Putin Regime Big Loser in Banning ‘For Human Rights’ Organization, Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 1 – Not only has the Putin regime gotten another black eye internationally for its decision to ban Lev Ponomaryev’s For Human Rights organization, but it has achieved only a Pyrrhic victory at home because the longtime activist says he will continue his work and the government will no longer be able to work with him and others like him.

            Instead, prominent Russian commentators say, the Kremlin has thrown the relationship between the regime and the human rights community back to where it was in late Soviet times, with each side viewing the other in isolation and the rights groups gaining support because of that (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/11/01/82601-vlasti-vozvraschayutsya-k-sovetskim-pravilam).

            Ponomaryev says he and other rights activists will continue to work albeit in different organizations and that the regime’s actions will unintentionally promote a new unity between the activists and society, a view echoed by Valery Borshchev, the vice president of the Moscow Helsinki Group. 

            In the wake of the ban of the For Human Rights group, Borhschev continues, “the state will refuse to take part in dialogue and interaction, and therefore the rights activists will fully return to the experience of the Soviet dissident movement and act autonomously.”

            Yekaterina Schulmann, a Moscow political commentator, says that until this move, the authorities had avoided going after the most prominent human rights groups for exactly that reason; but now the powers that be have decided to pay that price, although they have to know that this won’t end the movement.

            Ponomaryev and Mikhail Fedotov, the former head of the Presidential Human Rights Council consider this decision “a bad sign” that augurs ill for the future of other groups. Zoya Svetova, another activist, says the decision on For Human Rights may be based on a narrower consideration, anger at Ponomaryev for supporting particular groups the regime doesn’t like.

            She continues that in her view, the only human rights groups that will be allowed to operate freely in Russia will be “fake” ones such as the Human Rights Council under its new leadership. “For me,” Svetova says, “the decision of the Supreme Court sounds like a ban on the defense of human rights.”

            Dmitry Oreshkin, a Moscow political analyst, says the move against Ponomaryev’s organization was “completely predictable” and “a sign that the authorities have already accepted normal methods of fighting the opposition and are returning to Soviet rules of the game.” It also signals that the Kremlin recognizes it is facing a rising tide of protests.