<\/p>\n
Some people interpret the principle of the supremacy of law in a completely wrong fashion: they think that witch hunt is the supremacy of law and justice. But this is not so. Supremacy of law and justice means fundamental freedoms and their implementation in people\u2019s lives.<\/em><\/p>\n Asma Jahangir, human rights defender (Pakistan)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nA year ago amendments to the Russian law on non-commercial organizations were adopted as part of a series of legal changes, which were extremely brutal, absurd and inadequate in relation to the state of affairs in both our country and the world. It makes sense to also recall other legal \u201cmasterpieces\u201d of summer 2012: Russian State Duma has adopted, among other things, a new law on public assemblies, which introduced penalties for even slightest violations or the very fact that the number of participants in a rally is greater than was expected. Previous penalties were increased by hundreds of times in some cases and much greater criminal punishments were introduced for various violations of the law. Then followed the laws on state secrecy, blasphemy, restrictions on diffusion of information in the media, Internet, etc. A little later odious federal laws limiting the rights of LGBT people were adopted, as well as laws banning critique of religion.<\/address>\n Isn\u2019t it the XXI century we live in? Isn\u2019t Russia a member state of the Council of Europe and various other progressive international organizations? This all seems unbelievable, unreal, impossible to implement. That was a foolish, absurd, inadequate reaction of authorities to emancipation of various social groups, free expression of their opinions, claims to the necessity of defending human dignity, which expressed itself in various protest movements in 2010-2012 in Russia. Fear and anger, which deprived the authorities of the remnants of reason, were the basis of these laws, as well as the widespread suspicion that there was something (or somebody) hiding behind these new developments \u2013 most likely the underhand plotting of the West.<\/p>\n Authorities ruled out the possibility that people in Russia could stand up for their own dignity, demand freedom and implement their rights on their own account. It\u2019s better to look for the hand of the West and the \u201cagents of foreign bourgeoisie\u201d, as was the custom in the not so ancient times.<\/p>\n It was the intention of the anonymous authors of the amendments to the law on non-commercial organizations that those organizations which receive financial means from foreign donors and \u201care involved in political activities\u201d should name themselves as such \u201cforeign agents\u201d and list themselves in some special register. This idea was doomed to fail and its authors were warned about it in advance. We do not live in the times when people are expected to name themselves \u201cforeign agents\u201d by themselves or confess that they have destroyed the crops, put an evil eye on somebody\u2019s children or were paid by some foreign department of state for information on all that.<\/p>\n This law, which couldn\u2019t be implemented and observed in the first place, shouldn\u2019t have been adopted to begin with. Even some wiser people in the corridors of power, including the minister of justice, had understood this \u2013 they realized that the law was doomed to fail and the above mentioned \u201cregister may stay empty\u201d, as the minister forewarned. When a human rights organization \u201cShield and sword\u201d tried to get listed in the register as part of an experiment, clever bureaucrats from the Ministry of justice didn\u2019t let it, stating that foreign financing and protection of people against torture were not enough to get listed as a \u201cforeign agent\u201d. But do fools ever value clever decisions and acts? The idea that human rights organizations will not be forced onto their knees, or to pick up a metaphor from a different world, forced to stay under the prison bunk, simply didn\u2019t occur to the authorities. After that the authorities resorted to the easiest of possible measures \u2013 appealed to the law enforcement agencies, firstly the procurator\u2019s office. It looks like we have a lot of procurators in this country who have nothing much to do, i.e. to fight crime.<\/p>\n Checks, interrogations, administrative charges, court procedures \u2013 throughout the whole of the spring this year human rights organizations were on the defence against various claims and charges from the procurators\u2019 offices, the strongest of which was the charge of violating the new article of the Code on administrative violations (article 19, section 34). Saint Petersburg became the only city in Russia where the cases against three NGOs were transferred to courts as early as April 2013. ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d was the first to have received resolution of the procurator\u2019s office claiming violations were discovered in the human rights report provided by ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d to the UN Committee against torture already back in October 2012. Procurator\u2019s resolution also featured strong words of \u201ccalling to stand up against the existing authorities and state structures\u201d although in fact there were only recommendations for observe human rights and the norms of Russian and international laws. UN Committee against torture was fast and determined to react against the charges put against ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d and wrote a letter to the Russian ambassador to the UNO Mr. Borodavkin. It has called on the Russian government to immediately stop prosecution of human rights defenders for their professional activities, i.e. gathering information about human rights abuses, cooperation with international human rights organizations and assistance to the victims of arbitrariness.<\/p>\n The case of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d should have been considered in the 8th court department of Saint Petersburg, but the judge Olga Glushanok ruled to return the materials of the case against ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d back to the procurator\u2019s office, stating that \u201cthe provided documents do not prove the circumstances described in the decision No.35-78-2013 on administrative violation dated April 30, 2013\u201d. The judge not only noted numerous serious procedural violations (such as improper drawing up of protocols, lack of proof of formal relation of the prosecuted to the mentioned violations, lack of proof of the authority of the procurator to carry out the checks), but also pointed out numerous contradictions in the charges against the human rights defenders.