VIII. Other Elements of the Crackdown

The government introduced and implemented the new laws at the same time as it embraced increasingly hostile rhetoric against “foreign influence.” The rhetoric seemed aimed at conflating the promotion of human rights and government accountability with incursions on state sovereignty, and it seemed to influence local officials toward adopting more openly hostile stance toward civil society. At the same time, the state has criminally prosecuted opposition activists and protesters.

Rhetoric against So-Called Foreign Influence

As noted at the beginning of this report, Putin emphasized the need to limit the influence of foreign-funded NGOs during his first presidency and thereafter, particularly in the context of the 2011-2012 election cycle.  In a broad-ranging article on foreign policy published several weeks before the March 2012 presidential election, Putin implicitly accused certain kinds foreign-funded NGOs of serving the interests of “foreign masters” in order to “to destabilize other countries.”[226]

A document approved in February 2013 and entitled Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation echoed this sentiment. Included in the 104 points of this document was an assessment of the benefits and disadvantages of “soft power.” The document warned against “the risk of destructive and unlawful use of ‘soft power’ and human rights concepts to exert political pressure on sovereign states, interfere in their internal affairs, destabilize their political situation, manipulate public opinion, including under the pretext of financing cultural and human rights projects abroad.”[227]

Two days after approving this document, Putin bluntly warned against any foreign “direct or indirect interference in [Russia’s] internal affairs,” clarifying that this especially concerned “structures which are managed and funded from abroad.”[228]

Much of the rhetoric against so-called foreign influence focused on the United States, and in September 2012 the Russian Foreign Ministry expelled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the development arm of the US State Department, and ordered the agency to end its programs in Russia. [229]

Many official and pro-Kremlin politicians made statements implying that opposition leaders and nongovernmental organizations critical of the government were effectively Western spies with a mission to undermine Russia’s interests. [230] In January 2013 Duma members threatened to introduce legislation banning foreign nationals “who discredit Russia” from working for federal state-owned television stations. [231]

Officials in several regions have told civil servants and others not to cooperate with representatives of foreign organizations and foreign-funded domestic groups. For example, a directive posted online on the stationary of the regional government of Mari El Republic (850 kilometers east of Moscow) urged officials to refrain from participating in any social or public political activities organized by foreign NGOs or Russian NGOs receiving funding from foreign sources.[232]

The directive referenced a memorandum on public security and “the expanding activities” of foreign and Russian NGOs issued by the office of the presidential envoy in the Volga Federal District, where Mari El is located. The directive orders heads of regional state agencies to carry out “organizational, informational and awareness-raising work in the workers’ collectives within their jurisdiction” aimed at “minimizing participation of your colleagues and workers in programs and socio-political events organized and financed by foreign and Russian noncommercial organizations.”

The document further demands that regional bureaucrats organize more mass social and political events with participation of young people “with the aim of distracting them from protest actions.”

Human Rights Watch is not aware of similar orders issued in Russia’s other regions. However, the leader of an NGO that promotes law enforcement reform told Human Rights Watch that law enforcement officials in one Siberian region and one region in Russia’s north clearly changed their mode of interaction with the group. She told Human Rights Watch that “[w]hereas previously they participated without reservation in trainings, seminars and the like, since June 2012 they do so only after first obtaining approval from Moscow.”[233] Igor Sazhin, of Memorial-Komi, told Human Rights Watch that local authorities’ relations with the human rights group changed dramatically after the December 2011 protests. He told Human Rights Watch, “Before December 2011 the authorities never tried to go after Memorial-Komi, considering us a ‘necessary evil.’ But now the situation changed sharply.”[234]

In two specific cases, described below, local government officials made statements accusing locally prominent NGOs of being “foreign agents” and “destructive” respectively.

