V. Other Types of Pressure on Civil Society

The NGO law is only one of several means the government has used to harass and control certain types of NGOs and activists. Other forms of pressure used by the authorities include specious criminal or other charges against organizations or their leaders, police inspections, and interference with an organization’s substantive work. The growth of violent attacks on activists in 2008 and 2009, and the lack of adequate investigation into these crimes continue to be an urgent concern.

Anti-Extremism Legislation

NGOs that work on human rights, are politically active, or that express or mobilize dissent are vulnerable to being targeted arbitrarily under the problematic 2002 Law on Countering Extremist Activity, and associated anti-extremism criminal statutes.[178] Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of arbitrary application of the anti-extremism laws against political and civic activists, giving credence to concerns that the law is being used to marginalize or silence legitimate political dissent.[179]

The law’s definition of extremism itemizes almost a dozen acts including “the forcible change of the foundations of the constitutional system and violation of the integrity of the Russian Federation,” justifying terrorism, incitement of racial hatred, and “propaganda and public display of either Nazi attributes and symbols or the attributes and symbols similar to Nazi attributes and symbols to the extent of confusion.”[180] Two of the law’s definitions of what may be designated extremism raise concerns that they will be used to silence critics of the government. These are: any allegedly politically or ideologically motivated crime; and making a statement accusing a public official of acts of extremism in the course of fulfilling his duties.[181]

Under article 10 of the law, the activities of an organization believed to be carrying out extremist activities can be suspended. A court can dissolve an organization found to have engaged in extremist activities.[182] The law also obliges an organization to distance itself within five days from its head or a member of its governing body if that person makes a public statement found to be extremist.[183] Failure to do so can result in an organization’s dissolution, as was the case with the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society in Nizhni Novgorod, which was dissolved in October 2006.[184]

The State Duma has sought to make anti-extremism legislation even more harsh. One (failed) proposal would have required internet service providers to block access to websites included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials, which is maintained by the Ministry of Justice and consists of materials ruled extremist by courts throughout Russia.[185] Another, put forward by the prosecutor general and given initial consideration by the State Duma in September 2008, would increase the punishment for incitement of racial hatred (article 282 of the criminal code), and make internet service providers responsible for extremist content on websites they host.[186] These draft amendments have yet to move forward in the Duma.

The broad discretion given to the authorities in prosecuting extremist crimes under the criminal code raises concerns that it will be used to silence critical speech, minority opinions, and other forms of expression. Notably, article 282 of the Criminal Code forbids incitement of hatred against a “social group,” a nebulous term that has been construed by government-ordered expertise in several cases to mean “the police” and “officers of the Federal Security Service.”[187] Article 282 has been used to censor art and protected expression.[188] Efforts to censor under article 282 are clearly inconsistent with the freedom of expression and speech guaranteed by Russian and international law. Article 29 of the Russian Constitution and article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantee everyone the freedom of expression and speech. The European Court of Human Rights has maintained that the “freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of [a democratic society]” and applies also to information or ideas “that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.”[189]

The blogger Dmitry Soloviev was charged under article 282 in March 2009 for his blog postings. Soloviev is also coordinator for the regional branch of the youth organization Oborona (Defense) in Kemerovo. Oborona branches operate in numerous regions of Russia, and seek to “protect the right of Russians to express their opinion, elect their leaders, and demand from them the fulfillment of their duties” through peaceful direct action.[190]Oborona is a member of the Other Russia opposition movement (see Chapter III), and has played a vocal role in events such as the Dissenters’ Marches.

An investigator from the prosecutor’s office in Kemerovo claims that several of Soloviev’s blog postings “contain information, directed ... toward inciting of hatred and enmity, and at the abasement of dignity” of Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB officers, whom, the investigator says, constitute a social group.[191] In his postings, Soloviev levels harsh criticism against the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs including, ironically, for their efforts to prosecute bloggers under the extremism statutes.[192] One posting criticizes harassment of Oborona’s national coordinator, Oleg Kozlovskiy, by officers of the FSB and Ministry of Internal Affairs.[193]  

Dmitry Soloviev was initially required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, limiting his ability to discuss the case. While the agreement was in effect, he was able to tell Human Rights Watch that his apartment and workplace were searched on August 12, 2008, and that during the searches, the authorities confiscated his personal and work computer, mobile telephones, and computer media; he said that his university work has been paralyzed because his research and files were on the computer and media that the authorities confiscated.[194] According to Soloviev, the investigatory phase of the case was twice extended for additional linguistic, sociological, and technical expertise to be collected by the authorities.[195] Soloviev’s repeated appeals to the investigator and to a judge to appoint independent expertise on the case were rejected.[196] At this writing the case against Soloviev is pending trial. The non-disclosure agreement that Soloviev was required to sign was rescinded and ruled unlawful by a judge on May 21, 2009.[197]