<\/p>\n Thus, the judge reasonably protested against an attempt to present charges simultaneously on two different sections of the same article concerning \u201cforeign agents\u201d \u2013 for section 1 for not being registered as foreign agents and section 2 for not publishing information on the status of a \u201cforeign agent\u201d. The judge noted that \u201cconsidering a juridical person the subject of one section of article 19.34 of the Code on administrative violations means that the same juridical person cannot be considered subject to another section of the same article\u201d.<\/p>\n Moreover the court failed to find explanations in the presented case as to why the check of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d had been carried out and noted that the materials of the case lacked indications of the time and place of the violation. All these arguments were serious enough and it was completely unclear how the procurator\u2019s office expected to argue in favour of its position in court in the light of a professional legal analysis of the materials of the case by the judge. At the end of June 2013 it was reported that the procurator\u2019s office sent a protest to the court even without trying to correct the deficiencies of the materials of the case. On June 27, 2013 Leninsky district court judge N.G.Malinina left the protest of the procurator of Admiralty district on the resolution of the court concerning the return of the materials of the case against ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d (and a similar case against director of ADC \u201cMemorial\u201d Olga Abramenko) without consideration. Thus the court of second appeal ruled that the actions of the procurator were in violation of the existing legal norms. This became an important victory over disrespect for the law, legal procedures and common sense as such: district courts of Admiralty district of first and second appeal demonstrated that independence, respect for the spirit and the letter of the law and what\u2019s more important \u2013 the very sense of justice – could triumph over arbitrariness and erroneous omnipotence of procurator\u2019s checks.<\/p>\n Unfortunately in other cases the courts ignored the need to observe the laws and failed to see the lack of legal grounds for procurators\u2019 checks of other NGOs, the absence of time and place of the supposed violations or the prescription of the new law. Following the orders of the authorities the courts have ruled that \u201cGolos\u201d association in Moscow, Centre for support of public initiatives in Kostroma and two of the most respected LGBT organizations in Saint Petersburg were guilty of \u201cviolating the law on organizations serving as a foreign agent\u201d. These NGOs became the foreign witches for exemplary punishment. They were sentenced to enormous penalties and de facto forced to stop their operations. But the authorities were unable to publicly humiliate them and make them wilfully agree to the status of a \u201cforeign agent\u201d.<\/p>\n Over the period of last year that the shameful law on \u201cforeign agents\u201d existed, not a single NGO was forced \u201cunder the prison bunk\u201d. And it\u2019s not possible, indeed. Listing of some earlier unknown NGO \u201cFor competition in the CIS countries\u201d in this empty register cannot be considered serious \u2013 these people not only were not \u201cinvolved in political activities\u201d, but they lacked foreign donations as well – they are still thinking about getting some money from physical persons in the Ukraine, but even that it doubtful \u2013 who will give it to \u201cforeign agents\u201d and what for?<\/p>\n The Ministry of justice, which earlier had refused to list a real operating human rights NGO in the new register, has wilfully greeted these impostors. But that\u2019s funny, not sad. And more than that, it turned out that the Ministry of justice even lacks authority to refuse to register anybody! Deputy general procurator Mr. Zhafyarov openly accused Ministry of justice of \u201cexceeding its authority by refusing human rights organization \u201cShield and sword\u201d to be registered as a \u201cforeign agent\u201d because the law doesn\u2019t specify any legal grounds for refusing anybody to be registered as a foreign agent if he wishes so. Thus, it turned out that it\u2019s not even necessary to carry out political activities or receive foreign financing in order to be registered as a foreign agent!<\/p>\n What a free range for imagination does this open! One can ask to register an NGO by the name of \u201cLet\u2019s support the acts of the State Duma\u201d or \u201cRussian government \u2013 world\u2019s best government\u201d as foreign agents. If the Ministry of justice is not in a position to refuse this, maybe the Duma and the government will be better off and able to attract some foreign financing for themselves?<\/p>\n By Stefania Kulayeva<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some people interpret the principle of the supremacy of law in a completely wrong fashion: they think that witch hunt is the supremacy of law and justice. But this is not so. Supremacy of law and justice means fundamental…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[283,243],"strategy_cases":[],"campaign":[],"archive":[],"filter-content":[],"regions":[],"class_list":["post-7924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bulletin-en","tag-ngo-en"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","pub-thumb":"","post-thumb":"","wcicon":"","wcsquare":"","wcsmall":"","wcstandard":"","wcbig":"","wcfixedheightsmall":"","wcfixedheightmedium":"","wcfixedheight":"","wccarouselsmall":"","wccarousel":"","wcslider":""},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":" Some people interpret the principle of the supremacy of law in a completely wrong fashion: they think that witch hunt is the supremacy of law and justice. But this is not so. Supremacy of law and justice means fundamental freedoms and their implementation in people\u2019s lives. Asma Jahangir, human rights defender (Pakistan) A year ago amendments to the Russian law on non-commercial organizations were adopted as part of a series of legal changes, which were extremely brutal, absurd and inadequate in relation to the state of affairs in both our country and the world. It makes sense to also…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"News<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"admin3","url":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/author\/admin3\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20397,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7924\/revisions\/20397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7924"},{"taxonomy":"strategy_cases","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/strategy_cases?post=7924"},{"taxonomy":"campaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campaign?post=7924"},{"taxonomy":"archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archive?post=7924"},{"taxonomy":"filter-content","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/filter-content?post=7924"},{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adcmemorial.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=7924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}