May 01, 2006

Non-Governmental Spies

Recently, a scandal erupted in Russia surrounding new legislation to deal with NGOs (non-governmental organizations, or non-profits). Liberals saw the new regulations as a tool for the government to interfere in the activities of “undesirable” organizations, and even to shut them down. But critics of the law do not need to resort to speculation or theory to read the tea leaves for the future of NGOs or civil society in Russia. A very practical case-study can be found right next door: 10 years ago, Belarus passed a similar law regulating NGOs.

A new Cold War

Belarusan legislation dealing with NGOs went into effect in 1994 and, over the ensuing decade, has been supplemented with new decrees and resolutions. As a result, today, according to members of the Belarusan opposition, NGOs are regulated not by laws, but by the Presidential Administration. More specifically, NGOs are directly overseen by Head of Administration Viktor Sheyman and his deputy, Oleg Proleskovsky, who is responsible for ideological activity. The loudest complaints from NGOs are about difficulty with registration and a totalitarian policy towards social structures and foreign foundations.

Further authority is given to the country’s Secret Service. In particular, the Secret Service was given responsibility for disclosing the names of foreign spies planted in the NGOs.

Moreover, recently the Criminal Code of Belarus was amended: if a citizen receives money to finance, let us say, a scientific-social organization, and this organization is later recognized to have “political” activities, then this citizen could face a prison term of 2 to 6 years.

According to Ales Belyatsky, head of the human rights organization Vyasna, 150 NGOs have been closed in the last three years. “In not a single case has a court ruling regarding the shutdown of an NGO been overturned,” he said. “Last year, NGOs in Belarus received 600 warnings. In the future, any of these warnings could be a pretext for shuttering the organization.”

According to Lyudmila Gryaznova, President of the Belarus Human Rights Alliance, the war against NGOs began with the banishing of the Soros Foundation in 1998. Today, many foreign foundations have left Belarus and are attempting to work in the country from neighboring states. The MacArthur Foundation operates out of Ukraine; the Adenauer Foundation works from Saint Petersburg.

The government also seeks to sever foreign efforts to support local NGOs. All foreign aid has to go through the Department of Foreign Aid, which is regulated by the Presidential Administration. NGOs apply for grants, but the Department decides whether or not the financing will proceed and what the NGOs will do with the money.

“For instance,” said Marina Zagorskaya, a journalist from the paper Solidarnost, “in 2004 a case was filed against the heads of the Belarus Helsinki Committee, Tatyana Protko and Tatyana Rudkevich, alleging evasion of taxes due on financial aid received from the European Union. According to Belarusan law, such grants are tax free. The two women filed a civil suit and the case was stopped. Yet recently the Collegium of the Belarusan Supreme Court protested that ruling and the case was reopened.”

Last year, the European Union decided to allocate two billion Euros to establish independent TV and radio stations that would broadcast into Belarus. A Ukrainian TV channel and Poland’s Public Visual Radio are among the applicants for the money. The winner will be announced shortly, heralding a return to what was thought to be a relic of the Cold War era: “enemy voices” broadcasting at a totalitarian power from abroad.

Dangerous Catholics

Belarus’ system for managing and punishing undesirable social organizations, which has provoked criticism from human rights activists, is vividly illustrated in a recent story about the Union of Poles in Belarus (UPB). This story is particularly interesting as it may accelerate events leading to a popular revolution on the Ukrainian model.

The UPB is a national Polish organization with headquarters in Grodno, Belarus. It was founded in 1990 by Tadeush Gavin and unites various Polish cultural and educational organizations in Belarus. UPB defends the interests of Belarusan Poles, has created the Polish Democratic Party, and maintains relations with Poland.

The organization also caused a major conflict between Belarus and Poland, in which three Polish and three Belarusan diplomats were expelled from the other’s country, the Polish ambassador was recalled from Belarus, and Minsk accused Warsaw of financing a subversive radio station and forbade Polish delegates of the European Parliament from entering the county.

The conflict started, according to UPB leadership, when the Belarusan government sought to place people loyal to Belarusan Alexander Lukashenko in UPB management positions.

