and a program in Moscow involving homeless children because two of its three offices — those based in Belgium and France — had not obtained registration.

The law obliged foreign-based groups to complete the procedure by the deadline or suspend their activities.

An official from the Council of Europe, Europe’s leading humanrights body, urged the Russian government to issue the necessary permits.

“We deeply hope that the authorities will very quickly give registration to organizations such as Amnesty,” Annelise Oeschger said.

Officials have accused nongovernmental organizations of filing their applications too late, saying many only began the process in July, although the law came into force in April.

But the nongovernmental organizations complained of shifting guidelines and onerous red tape; one requirement stipulated that organizations had to submit personal details on their founders, even if they were dead. Some devoted lengthy time to searching for death certificates or affidavits from widows.

Panchenko said 107 groups completed the procedure in time.

The Justice Ministry had earlier estimated the number of foreign groups in Russia at between 200 and 500, but Panchenko said only about 250 were probably working in the country.

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/national/170197/