US: The United States on Thursday express concerns over a Russian court decision to impose a $13,000 fine on the election monitor 'Golos,' a non-governmental organization (NGO), under the country's new "foreign agent" law.
"We're very concerned that the election monitoring NGO Golos has been declared a foreign agent and fined thousands of dollars - the first conviction under Russia's 2012 law on NGOs," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters.
The U.S. is "troubled by this and other recent laws that impose restrictions on NGOs in Russia and have been used to justify hundreds of raids on civil society groups and other organizations since early March," said.
Asked whether Golos received any U.S. funding, Ventrell said he could not answer the question without checking the details. Nevertheless, he pointed out that the "very restrictive environment" in Russia had forced the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to end its operations in that country.
"And this is in the context that our civil society activities and partnership with the Russian people has always been nonpartisan and nonpolitical and done in a way that can support civil society broadly," he stressed.
Noting that "the context over the past months has been an incredible shrinking of space for civil society within Russia," the spokesman added that the U.S. has been expressing its "deep concerns repeatedly" over the issue. Notably, Golos is the first Russian NGO to be prosecuted under the repressive "foreign agents" law ratified by President Vladimir Putin last year. The law requires Russian NGOs receiving foreign funding to register as a "foreign agent" and submit to more rigorous checks by the authorities.
Besides, the new laws impose further restrictions, additional administrative burdens and even possible imprisonment on the NGO community. Notably, the new measure cannot be compared to any legislation or practice existing in the Western world.
However, Russian authorities insist that the new laws are aimed at preventing foreign nations from influencing the country's internal politics. Incidentally, foreign-funded NGOs and Western nations, particularly the United States, were blamed for inciting the widespread protests that followed Putin's disputed re-election in May 2012.
The protests, however, were brutally suppressed, with hundreds of demonstrators arrested. Incidentally, Golos had confirmed after the elections that it received nearly 5,300 complaints alleging violations of electoral laws. |