In March 2005, Angelica Boris was elected President of the Union by its members. However, shortly thereafter, a second UPB congress was unexpectedly held in Volkovyskvyksk, this time run by the Belarusan government. Present at this convocation were Stanislav Burko, head of the Religion and Nationality Activities Committee, along with other representatives of the “vertical of power,” led by Maria Birukova, deputy chairperson of the Grodensk Regional Executive Committee.

According to information provided by human rights activists, delegates were forced to attend the second congress under threat of losing their jobs. The most active delegates, the ones who opposed cooperation with the government, were, so to speak, neutralized. They were arrested under false premises, taken to temporary detention cells and had criminal cases opened against them. In this instance, the congress delegates elected 69-year-old Yuzef Luchnik as UPB President.

On the day of the second congress, police patrolled all roads to Volkovysk and the train from Baranovichi to Grodno did not stop in Volkovysk. On the way to the congress, two buses from Baranovichi and Minsk full of supporters of the liquidated first congress were detained by the police. One of the buses was declared to have been stolen.

The European Union of Polish Organizations did not recognize the second congress. It announced that Angelica Boris was the legitimate UPB President and the only one who could represent it. Meanwhile, Boris had been summoned 45 times for questioning. UPB activists Andzhey Pisalnik (press secretary of the UPB), Andzhey Pochobut (editor of the UPB magazine, Magazin Polski), Vetslav Kevlyak (vice president of the UPB), Mechislav Yaskevich (head of the Grodnesk brach of the UPB) and others were arrested several times. UPB Founder Tadeush Gavin spent a month under administrative detention. The Belarus Prosecutor General’s Office is spearheading criminal and administrative cases against the activists.

Meanwhile, the official, Minsk-recognized UPB will be financed from state coffers. In response, Poland, which previously had financed the UPB, is withdrawing its support from the organization. According to Iolanta Danelek, vice-speaker of the Polish Senate, “we cannot offer financial support to any organization working against the Poles. And the UPB under Lukashenko is sure to be one of those.”

As a result, a year after the start of the conflict, Belarus now has an official Polish Council headed by a governmental loyalist, and a virtually illegal organization supported by Poland but unrecognized by the State. According Andzhey Pisalnik, the government is now trying to replace UPB leadership in over 100 regional branches of the Union.

The desire of the State to have the UPB in their pocket does not come as a surprise. The Poles are not simply a large national minority in Belarus – they are also a Catholic constituency, one that comprises 15 percent of the population. The State pays special attention to the Catholic Church. Vatican support for the Polish movement Solidarnost played a large part in triggering the revolutionary events in Eastern Europe in the early 1980s. Apparently, the Lukashenko administration and Belarus’ Catholic episcopate have reached something like a “gentleman’s agreement”: the Church does not get involved in politics and the government allows Belarusan Catholicism an opportunity to develop. Vyasna’s Ales Belyatsky said that Belarusan Catholics are today focused on strategic objectives: building and taking care of their parishes. In Minsk alone there are 150,000 Catholics and only five churches. The capital city needs a minimum of 15 parishes.

Perhaps this is why the Vatican has not shown any interest in the UPB scandal. But if the Vatican did decide to voice its opinion in future, whom it chose for this task would surely determine the outcome of events. the current head of the Belarusan episcopate is 92-year-old Cardinal Kazimir Sventik. Two candidates are typically named as eventual successors: Aleksandr Kashkevich, an episcope of the Grodnensk eparchy, and Vladislav Zavalnyuk, an abbot of the Polish Roman Catholic Church in Minsk. Kashkevich is most likely to continue the policy of nonintervention set by Sventik. Zavalnyuk, on the other hand (who was recognized by the American Biography Institute as a Person of the Year in 2000), is highly critical of the situation in Belarus and has even made some pointed comments. For example, he has compared life in the country with a prison “that just opened its gates.” He is an active participant in social life and, if he is chosen as Sventik’s eventual successor, it would be a sign that the Vatican will be turning to active involvement in Belarus.

