III. A Hostile Environment

The hostile environment for nongovernmental organizations in Russia is the result of two ongoing processes: first, efforts by Russian authorities to control public participation in government and society, access to information, and independent expression; and second, the Kremlin’s successful moves to reign in would-be checks on central executive power—the broadcast and online media, political opposition, the parliament, and direct election of regional governors. The election of President Medvedev occasioned some optimism for a new environment of respect and support for pluralism and civil society, although to date it has not resulted in concrete change.

New President, New Promises, Old Reality?

When Dmitry Medvedev was elected president in March 2008 his reputation as a cautious reformer, and early initiatives after becoming president, raised hopes that he would remove restrictions on civic freedom and ease regulation of NGOs instituted during Vladimir Putin’s presidency.[2]

These hopes quickly proved unfounded, however, as restrictions on the media and hostile rhetoric toward independent civil society continued, changes in the tax regime adversely affected NGO funding, and violence swelled against activists and other public personalities. A presidential decree in May 2008 that ordered the transfer of oversight regulatory authority over NGOs directly to the Ministry of Justice also did not improve the situation.

Little has changed in the Kremlin’s domination of the media, which began to take shape in 2000. A media space that once accommodated a wide variety of opinions on television and in much of the print media narrowed to one that portrays the president and government in a positive light and avoids criticism of their policies. Editorial control over all television stations with national reach remains with the Kremlin and its supporters; access to the media by opposition or critical voices is restricted through coerced self-censorship.[3] Online media, news websites, and bloggers have come under special scrutiny recently, with mounting accusations of extremism and libel whose object is to silence them.[4] The summer 2008 armed conflict with Georgia over South Ossetia occasioned more government moves to control public access to information and media reporting. On August 29 Putin, prime minister since leaving the presidency, reportedly held a private meeting with top media executives at which he took the Russian media to task, and especially the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy, for its coverage of the conflict. According to observers, Putin sent a clear message to the media at the meeting not to stray from the Kremlin line.[5]

In a sign of the ever more restrictive controls over the ability to use public assemblies to voice dissent, the vocal opposition movement Other Russia[6] has been consistently thwarted from conducting public protests, and NGOs that organize protests have been the targets of police harassment and intimidation. In the lead-up to the 2007 parliamentary and 2008 presidential elections, Other Russia’s “Dissenters’ Marches” were forbidden or severely restricted in several cities.[7] In June 2008, in the eastern Siberian city of Chita, the prosecutor retaliated against one NGO for demonstrations it organized that were critical of policy made by the local government.[8] In December 2008 Moscow sent a special police battalion nearly 9,000 kilometers to Vladivostok to suppress protests there amid fears that the local authorities would not crack down on a growing movement against car import tariffs.[9]

Hostile Rhetoric Toward NGOs

Like the independent media, civil society organizations have come under fire from Russia’s leaders and the media, a dynamic that compounds the financial and other stresses that Russia’s nongovernmental organizations are forced to deal with. These efforts appear aimed at discrediting NGOs, especially those that are foreign-funded or that work on controversial issues. They continued in the first year of Medvedev’s presidency, particularly in the aftermath of the conflict over South Ossetia.

As he did during his presidency, Prime Minister Putin continued to try to raise doubt about the allegiances of certain Russian NGOs, such as when, in a September 2008 speech, he accused “certain nongovernmental organizations” of trying to peel away Russia’s Caucasian republics.[10] Earlier in the year the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) accused unspecified foreign NGOS of supporting and recruiting terrorists in Russia.[11]

Taking their cue from government leaders, state-controlled and -affiliated media outlets continue to try to discredit foreign-funded NGOs. On June 27, 2008, the television show State of Emergency on NTV ran a sensational episode that alleged that Russia’s political opposition and Russian human rights defenders work for foreign spy agencies, with a goal of removing the president from power. During the show, the director of one NGO that had received funding from the European Union was shown calling foreign-funded NGOs “fraudsters and gamblers,” and saying their goal was to provoke the police into cracking down on protesters, for use in Western propaganda.[12]

