Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 4 – Lyudmila Alekseyeva,
the founder of the Moscow Helsinki Group in Soviet times, says that the current
Russian government is creating such impossible conditions for NGOS that “it
would be better if we closed and worked again as in Soviet times – without registration
and those opportunities which it gives.”
Unfortunately, she said yesterday, “not
everyone will be able to work only on a volunteer basis, without offices and
money,” and consequently, the number of non-governmental organizations in the
Russian Federation, already falling, will continue to decline in 2015 (lenta.ru/news/2015/01/03/alekseeva/).
The Russian government has used many
tools to restrict or close such groups, she said, but none has been as
effective as the requirement introduced by Russian law in 2012 that any of them
who receive any foreign funding must declare themselves to be “foreign agents.” Thirty-two NGOs have been included in this
list by the end of 2014.
The most recent groups to be so
classified are the Sakharov Center and the For Human Rights Movement. None of
these groups deserved to be described in this way, and none can function
effectively in Russia today if that epithet is applied to them, Alekseyeva
said. As a result, the future of Russian NGOs is likely to be that of the
Soviet past of their predecessors.
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