MASHR-Ingushetia

On October 13, 2012, before the “foreign agents” law entered into force, the Federal Security Service chief for Ingushetia, Yuri Seryshev, told Interfax that his agency had “stopped the activities of 20 Ingush NGOs with links to security services of foreign states” and claimed that the human rights organization MASHR was one of three organizations in Ingushetia that fit the definition of “foreign agent.”[235]

MASHR is one of few rights groups that provides pro bono legal help and monitors human rights in Ingushetia. Its head, Magomed Mutsolgov, immediately rejected Seryshev’s allegation.”[236]

On October 15 Alexander Cherkasov, head of the Memorial Human Rights Center, wrote to the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Security Service (FSB) asking which NGOs were closed in Ingushetia for cooperating with foreign intelligence. The letter also asked whether any individuals were being investigated for involvement with foreign states’ security services.[237] In his reply, Seryshev stated that the journalist had misquoted him regarding the 20 NGOs, but did not deny the other statements cited in the interview.[238]  In a media interview, a Ministry of Justice official said that only five NGOs had been closed in 2012 due to “severe violations.”[239] MASHR was eventually inspected in March 2013 during the mass inspection wave but continues to operate.[240]

Komi Human Rights Commission “Memorial” (Syktyvkar)

The Komi Human Rights Commission “Memorial” (Memorial-Komi) is a regional group in Syktyvkar that carries out public oversight of police and defends prisoners’ rights.[241] It has faced multifaceted persecution starting in December 2011, when the organization spoke out in support of the protest movement.[242] Five of the group’s members were detained under various circumstances on December 10, the day on which a protest action was announced in Syktyvkar.[243] These detentions were later found unlawful by a court.[244]

This was followed by a massive smear campaign in the regional media, with at least 15 different news items published and television reports aired since January 2012 highlighting the group’s foreign funding and claiming it “works for foreign interests,” it defends “Chechen militants”, and alleging that its members’ had ties with the criminal world.[245]

On January 18, 2012, Red Banner newspaper published an article quoting a report by the head of the regional FSB department for the Komi Republic, Alexander Kalashnikov. In the report, Kalashnikov allegedly stated that Golos and the Komi Human Rights Commission “Memorial,” along with several nationalist groups, were among the “organizations of extremist orientation” active in the region. The Red Banner quote said,

[Their] activity is directed from abroad, often financed by foreign nongovernmental foundations and is aimed at transforming the political system of Russia. The next demonstrations are planned for February 4 and 24, and their aim is to disrupt presidential elections in Russia.[246]

Two days later, on January 20, representatives of Memorial-Komi invited Kalashnikov to attend the organization’s board meeting in order to learn more about the group, its members, activities, and sources of funding and to “discuss opportunities for cooperation between Komi Human Rights Commission “Memorial” and the FSB department for Komi Republic, particularly in the field of combating corruption and extremism.” Because the group received no reply to neither this, nor to a repeated invitation, it asked Alexander Kalashnikov to officially apologize for his statement.[247]

On December 3, 2012, Memorial-Komi filed a defamation suit against the regional FSB department, its head Alexander Kalashnikov, the Red Banner newspaper, and the author of the article citing Kalashnikov’s report. The claim stated that according to the Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activities, an extremist organization is a group in relation to which a court decision has entered into force dissolving its activity for carrying out extremist activities. As there was no such court decision regarding Memorial-Komi, the group claimed that the quote defining it as an “organization of extremist orientation” harmed its business reputation and asked the court to declare the statement invalid and order the newspaper to publish a retraction.[248]

According to the head of the Memorial-Komi, Igor Sazhin, on December 28, 2012, a Komi regional administration official summoned one of Memorial’s staff members for a confidential conversation during which the official threatened to press criminal charges against Memorial staff members if the group did not withdraw the suit against Red Banner.[249] As of March 1, 2013, two staff members of Memorial faced criminal charges.[250]

Hearings on the case started only in February 2013.[251] FSB representatives told the court that its head mentioned Memorial and Golos among “organizations of destructive orientation,” not those of “extremist orientation,” as quoted in the Red Banner article, and that the journalist who wrote the article was not present at the meeting. However, two other journalists, summoned to the court as witnesses, confirmed both that the FSB head used the term “extremist” and that the Red Banner journalist had been present.[252]

On April 5, 2013, the Syktyvkar City Court issued a ruling ordering Red Banner to publish a retraction. However, court refused to satisfy the group’s claims regarding the regional FSB department and its head. The author of the article, Mikhail Kazantsev, explained that the very reason why he decided to write the article was his surprise after hearing Kalashnikov’s statement, which sounded “sensational.”[253]

Post-Election Protests: The “Bolotnaya” Case

On May 6 2012, the day before Vladimir Putin’s inauguration, tens of thousands of protesters marched in central Moscow and began to assemble for a rally sanctioned by the Moscow authorities at Bolotnaya Square, near the Kremlin. Unbeknownst to the rally organizers, the Moscow city police department had, the day before, decided that police should block off one of the entrances to the square on May 6, allegedly for security reasons.[254] This created a bottleneck at the entrance to the square itself.