Dodo (Nizhni Novgorod)

The environmental NGO Dodo (Dront) in Nizhny Novgorod was warned in June 2008 by the Nizhni Novgorod Province branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Department K (Administration of Special Technical Operations) that its website “could be used for the posting of information by organizations of an extremist nature,” citing article 282 of the Criminal Code on the incitement of national, racial, or religious enmity. The warning ordered Dodoto remove any offending material, without stating what specifically was unlawful.[198]

Dodo had been engaged in campaigning against a nuclear power facility and a trash incinerator in Nizhni Novgorod province, though it is unclear whether web content about these activities was the basis for the warning.[199] The director of the organization, Askhat Koyumov, told Human Rights Watch that he was not allowed to review the materials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ case against the organization. The NGO responded to the warning with a letter, complaining that the warning was without merit, alleging violations on the part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and demanding an opportunity to read the case materials.[200] According to Koyumov, Dodo received a response from the Ministry of Internal Affairs rejecting the request to see the case materials and citing the Law on Countering Extremist Activity as the legal basis for the warning. At this writing, Dodo has been unable to have the warning withdrawn or to review the case documents.

Nearly two months after the warning, in September 2008, Dodo’s office was searched by the Economic Crimes Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on suspicion of tax avoidance. During the search the authorities confiscated documents, maps, and computers for further review, which were eventually returned to the NGO.[201] Upon finding maps in the course of the search that it believed were secret, the Ministry of Internal Affairs called the FSB, which itself came to search the NGO. Neither search, however, identified any violations of the law.[202] It is unclear whether the searches were connected to the allegations of extremist materials on Dodo’s website. At this writing neither the FSB nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs has taken any further action against Dodo.

Memorial St. Petersburg

In another case that demonstrates how the authorities use the anti-extremism law arbitrarily against NGOs, the work of Memorial in St. Petersburg was severely disrupted when its archives on Soviet repression and other materials were confiscated. On December 4, 2008, an investigator from the prosecutor’s office, along with armed, masked law enforcement officers, stormed and searched Memorial’s office for several hours, confiscating archival materials on several computer hard drives, and other items connected to Memorial and two other NGOs.[203] This commando-style raid on Memorial, and recent efforts to reinvigorate patriotic education in Russia, raise concerns that scholars working on controversial historical subjects such as political repression under Stalin will be targeted under the anti-extremism statutes.[204]

The search was conducted in connection with an extremism investigation of a local newspaper, New Petersburg. Irina Flige, director of Memorial in St. Petersburg, told Human Rights Watch that Memorial has “never had any connection with that newspaper,” and characterized a connection between the two as a “far-fetched pretext” for carrying out the search. Flige told Human Rights Watch that “for the last three months [Memorial’s] ... work has been [made] complicated,” and that because “they confiscated 13 hard disks, which hold information that we work with ... we can’t use any of our computers” and “we’ll be forced to restore a lot of information if the [hard] disks aren’t returned.”[205]

In the months since the raid, Memorial has actively sought the return of the confiscated materials. On December 12 Memorial submitted a complaint to Dzerzhinsky District Court, asking for the search order, search, and confiscation to be ruled illegal.[206] On January 20, 2009, a judge ruled that the search was illegal and ordered the archives to be returned.[207] The prosecutor immediately appealed, but on March 20 the district court confirmed its previous ruling that the prosecutor had violated the NGO’s rights during the search by not allowing its lawyer into the building, and ordered the archives and documents returned.[208] The confiscated materials were finally returned to Memorial on May 6, after a court again ruled that the search was illegal. In a statement issued by Memorial after the return of the materials, it acknowledged that “the return of the property did not compensate for the harm” caused by the ordeal, but drew attention to the fact “in some cases, [NGOs] defend their rights in court, if they apply enough effort and determination.”[209]

Inspections

Fire Inspections

European University (St. Petersburg)

The suspension of European University’s work in St. Petersburg in 2008 raises concern that fire safety rules can be arbitrarily enforced against civil society organizations whose work the authorities may view with suspicion. The university was forced to suspend its activities for several months in the first half of 2008 because of fire safety violations identified in a routine inspection. An election-related project that had come under considerable scrutiny by the authorities could explain why several months before Russia’s 2008 presidential election, fire safety inadequacies in the university’s historic building were cause for suspension even though they had not been deemed as such in prior years.