In 2007 the government tried to discredit NGOs in St. Petersburg that received funding by the Dutch government fund MATRA;[13] these efforts continued in 2008. In April 2008 Nevskoe Vremya, a St. Petersburg newspaper whose parent company is close with the Kremlin, published an article accusing two NGOs funded by MATRA of giving the fund direct access to the Russian law enforcement and judicial systems, presumably to undermine them. The article, “Dutch Cheese is Found Only in a Mousetrap,” alleged that at one NGO event supported by MATRA, “foreigners received direct access to the personnel database, and examined the methods and tools of our law enforcement group.”[14] The event’s sponsors vigorously deny those unsubstantiated claims.[15]

Violence and threats

Hostility toward civil society activists and journalists has manifested itself with increasing frequency in threats, violent attacks, and killings. The goal of these attacks, especially against those who speak out about xenophobia in Russia and about human rights violations in the North Caucasus, can only be to silence these important voices for human rights and the rule of law. No one has been held accountable for these crimes.

The director and deputy director of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, an independent research center that monitors ultranationalism and xenophobia in Russia, have been repeatedly threatened by neo-Nazi groups for their work. In early 2008 SOVA Center director Alexandr Verkhovsky’s name, home address, and other personal details featured in a list of “enemies of the Russian people” that a neo-Nazi group posted on its website, along with direct appeals to kill the activists. Since then Verkhovsky and his deputy, Galina Kojevnikova, have received numerous anonymous telephone and email threats. People Verkhovsky identified as neo-Nazis visited Verkhovsky’s apartment building in July 2008 and again twice in February 2009, seeking to lure him from his apartment. A film that included footage of the July 2008 incident was posted on the internet, identifying Verkhovsky as a key enemy and a priority target for violence. After Verkhovsky reported the July 2008 visit the prosecutor’s office initiated a criminal investigation into “threats of murder,” but the investigation was later suspended with no suspects identified.[16]

Lev Ponomarev, director of the human rights group For Human Rights, was attacked on March 31, 2009, by unidentified assailants who punched and kicked him, causing hemorrhaging in his eyes and severe bruising all over his body. The assault happened near Ponomarev’s home in Moscow, as he was returning from meeting with a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.[17] According to Ponomarev, even though the authorities pledged to thoroughly investigate the attack, he was contacted by the investigator only about a week after the beating, just after a press conference on the attack was announced by several NGOs. At this writing, the attack remains unsolved.[18]

Several human rights advocates have been killed in the past year.[19] Stanislav Markelov, a prominent lawyer, and Anastasiya Baburova, an intern at Russia’s leading independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, were shot on a central Moscow street in January 2009; Markelov died immediately, while Baburova was fatally wounded and died in the hospital.[20] Markelov had represented numerous victims of human rights abuses in Chechnya, including one man who alleged having been held for months in a secret prison run by the Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov.[21]Markelov’s killing echoed that of one of his former clients, Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent journalist and human rights champion who investigated government abuses in Chechnya. The perpetrators of Politkovksaya’s October 2006 assassination, one of 15 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since 1999, have not been held accountable.[22] A trial of three suspects ended in February 2009 in their acquittal.[23]

Hopes for Reform

In April 2009 President Medevedev signaled clearly that it was time to reverse the hostile rhetoric, to relax restrictions on civil society, and to amend laws regulating NGOs. Meeting with his Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights he said, “It is no secret that there is a seriously distorted perception of human rights activities in our country.” Medvedev acknowledged that the authorities had limited important freedoms in Russia, and that “the [NGO] law is clearly not ideal” and some changes were “necessary.” More specifically, he acknowledged a “mass of cases, where the work of nonprofit organizations has been limited without sufficient cause.” This was because “many government workers see [in NGO work] a threat to their absolute power.”[24]