In response to the bottleneck, several political opposition leaders called for a sit-down strike, and a handful of protesters tried to break through the police line, in some cases throwing asphalt. Police responded with force, including using rubber truncheons, detaining hundreds of people, including peaceful protesters as well as those who were acting aggressively.[255]

One of the participants of the “Bolotnaya” protest has since been sentenced to four years in prison for “mass rioting”; twenty more await trial on charges of rioting and violence against law enforcement agents; and at this writing, 15 are in pretrial custody. A group of members of the Presidential Council on Civil Society Development and Human Rights have questioned the appropriateness of mass rioting charges and called for the detainees to be released prior to trial.[256]

One of the protest leaders, opposition movement Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, has been charged with planning “mass riots” and accused of planning the violence in advance with a view to “destabilizing” Russia.  Also charged were Udaltsov’s assistants, Konstantin Lebedev and Leonid Razvozzhaev. The evidence for the charges is a documentary aired by the pro-Kremlin television station NTV alleging that a Georgian politician and businessman paid Udaltsov to organize the violence to overthrow the government.[257]

Udaltsov and Lebedev are being held under house arrest prior to trial.[258] Razvozzhaev has been in custody in Russia since October 21, 2012, two days after he disappeared from Ukraine while in the process of applying for political asylum.[259] A member of a prison monitoring body who visited Razvozzhaev in detention in October told Human Rights Watch that Razvozzhaev alleged investigators psychologically tortured him, including by threatening to harm his children and inject him with a “truth drug” that would make him “an idiot for the rest of his life,” so he would sign a confession.[260] An official inquiry into Razvozzhaev’s allegations of torture found no grounds for the allegations, and after Razvozzhaev continued the allegations, in January 2013 he was charged with knowingly making false allegations.[261]

At his March 29, 2013 remand renewal hearing, Razvozzhaev told the court that he was refraining from speaking about abuses against him, lest the authorities add new charges against him, but alleged “outrageous pressure” on him in custody.[262]

In July 2012 another political opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was charged with embezzlement unrelated to the protest movement in a case that prosecutors had closed in spring 2012 for lack of evidence.[263] At this writing, his trial was scheduled to start in Kirov on April 17, 2012.

Searches Related to the Bolotnaya Case

Investigations into the charges against Udaltsov, Razvozzhaev, and Lebedev have led to broader searches of homes and offices of human rights defenders and political activists who had met with Udaltsov in summer 2012. The searches gave rise to concern that the authorities sought to use the Bolotnaya investigation as a pretext to intimidate independent activists not directly involved with the protest movement and taint their human rights work by association with persons the government has accused of organizing foreign-funded mass riots.

In the early morning of December 19, 2012, police officers from the regional Center for Combating Extremism and officers of the Investigative Committee began searches at the homes of several civil society and opposition activists in Voronezh whose organizations had been active in the protest movement.[264] Officials also searched the apartment of Natalia Zvyagina, a human rights defender who monitors public assemblies but is not directly involved in the protest movement.[265] All the search warrants were issued by the Basmanny District Court in Moscow. Later on the same day, Natalia Zvyagina and three other activists were taken to the regional Investigative Department for questioning and released under a nondisclosure agreement with regards to the case.[266]

The Investigative Committee explained in a public statement that the activists were witnesses in the investigation against Udaltsov, Razvozzhaev, and Lebedev and that Udaltsov had conducted seminars with the political opposition in summer 2012 “with the aim of getting them involved in mass riots.”[267] Since the Voronezh-based activists had attended these events, the statement said that their homes might “contain objects and documents of significance for the criminal case.”[268]

