Russian officials raid Amnesty's Moscow headquarters

[pampango]

Source: UK Guardian

Russian prosecutors and tax police have searched the Moscow headquarters of Amnesty International and several other rights groups, continuing a wave of pressure that activists say is part of President Vladimir Putin's attempt to stifle dissent. They were accompanied by journalists from the state-controlled NTV television station, which has been used by the Kremlin for hatchet jobs against its political foes.

Other rights groups were also subject to searches. The veteran activist Lev Ponomarev's For Human Rights movement was visited by officials and an NTV crew on Monday. He wrote a letter to the Moscow prosecutor's office calling the search illegal, since prosecutors had provided no evidence that his organisation had broken the law. Public Verdict, a human rights law group, was also searched on Monday.

After Putin returned to the presidency in May, parliament rubber-stamped a Kremlin-backed law requiring all NGOs that receive foreign funding to register as "foreign agents", a term that many Russians find pejorative.

Russian officials have searched up to 2,000 NGOs in the past month, according to Pavel Chikov, a member of the presidential human rights council. The searches began after Putin gave a speech urging the Federal Security Service to focus attention on groups receiving foreign funding, which he said were "putting pressure on Russia".

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/25/russian-officials-raid-amnesty-moscow-headquarters

[geek tragedy]

1. Off to the gulags with them.

Russia is a de facto dictatorship.

[melm00se]

2. some would argue that

other than the change in name from Czar to Premier to President, Russia is still an imperial monarchy

[geek tragedy]

3. with plutocrats subbing in for aristocrats. nt

[srican69]

4. Russia is turning into a fucking basket case ..

its a total robber barron economy out there and you can ask tough questions only if you dont mind having your knees busted.

[paleotn]

6. Seems it's always been like that....

...if it's not royalist blue bloods oppressing the serfs, it's party apparatchiks and now croni-capitalists and Russian mafia types. Really sad.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. So - how does it differ so much from the USA?

.
.
.

oh forgot

Russia ain't bombing the shit out of defenseless countries

and

Russia doesn't have a bunch of weapons in OUR backyard

"its a total robber barron economy out there and you can ask tough questions only if you dont mind having your knees busted."

THAT sure sounds like the USA's government doncha think??

just sayin'

CC

[tabasco]

8. How many NGOs have been ransacked by police in the USA?

Try to stay on topic.

Start a separate USA-bashing thread, if you like.

[Dryvinwhileblind]

5. Hmmmmmm, eerily similar...

...controlled media hatchet jobs, humanitarian projects searched, infiltrated and teed up for said hatchet jobs. Moscow, Oakland, New York...hmmmmmm...

[bananas]

9. They raided Bellona, too - an important environmental organization

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2013/bellona_ngo_raid

UPDATE: Raid on Bellona’s St. Petersburg offices casts uncertain shadow over organization’s future

Bellona’s office in St. Petersburg yesterday got a surprise look at how the Russian government plans to enforce its law requiring NGOs that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” with an unannounced inspection from the general prosecutor and other authorities.

Charles Digges, 20/03-2013

Alexander Nikitin, director of the Environment and Rights Center (ERC) Bellona in St. Petersburg, said dozens of other groups from various cities are also experiencing such surprise inspections.

The authorities that swooped on ERC Bellona yesterday were a strange array: a representative of the Prosecutor General’s office, two from the sanitary inspection and one from the fire department.

According to ERC Bellona’s local director, Nikolai Rybakov, the sanitary inspection representatives – who said they were there to check air quality and lighting – didn’t bring any instruments to conduct their checks.

The representative of the Prosecutor General’s office meanwhile checked bookshelves in search of so-called “extremist” literature. The fire inspector cited that the door to ERC Bellona’s conference room was too small.

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