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Russia stops aid groups' work
POSTED: 0158 GMT (0958 HKT), October 19, 2006
MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Russia brushed aside U.S. objections and forced almost 100 foreign non-governmental organizations, including leading human rights groups, to suspend their operations for failing to meet a deadline for re-registration under a tough new law.
Those who had to stop work include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have been persistent critics of President Vladimir Putin, and some accused the Russian authorities of deliberately keeping them in legal limbo.
Kim Reed, an NGO lawyer who is advising several foreign groups, told The Associated Press Thursday that 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 U.S.-based Human Rights Watch's Moscow office, 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 new bureaucratic deadline of the end of October to submit plans for the coming year.
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 NGOs but especially Russian ones, as likely to curtail civil freedoms. The U.S. State Department on Wednesday urged Russia to speed up the re-registration process and to allow all NGOs to continue operating.
But Justice Ministry official Anatoly Panchenko said authorities were unable to process the registration papers of 96 NGOs by the midnight Wednesday deadline, although he promised they would do so as soon as possible.
"We will do our best to process them as quickly as possible so they can resume their work," he told the AP.
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 Friday.
However, medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said that it had to halt some of its humanitarian work in Chechnya and a program in Moscow involving homeless children because two of its three representative 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.
The European Union said Thursday that it had "repeatedly expressed concern" about the NGO law since it had been adopted in April.
"We attach paramount importance to the principle of freedom of association and we hope the NGO law will have a positive rather than negative impact," said European Commission spokesman Pietro Petrucci.
An official from the Council of Europe, Europe's leading human rights 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.
The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute, both U.S.-based organizations that promote democracy, were also affected by the suspension order -- which does allow NGOs to keep paying staff and remain in their offices.
Officials have accused NGOs of filing their applications too late, saying many only began the process in July, though the law entered into force in April.
But the NGOs 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 deceased. Some devoted lengthy time to searching for death certificates or affidavits from widows.
One group's founding charter was in Russian, but officials insisted on it being translated back into English in the organization's home country and then translated back into Russian and notarized.
"They are certainly using every means they can to find minor, absurd aspects of the applications to refuse documents, and that amounts to deliberate obstructionism," said a Western NGO activist who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing the registration process.
Panchenko said 107 groups completed the procedure in time.
The Justice Ministry had earlier estimated the number of foreign groups in Russia at between 200-500 but Panchenko said only about 250 were probably working in the country.
Russian NGOs face even more onerous controls under the law, which allows authorities to ban financing of specific NGOs or projects if they are judged to threaten the country's national security or "morals."
The law has already been used by prosecutors who successfully petitioned a court to order the closure last week of a Russian rights group critical of government's conduct in Chechnya.
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