Officials confiscated “electronic data carriers, leaflets and literature with anti-government content” as well as “documents … which confirm that in 2011 and 2012 [the Voronezh Regional Democratic Center] received grants from companies registered in the USA for … 469,000 rubles … allegedly intended for ‘defending the rights of citizens living in tenements’ in Voronezh.”[269]

At around 1 p.m. on December 19, 2012, eight police officers in plain clothes searched the premises of the regional branch of Solidarnost and the Human Rights House of Voronezh.[270] They refused to state which official agency they represented and waved a piece of paper claiming it was a warrant to search the building. They did not allow staff to read the document.[271]

During the search, the officers pushed Victoria Gromova, director of the Youth Human Rights Movement Foundation, out of the room and confiscated the phone of Liubov Zakharova, a representative of Article 20 human rights news agency, while she was reporting the events on Twitter.[272] After about 20 minutes, the officers locked themselves in the room together with several staff members and volunteers, locking out other NGO representatives and a lawyer. The officers examined documents and confiscated two hard drives, a personal laptop, a personal tablet, an e-book, and two USB drives. The equipment has not been returned to the owners.

In early April 2013 court hearings in Moscow began in cases filed by several of the activists complaining about the legality of the search.

Towards the end of December the apartment of an opposition political activist in Voronezh was searched and two more activists were questioned on the same grounds.[273]

More searches related to the Bolotnaya case took place in April 2013 in Orel (325 kilometers southwest of Moscow).  On the morning of April 1, 2013, a team consisting of an officer from the Investigative Committee, several police officers from the regional Center for Combating Extremism, and several other police officers searched the apartments in the city of Orel belonging to Dmitry Kraiukhin and Veronika Katkova. Kraiukhin and Katkova are human rights defenders who work on a variety of issues, including election monitoring and prison monitoring.

A copy of the search warrant, which Kraiukhin was able to obtain from the investigators, states that he and Katkova had met Udaltsov in a café in Orel to discuss getting Orel residents involved in the March of Millions protest planned for September 15, 2012. Elsewhere the search warrant states that Udaltsov had organized training camps to train people how to organize “mass riots” in various Russian cities but that he had failed in his efforts to stage these alleged riots.[274]

According to Dmitry Kraiukhin, the officers were polite. Due to the lack of electricity in Kraiukhin’s apartment, the officers could not examine his computers, so they took his computer, a laptop, and several USB drives to the regional Center for Combating Extremism, where they examined the equipment looking for documents related to “plotting mass riots.”[275]

Kraiukhin has filed a complaint with the court regarding the search on April 12.[276]

The Pussy Riot Trial

The unjust criminal trial and imprisonment of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot caused a global uproar. Two of the members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Marina Alyokhina, are currently serving a two-year prison sentences and a third, Ekaterina Samutsevich, was released on a suspended sentence in October 2012.[277]

Four members of the group performed what they call a “punk prayer” on February 21, 2012 in Moscow’s Russian Orthodox Christ the Savior Cathedral. Dressed in brightly colored dresses and wearing balaclavas, they sneaked into the area in front of the iconostasis – a screen that separates the sanctuary from the rest of the church – where the public is generally not supposed to enter.[278] They danced, jumped, and shouted some words to their song, “Virgin Mary, Get Putin Out.” The stunt lasted about a minute before they were forcibly removed from the premises. They caused no damage to church property.

The same day, a video widely shared on social media showed a montage of the stunt with the song spliced in. The song criticizes the Russian Orthodox Church’s alleged close relationship with the Kremlin and the personally close relationship of Putin with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.  The group was particularly critical of the Russian Patriarch Kirill for his alleged calls on Orthodox believers to vote for Putin in the March 2012 presidential election.

In August 2012 a judge found in favor of the prosecution’s argument that the women’s actions were motivated by religious hatred and had caused grievous harm to Christian Orthodox believers. Prosecution witnesses included nine people who said they were profoundly offended by the stunt, including altar boys, security guards, and candle sellers.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina lost their October 2012 appeals and have filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.

In September 2012, one month after the trial ended, lawmakers submitted to the Duma a draft law criminalizing religious insult into the Duma, and on April 9, 2013, the Duma approved the draft in first reading. During the April reading, the draft’s author “cited Pussy Riot's performance as evidence that the country's traditional beliefs are in need of additional legislative protection.”[279]