The university, a unique blend of Russian and foreign educational models, was ordered shut down not long after a prominent Duma deputy publicly condemned the university for a grant it had received from the European Commission that funded research on electoral behavior and elections monitoring training.[210] Around the same time, it was also being inspected by several other government agencies.[211] According to rector Nikolai Vakhtin, “it is clear that we have become the object of arbitrary law enforcement, for whom and why, is the question we have been asking ourselves.”[212]

The university was inspected by the regional department of government fire oversight in St. Petersburg on January 18, 2008; 52 fire safety violations were identified. Dzerzhinsky District Court ruled on February 7 to suspend the university. Nikolai Vakhtin explained in a newspaper editorial that the university had over the past several years progressively brought its old and historically-protected building up to standard with the cooperation of the authorities, but “suddenly, this year [they took] ... the overly severe measure, of suspending [our] work.”[213] Following the February 7 order, the university quickly corrected 20 violations, and appealed to the court for reconsideration. On February 18 the court upheld its earlier decision to suspend the university’s activity.[214]

Meanwhile, European University students and faculty waged an intense public relations campaign to save their school, through blog postings and newspaper articles and by collecting signatures. Letters of support from academics from around the world also poured in, pleading that the university be allowed to remain open while addressing the violations.[215] While the university’s administration generally refrained from speculating on why “one of the foremost graduate schools in the humanities and social sciences in Russia” had been suspended, many academics, students, and journalists found it “hard to believe that the teaching program of an academic institution must be suspended in mid-term, or indeed at any point in the year, due to the oddly sudden discovery of the institution’s inability to bring its historic and city-owned building up to contemporary fire codes.”[216]

On March 21, 2008, two weeks after the presidential election, Dzerzhinsky District Court finally accepting the university’s argument that it had corrected many of the violations and would work quickly to fix the others, overturned its previous ruling, and allowed the university to resume operations.[217]

Vakhtin believed that “someone wanted to create maximum troubles for European University.”[218] There has been no satisfactory official explanation as to why the fire department sought the university’s suspension only following the January 2008 inspection, or why the university was inspected by so many government bodies at around the same time.

Golos Samara and Golos Volga

The office Golos Samara shares with another regional affiliate, Golos Volga, was closed for fire safety violations in May 2007. Both organizations had been investigated at around the same time by the economic crimes police and the Ministry of Justice NGO Department, pressure that the organizations’ director Ludmila Kuzmina ties to a crackdown on activists in Russia in May 2007 surrounding the EU-Russia Summit, held in Samara.[219]

On May 11, 2007, the second floor of the building, including the Golos office and the offices of other NGOs, was closed by the police after they conducted a search and confiscated computers on software piracy allegations (see below). The first floor of the building was closed and sealed on May 15 without explanation. Kuzmina told Human Rights Watch that the cause of the closure was explained only on May 21, when a court ordered the building closed for 90 days by appeal of the fire safety inspector. Kuzmina said that during the time the building was off-limits heating pipes burst and “water gushed for three days, because no one saw it,” ruining many of the organizations’ documents.[220]

The organizations were finally allowed back into the office after the 90-day court-ordered closure lapsed, even though no modifications were made nor efforts taken by the building’s owner to address the alleged fire safety violations. Later, because many of the NGO’s documents were destroyed and the organizations’ computers were confiscated, Golos had difficulty meeting the demands of the Ministry of Justice inspectors, who began an inspection not long after the office reopened.[221] For Golos Samara’s successful legal fight against the ensuing dissolution suit, see Chapter IV, section “NGO Dissolution and Suspension.”

Harassment through multiple investigations

Golos Siberia and the Institute of Social Technology (Novosibirsk)

In the weeks prior to and following the 2008 presidential election, Golos Siberia and the Institute of Social Technology, a sister organization that supports women in running for elected office, were inundated at their Novosibirsk office with requests for documents and explanations of their work from various government agencies. The requests appeared aimed at burdening the organizations at their busiest time of work. Galina Ivanova, director of both organizations, told Human Rights Watch that “of course it distracted” her when they asked her “to prepare a package of documents confirming the appropriate use of funds within five days, without giving [her] a list of the documents they want.”[222]

Ivanova began keeping a log of government demands for documents when, just before the March 2008 presidential election, both Golos Siberia and the Institute of Social Technology attracted the intense scrutiny of numerous government departments: The requests came from the Federal Tax Service for Lenininsky District, the Federal Tax Service for Kirovsky District, the Novosibirsk province Registration Service, the Novosibirsk province prosecutor, the Novosibirsk province Elections Commission, and Kirovsky District Court. Ivanova said,

If you are talking about elections monitoring ... of course they show us intense interest, special interest... The main goal of the authorities is to exert influence, because when a person is anxious, he won’t take part as actively. The goal is to decrease activity specifically in the area of elections monitoring.[223]

According to Ivanova’s log, in the two weeks prior to the March 2 elections she received 15 letters or phone calls demanding information and documents, or that Ivanova appear in person at various government offices. She complied with each request to the best of her ability. In the three weeks following the elections, Ivanova received 10 more similar communications.[224] Harassment of both organizations ceased after the election.