Russia’s turn

Last year, Russia began to tread in Belarus’s footsteps, when the Duma passed a law on NGOs that would closely regulate their activities. The law provides amendments to four existing acts: the Russian Civil Code and laws dealing with Closed Administrative-Territorial Units (ZATOs in Russian), Public Associations and Non-Commercial Organizations. The law lays out new registration procedures for Russian and foreign organizations and provides a list of required registration documents – a list significantly longer than previous lists. Foreign public organizations now must notify the authorities about their intentions and the State will perform the necessary “supervisory control” over the NGO’s activities. Registration of foreign NGOs takes place not in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as previously, but in a specially created Federal Registration Service.

The law also specifies the procedures for audit of NGOs’ finances. The Federal Registration Service may not single-handedly verify an NGO’s books. But, if necessary, it can ask financial and credit organizations, as well as tax and law enforcement agencies, to perform this task.

The law specifies that a “a structural department of foreign NGOs shall inform the authorized agency about the volume of incoming financial assets, their proposed allocation, objectives and the actual expenditure.” In addition, when requested, foreign NGOs must present documents proving that funds received for specific programs were received from Russian individuals or entities.

Another aspect of the law prohibits operation of NGOs, including foreign NGOs, in Closed Administrative-Territorial Units. This will directly impact ecological organizations which operate in many ZATOs at present, for instance those connected with nuclear industry monitoring (see Russian Life, March/April 2006).

The law also states that public organizations may be denied registration “if the goal for their creation conflicts with the Constitution and the legal system of the Russian Federation; if they threaten the sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity, national unity and distinctive character, social heritage and national interests of the Russian Federation.”

The government is very satisfied with the law. Mikhail Kamynin, official spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which lost some status regarding foreign NGOs, no longer being involved in their registration), said, “a comparative analysis shows that the law passed by the State Duma does not go beyond the scope of international standards regulating activity of NGOs. The existing norms in other countries leave a lot of room for interpretation by state authorities in charge of NGOs. And this is considered normal.”

In fact, it is this very latitude in interpretation that scares representatives of NGOs in Russia; they began to voice their objections as soon as the legislation made it to the State Duma. Alexander Petrov, Vice-President of Human Rights Watch in Moscow said that State control over public organizations will make things worse for charitable foundations.

Yevgeny Yasin, an Academic Supervisor of the Higher School of Economics (and former economics minister under President Yeltsin), is convinced that the law’s concepts and statements are too vague, and that any non-governmental entity could be subject to retaliatory action. “The law is so general that it allows the closure of any organization which is found to be in one way or the other undesirable to the Powers that Be,” he said.

Many foreign governments were alarmed by the new law. Alvaro Gill-Robles, the Council of Europe’s previous Commissioner for Human Rights, and his successor Thomas Hammerberg, promised to watch how the law is applied in practice.

Will Europeans offer real support to their Russian counterparts? Did the Russian government take into consideration Belarusan experience? “I think that all dictatorships use the same methods,” said Irina Khakamada, a leader of the Russian Democratic Party, in an interview with Russian Life. “A totalitarian regime already exists in Belarus. Here [in Russia] we still have an authoritarian state, but are slowly moving towards totalitarianism. Our government did not have to intentionally imitate methods developed in Belarus, yet I suspect that our Powers That Be are already thinking about following President Lukashenko’s lead and introducing criminal liability for NGOs ‘leading unlawful political activity.’

“Unfortunately, despite its loud declarations, the European Union today is indifferent to the events in Belarus and in Russia as well. The world needs us as an energy superpower. And that is why, on the one hand, we preside over the G8, while on the other hand, for example, at the recent NATO seminar, Russia and Belarus were grouped together as barbarian states, in terms of civil society. These double standards are what allow totalitarian and authoritarian regimes to go unpunished.”

Enemies of the People

It is a curious fact that one of the most active supporters of the new law was the Russian special services. Their representatives enthusiastically accepted all of the amendments and began speaking out about how many foreign spies had infiltrated NGOs.