These positive statements appear to build on Medvedev’s focus on overcoming Russia’s culture of “legal nihilism.” During the presidential campaign, Medvedev had spoken forcefully and often about reinforcing the rule of law, and about the government’s cooperating with independent civil society organizations, saying cooperation with NGOs “in realizing social and civil goals” was “without doubt a priority of a democratic government.”[25] Medvedev also promised to tackle head-on the culture of “legal nihilism” and rampant corruption, a challenge he suggested civil society and the government could overcome together.[26]

Positive rhetoric is welcome, but past experience shows that this is not enough to create real progress. For example, in the months preceding Medvedev’s meeting with the Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights Council, the Ministry of Justice on March 31, 2009, issued new administrative regulations,[27] five months after they had been released on the ministry’s website for comment. Several experts on NGO regulations in Russia had submitted detailed commentary on the new regulations. Expert commentary urging broad modifications to the regulations, however, seems to have had a mixed impact: According to one NGO lawyer, while the Ministry of Justice replicated some positive changes recently instituted for commercial organizations in the regulation on inspections of NGOs, in the regulation on NGO registration “not one proposal from human rights defenders and public-interest lobbyists for NCOs was taken into account.”[28]

NGO Financing: A Matter of Survival

The Kremlin has made clear that the 2006 law aims to control and monitor foreign funding of NGOs, which it has viewed with intense suspicion since the so-called color revolutions in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004. In addition to accusing such NGOs of fomenting revolution, Russia’s leaders have accused them of recruiting terrorists; even Medvedev, during his election campaign, suggested that foreign-financed organizations “in addition to educational functions, carry out a mass of other tasks that they don’t widely advertise. This includes the collection of information, and also reconnaissance work.”[29]

Taxes, including wider taxation of foreign funding

Hostility toward the funding of NGOs by foreign donors was manifested in policy when in June 2008 Prime Minister Putin issued a decree that reduced from 101 to 12 the number of foreign and international organizations allowed to give tax-free grants in Russia.[30] Many organizations and commentators condemned the decree as an attempt by a government suspicious of foreign foundations to further restrict civil society in Russia.[31] The director of the Russian affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund, an organization affected by the change, linked the decree to other efforts to restrict civil society organizations in Russia and called the change a “result of efforts of [Russia’s] intelligence forces ... those who already introduced practically full control of the state over the activities of NGOs.”[32] According to another donor wishing to remain anonymous for fear of further complications, it “[o]bviously ... is a move to sweep us all out the door.”[33] Defending the policy, President Medvedev said, “I doubt that any developed Western country would tolerate such an overwhelming flood of foreign capital into its own ‘third sector.’”[34]

The new policy put in jeopardy tens of millions of US dollars of grants to NGOs in Russia. Major donors not found on the new list include the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation,[35] the World Wildlife Fund, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. NGOs receiving grants from donors not on the list will be required to pay a 24 percent tax on “profits” under the new rules, which entered into force on January 1, 2009. The decree required that a procedure be established for foreign organizations to petition for inclusion in the tax-free list, yet at this writing it appears that no organizations have been added to the list.

Several NGOs told Human Rights Watch that they fear that as a result of the new rule, foundations will stop making grants in Russia. One director of an organization that works on HIV/AIDS in Tomsk said that she believes a “lion’s share of [foreign] grants will be taxed” under the new decree, and added that she isn’t sure how her organization will be funded in 2009 and beyond, in part because of the new restrictions on the Global Fund in Russia.[36]

Levying taxes on NGO income contravenes the 2007 recommendation of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on the legal status of non-governmental organizations (Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation), a nonbinding document that states that “NGOs should be assisted in the pursuit of their objectives through public funding and other forms of support, such as exemption from income and other taxes.”[37]  