Unity (Samara)

Human Rights Watch spoke in November 2008 to Svetlana Chernova, director of the NGO Unity (Yedinstvo), which provides medical and psychological consultations to HIV-positive women in Samara. Chernova recounted that in the previous year the NGO had been inspected by the Ministry of Justice, the organization’s founders and Chernova had been questioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs computer crimes unit, and its bank account had been inexplicably frozen twice, first in the run-up to the December 2007 State Duma elections and again before the March 2008 presidential election.[225]

Chernova described in detail how Unity was inspected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs Tax Crimes Unit in September 2008 because of “information” received by the tax authorities that indicated inappropriate use of funds, a claim that Chernova considers unfounded.[226] According to Chernova, on September 3 one of the organization’s founders was visited by the police and asked about the NGO’s work; the police gave the founder a summons to appear for further questioning. Chernova followed up with the police, and was also asked to appear for questioning. The day after the September 3 police visit the Tax Crimes Unit demanded the organization’s primary and cash accounts from 2005 on, and all versions of the organization’s charter—all documents that had been among those inspected by the Ministry of Justice in spring 2008. That inspection revealed only minor violations that were unconnected to the alleged inappropriate use of funds and were quickly addressed, and concluded that Unity was operating within its charter.[227]

Chernova told Human Rights Watch that she suspects the most recent inspection was politically motivated, and was connected either to the organization’s work with HIV/AIDS positive people in Samara, or to a recent incident in which another founder of the organization had been detained by the authorities while protesting a controversial construction project in Samara.[228] In an interview Chernova gave to a journalist, she suggested a possible connection between the authorities’ interest inUnity and the threats of criminal prosecution made against another NGO that was to begin a harm-reduction project for HIV/AIDS positive people in Kaliningrad province.[229]

Software Piracy Investigations

NGOs are vulnerable to arbitrary enforcement of software piracy laws because of their limited resources to purchase equipment and to defend themselves when facing charges of copyright violation. It is widely acknowledged that many private, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations use pirated software in Russia. Indeed, statistics show that 73 percent of newly installed software in Russia is pirated.[230]

In recent years the authorities have selectively cracked down on software piracy violations, in some cases appearing to target independent media and civil society organizations. In 2007, around the time of the EU-Russia Summit in Samara and several planned Dissenters’ Marches, numerous organizations were targeted in Samara, Tula, Volgograd, Syktyvkar, and Nizhni Novgorod. A November 2007 Washington Post article noted that “most of those accused of using unlicensed software appear to have some connection, sometimes quite tentative, to the opposition coalition called Other Russia.”[231]

In Samara, an extortion racket was uncovered in July 2008 under which computer experts worked apparently in concert with the local authorities to blackmail NGOs and other organizations regarding software copyright violations. Golos Samara, the local affiliate of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and numerous other organizations were caught up in the scheme. According to AGORA, an organization that provides legal assistance to NGOs, under the scheme the police in Samara would inspect an organization’s computers and experts would identify signs of pirated software. The local software copyright holders, who also sometimes provided the experts to the police, would propose to either file charges or accept a fee in exchange for not filing charges.[232] The procurator’s office has launched a criminal investigation for organized fraud into one such expert/rights holder who apparently demanded 400,000 rubles ($15,000) to drop charges against an alleged copyright violator; according to the FSB, he is “but one of the links in the criminal chain.”[233] Employees of the Economic Crimes Department for the Leninsky district of Samara are also implicated in the case.[234]

The conduct of the Economic Crimes Department in Samara was ruled unlawful and baseless in the software piracy case it pursued against Ludmila Kuzmina of Golos Samara; additionally, the Samara province prosecutor was forced to apologize for its conduct in the case. Ludmila Kuzmina filed suit seeking compensation for violation of privacy and emotional damage arising from the extraordinarily invasive tactics used in the course of the investigation (for example, during the software piracy investigation in 2007 they subjected her to obligatory psychiatric and drug examinations). In June 2008 Kuzmina won punitive damages of 20,000 rubles ($750). The day after her victory, she told Human Rights Watch, “The government ... should take material responsibility for the quality of the decisions of its employees, and the quality of those employees.” For other NGOs and activists who have been harassed and persecuted by the authorities, it is an encouraging sign that the court agreed.