Sergei Lebedev, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS), officially stated that his agency has data showing that foreign intelligence services exploit NGOs for their purposes. According to Lebedev, “humanitarian missions and NGOs are very attractive to intelligence services the world over. A spy needs a cover, a mask, a screen.”

In early March 2006, at the session of the CIS Council of Security Agencies in Astana (Kazakhstan), Nikolai Patrushev, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), gladly touched on this subject, going even farther than his colleague from foreign intelligence. According to Patrushev, NGOs active in Russia threaten the country’s national security: weak legislation and a lack of governmental control, he said, creates fertile soil for conducting intelligence operations under the cover of charitable activity. Patrushev promised that members of the State Duma will soon receive new legislation and amendments which will be more vigorous in regulating the activity of foreign missions in Russia.

In other words, even after the passage of what Russian liberals have called a “draconian law,” the case is not closed. And, according to the special services, Russian legal norms are still too soft towards the institutions of civil society.

The only problem is that the special services need motivation. And what can be better than the sort of “accidental flare-up” of espionage scandals all across Russia.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, president of Moscow Helsinki Group, was one of the most active critics of the legislation. She stated more than once that this legislation would do society no good, that what is at stake is establishment of state control over NGOs. And thus, right after passage of the new legislation, Russia witnessed its first high-profile scandal: the Federal Security Service (FSB) exposed the activities of English spies (see Russian Life, Mar/Apr 2006). And in their commentaries, representatives of the security agencies insistently reminded viewers and readers that the exposed spies were also financing some NGOs, in particular the Moscow Helsinki Group.

In the spring of 2006, it also became known that the most respected Russian public organization, Memorial (which for two decades has been compiling information on victims of Soviet-era political repression, among other things), was under suspicion of promoting Islamic extremism.

The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office issued Memorial an official warning because Memorial published on its website an article dealing with the prohibited Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahir. The article was written by Nafigulla Ashirov, co-chairman of the Council of Russian Muftis – one of the most influential Islamic leaders in the country. The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office saw this as undermining the foundations of the State.

The text of Ashirov’s article originally appeared on Memorial’s site in May of 2005, yet law enforcement agencies did not react to it until a year later. The Prosecutor’s Office concluded that Ashirov “was deliberately using his religious authority for political ends” and was enabling the promotion of Hizb-ut-Tahir’s ideas. The prosecutor demanded that the article be removed from the site within three days.

Even though this “violation” falls under a different law, “On Opposition to Extremist Activities,” Memorial leaders are certain that this warning is the next stage of a state attack on NGOs. That is why the Prosecutor’s Office became interested in the article and in Memorial just now, after passage of the NGOs law and after the spy scandal with the Moscow Helsinki Group. “They want to forbid us from having any doubts about the official point of view and from having our own opinion,” said Oleg Orlov, head of Memorial. The group removed the article from their website, but plans to go to court with a complaint about the actions of the Prosecutor’s Office.

In should also be mentioned, in conclusion, that similar incidents are taking place in the provinces. Thus, the editorial staff of the Kursk newspaper Ekho Nedeli are suspected in cooperating with international foundations managed by the same “English spies” that the FSB exposed. Interestingly, this scandal began with a letter written by a local resident and published in the regional newspaper.

In the letter, he denounced Ekho Nedeli as oppositionist and proposed that the paper’s disloyalty towards the local government was related to its connections with foreign foundations, and specifically to the heroes of the British spy saga.

For now, the Kursk spy story has not developed any further. Likewise, the largest Russian human rights NGOs are not being prohibited or destroyed. But human rights activists do not intend to back off. “We do not accept this law. It limits our constitutional rights,” declared Lyudmila Alexeyeva. She said that, if necessary, Moscow Helsinki Watch will challenge the law all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Yet all of these strange events are evidence of a massive attack on NGOs by the State, proof that the Powers That Be in Russia have chosen the Belarusan variant for the development of “civil society.” RL

May 01, 2006

Non-Governmental Spies

See Also

Russian NGOs: It's not so simple

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