In an encouraging sign, the current draft of Russia’s Long-term Social and Economic Development Plan generally indicates that social service NGOs should receive tax benefits.[38] It is unclear, however, what NGOs would receive tax benefits and what exactly those benefits would be under the plan. It bears noting, too, that when it comes to direct taxation of Russian NGOs’ income, the present environment is reasonably benign, to the extent that many NGOs have the option of switching from a more complex, general tax system, to a simplified tax system.[39] Even though the simplified tax system does not offer special benefits on the taxation of grants, experts on NGO law in Russia have called it “preferred, because in comparison with the normal regime of taxation [it] results in savings on taxes.”[40]

Losing subsidies on office space

In addition to losing tax privileges for grants from most foreign sources, many NGOs also stand to lose privileged rental arrangements for government property in connection with a law passed in June 2008.[41] The modified law on competition forbids the authorities from giving preference to NGOs when deciding with whom to conclude rental agreements, requiring that contracts go through a competition or auction. An effort is underway in the State Duma that would reverse this and would once again allow the leasing of space to government corporations and NCOs without an auction. At this writing the measure had passed the first of three readings necessary to become law.[42]

A government is under no obligation to provide office space to NGOs at below market rates. But in Russia this development contributes to the financial hardships some NGOs now face.

In interviews throughout Russia, many NGOs reported receiving subsidized or special rates for office space rented from local, regional, or national authorities. For example, the Family Planning Association in Khabarovsk and Humanitarian Project in Novosibirsk are two organizations that receive subsidized office space from the government.[43] Under the new rules requiring competitions, NGOs compete with for-profit enterprises that will likely be able to offer higher prices. Dmitry Ufimtsev, deputy director of the Humanitarian Project, an organization that runs educational programs on health lifestyles and provides support to HIV- and AIDS-affected people, told Human Rights Watch that his organization would have trouble finding suitable and affordable space without government support.[44]

Politicization in Public Chamber grant-making

In the past, many NGOs were funded primarily or exclusively by foreign donors; Russian private donation to NGOs is generally low.[45] However, in recent years the government began supporting NGOs through the Public Chamber, the institution introduced by then-President Putin in 2004 to coordinate the interests of Russian citizens, NGOs, and the authorities.[46] It is a consultative council that analyzes draft legislation, monitors the activities of federal and regional authorities, and provides feedback to the government.

Through the Public Chamber 2008 grant competition, 1.5 billion rubles (US$50 million) of government funds were distributed, a large increase from the 250 million rubles in 2006 and an increase over the 1.25 billion rubles in 2007.[47] The competition is administered by NGOs contracted by the Public Chamber, which are responsible for selecting grant recipients as well as dispersing funds. While many NGOs have welcomed government support, others harbor serious concerns about the connections both the grant makers and recipients have with the authorities, and the process for distributing grants.

For example, the NGO Resistance (Soprotivlenie), which will be responsible for making Public Chamber grants in the area of human rights advocacy and education in 2009, appears very positively disposed toward Russia’s law-enforcement agencies: its website contains endorsements of these agencies’ leadership, policies, and positions.[48] Another of the contractors for the 2009 competition (and the one with the biggest budget), the National Philanthropic Fund, was started by Putin in 1999.[49]

Having strong government connections should not disqualify an NGO from running a grants competition involving public monies. But in the case of the Public Chamber grant competition, such connections on the part of contracted grant makers has raised legitimate questions about whether the contractors would give fair consideration to certain NGOs, such as human rights “watchdogs” that are critical of the authorities, or to groups out of the government’s favor. These concerns were strongest in 2006, when several prominent human rights organizations submitted applications but did not win any funding.[50] In 2007 and 2008 several human rights organizations did win grants. So too, however, did a number of prominent, overtly political organizations associated with the Kremlin. For example, the fiercely pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi won 6 million rubles ($250,000) in 2007 for its summer “educational forum,” a free two-week camp for Nashi’s activists that combined lakeside relaxation with activities, some of which appear designed to marginalize the political opposition and vilify “Russia’s enemies.”[51] In 2008 Nashi won another 7.15 million rubles for the 2008 summer forum and 8 million rubles for other educational events—the total amount, at over 15 million rubles ($500,000) is around 1 percent of the total Public Chamber grants.[52]