The Russian NGO Law and “the logs in our own eyes”
Accepted wisdom, lore, or legend has it that LBJ, in the dead of night when nobody was paying attention, inserted the prohibition against campaign intervention because he was running for Senatorial reelection and he wanted to shut down opposition emanating from a Texas nonprofit. If that is true, we probably should have spoken up earlier and not deemed that action a harmless imposition on civil liberties. In the age of the GWOT, I admit that I sometimes shake my head at die hard civil libertarians who object to “every little” imposition on individual liberties undertaken for our own good, according to our government. I appreciate those impositions whenever I get on a plane. The danger is that when we get used to letting the little impositions go unchallenged, we are just asking for trouble at home or elsewhere, now or some time in the future. One day we wake up and all the little rights we took for granted are gone . . . . and by then its too late to say anything. I will resist the urge to quote Martin Niemoller here.
The U.S. and the EU are up in arms, and rightly so, I’m sure, about amendments to a 2012 Russian law giving “the Kremlin” more authority to crack down on “illegal activity” by NGO’s. U.S. laws are not so draconian in their punishment of political activities by NGO’s but I still wonder whether we ought to deal with “the log in our own eye” while we are condemning Russia’s NGO law. I am not sure the same – that they are not draconian — can be said of U.S. laws relating to NGO’s suspected of allowing the use of their assets in support of terrorism. I have not read those provision in a while but I recall being troubled by the “before the facts are established” authority Executive Order 13224 gave the government; authority, it seemed to me, to just swoop in and shut a charity down under the umbrella of fighting terrorism. Whatever process was allowed under that order and subsequent laws comes only after the fact and presumably without use of funds previously frozen. When I read about the Russian NGO law this weekend and all the resulting criticism, I wondered about our own laws. For their part, and quite predictably, the Russians are claiming that in their recently amended NGO law they are doing no more than what the U.S. and many other countries have done in their treatment of political activity and terrorist support groups masquerading as tax exempt charities.
On Saturday evening, Josef Stalin Vladirmir Putin signed amendments to Russia’s highly criticized NGO law. Here is a little history from Human Rights Watch:
In 2012 Russia’s parliament adopted a law that required nongovernmental organizations (NGO)s to register as “foreign agents” with the Ministry of Justice if they engage in “political activity” and receive foreign funding. The definition of “political activity” under the law is so broad and vague that it can extend to all aspects of advocacy and human rights work. Initially, the law required all respective NGOs to request the Ministry to have them registered and implied legal consequences for failure to do so. Because in Russia “foreign agent” can be interpreted only as “spy” or “traitor,” there is little doubt that the law aims to demonize and marginalize independent advocacy groups. Russia’s vibrant human rights groups resolutely boycotted the law, calling it “unjust” and “slanderous.” In early March 2013 the Russian government launched a nationwide campaign of intrusive inspections of hundreds of NGOs to identify advocacy groups the government deems ” foreign agents” and force them to register as such. After the inspection wave, at least 55 groups received warnings not to violate the law and at least 20 groups received official notices of violation directly requiring them to register as “foreign agents.” Also, the prosecutor’s office and Ministry of Justice filed at least 12 administrative cases against NGOs for failure to abide by the “foreign agents” law and at least six administrative cases against NGO leaders. Additionally, the prosecutors brought civil law suits against six NGOs for failure to register under the law. Since the law entered into force, numerous rights groups challenged the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Justice in courts; most lost their cases. As a result, by February 2015 at least 12 groups chose to shut down rather than wear the shameful “foreign agent” label, including Association of NGOs in Defense of Voters’ Rights “Golos”, JURIX (Lawyers for Constitutional Rights and Freedoms), the Moscow School of Civic Education (Moscow), Kostroma Center for Civic Initiatives Support, Anti-Discrimination Center (ADC) Memorial, Side by Side LGBT Film Festival, Coming Out, “Freedom of Information” Foundation, the League of Women Voters and Human Rights Resource Center (Saint-Petersburg), Center for Social Policy and Gender Studies and Association “Partnership for Development” (Saratov).
According to this news report, the latest amendments provide sweeping authority to the government to respond to “undesirable” NGO’s engaging in vaguely defined activities, including prison sentences:
Under the law signed by president Vladimir Putin on Saturday evening, Russian prosecutors will be able to target foreign groups whose “undesirable activities” are deemed to threaten “state security” or the “basic values of the Russian state”. Such groups and their publications risk being banned in Russia, having their bank accounts blocked and violators face fines or prison terms of up to six years. People cooperating with such entities would also be hit with fines and could be banned from entering Russia, according to the text, which sailed through the two chambers of Russia’s parliament. Critics have said the vague wording of the legislation, and a process that bypasses the court system, means that any group or business could be targeted.
I am not defending the Russian actions. I’m just wondering whether we have done all we should to make sure our own laws are not as reactionary.
dkj