Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 5 – The Russian
authorities, long angered by the reporting the Ecological Watch for the North
Caucasus of violations by President Vladimir Putin and other officials of environmental
laws and after a campaign of harassment against the group, appear to have
decided to take superficially “law-like” but not legal steps to close the group
down.
This latest attack is almost
certainly connected with the group’s continuing coverage of violations of the
law by those who are building a road to Putin’s dacha near Sochi and to official
anger that such reports are getting national and international exposure as the
February 2014 Olympiad approaches.
Yesterday, the group’s website
posted a report on just what has been going on.
It began by reporting that the administration of the Ministry of Justice
for the Adygey Republic has given Ecological Watch “a repeat warning” claiming
that the group had failed to “react” to an earlier one. That sets the stage for a move to ban the group
(ewnc.org/node/12762).
The organization notes that “being a
group which regularly has revealed serious violations of environmental protection
law committed on the initiative and in the interests of senior official of the
Russian Federation (and above all, Russian President Vladimir Putin) and also
by the leadership of certain regions of the North Caucasus,” Ecological Watch “has
long been the focus of particular attention by the special services and other
state organs.”
Over the past year, officials of the FSB, Center E, and
the Russian procuracy have conduced searches, demanded that the group register
as a foreign agent, and taken a variety of other steps to interfere with its
activities. Recently, the Administration
of the Justice Ministry for the Republic of Adygeya, where Ecological Watch is
registered, joined this fray.
In
a July 29 letter, that administration called on Ecological Watch to provide a
variety of documents for the period 2010-2013. Then the letter said that if it
did not provide these documents in a timely manner, the group would receive a
warning that it was in violation of the law. On the basis for that, the group
received a second warning on September 10.
It
would appear that everything is according to the rules: an organization is
asked for documents, doesn’t provide them and is given a warning. But, the leaders of Ecological Watch for the
North Caucasus say, there is just one problem: they did not receive either the
July 29 notification or the August 7 warning.
Yesterday,
the organization’s leaders say, they sent “an official letter to the
Administration of the Justice Ministry” in which they explained this Kafkaesque
situation. And they conclude their public announcement of this action with the
following words:
“The
efforts of various Russian government organs directed at creating obstacles to
the activity of the Ecological Watch on the North Caucasus, to prevent it from
being involved in ecological and legal defense activity, and to shift the focus
of its attention to its own defense instead of the defense of public interests
has already become customary.”
Moreover,
the group says, “On the whole, pressure on social organizations which issue
sharp criticism of the activity of the present rotting state system of Russia
which works not for the interests of society and the state but for the personal
interests of bureaucrats and oligarchs and which is penetrated top to bottom by
corruption has sadly become in [Russia] the norm.”
But
the latest moves of the Administration of the Ministry of Justice of the
Russian Federation for the Republic of Adygeya “testify that there is an
intention not simply to create obstacles for the activities of Ecological Watch
but also to close it down.” If that happens,
there may be no one to report on the trees that the authorities are now cutting
down.
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