Implementation campaign in Russia is going on despite persecution
/By Tatiana Chernikova, a lawyer at HRC “Memorial”,
Aleksandra Chilikova and Denis Shedov, lawyers at OVD-Info
Introduction
From April 2020 Russian NGOs are undertaking a campaign in support of implementation of the ECHR’s judgment “Lashmankin and others v. Russia” concerning the systemic problems with the freedom of assembly in Russia. During this campaign the leading Russian NGOs made three submissions to the Committee of Ministers under Rule 9.2 on the implementation of the general measures. The NGOs also submitted requests with the proposals of the reforms to the Russian national institutions including the Ministry of Justice, federal and regional Ombudsmans on human rights, the Presidential Council on human rights, the regional parliaments. Some positive results have been achieved, for instance the changes in several restrictive regional laws.
At the same time Russian law enforcement agencies replied to this campaign and other activities of the NGOs by persecution of several NGOs. The statement below describes two alarming cases of persecution of Russian human rights activists for their interaction with the Council of Europe institutions, namely, OVD-Info and HRC Memorial projects.
Prosecution for the implementation campaign
OVD-Info was included in the registry of foreign agents on September 29, 2021. These registries are maintained by the Ministry of Justice. The project appealed that decision and filed an administrative claim to be excluded from the registry. Ministry objected and expressly stated that OVD-Info is engaged in political activities, which, among other, are expressed in ‘public appeals to state bodies and other actions that affect the activities of these bodies’ and ‘dissemination of opinions on decisions made by state bodies and their policies’. These activities are carried out in the form of ‘reports on the problems of freedom of speech and assembly, including joint reports with HRC Memorial to the Council of Europe, with a description of problems in Russian legislation and a detailed list of recommendations for changing it’. The engagement of the project in these activities is one of the main grounds of inclusion to the foreign agents list. The same position was later repeated in the decision of Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow on November 11, 2021. Moreover, on December 25, 2021, OVD-Info encountered the blocking of their website. It was blocked at the request of Russian state media watchdog Roskomnadzor on the basis of a Court, which recognized the work of the project ‘aimed at promoting terrorism and extremism.’ The court also ruled to remove the project’s accounts from social networks on the same basis.
At the very end of the year, the Russian courts of first instance adopted the decisions about the liquidation of International Memorial and Memorial Human Rights Center, two of the biggest and oldest Russian NGOs. The courts referred to the repeated violations of the ‘foreign agents’ law. Currently the NGOs are appealing these decisions. Although the courts referred only to the ‘foreign agents’ law as a ground for liquidation of Memorials the Prosecutor’s Office also claimed that Human Rights Center Memorial had been justifying extremist and terrorist activities. The Prosecutor’s Office argued that Memorial had included several persons convicted for extremism and terrorism to their list of political prisonners. The prosecutor evaluated these activities as ‘pretentious promotion of provocative materials on human rights issues, which are used to destabilize the political structure of the Russian Federation’. However HRC Memorial is maintaining its list of political prisoners on the basis of the criteria elaborated in the PACE resolution 1900 (2012). This means that Memorial includes a person in this list only if it is persuaded that his activities were non violent and his prosecution was conducted in violation of human rights law and for political grounds. Memorial also directly says that the inclusion of a person in this list does not mean that Memorial supports his views. Memorial always condemned extremist and terrorist activities in the sence of international law. This debate also indirectly pointed to the international advocacy activities by OVD-Info. The fact that in the hearing on the liquidation of the HRC Memorial, the prosecutor's office decided to speak out about a separate project OVD-Info and its international communications is itself quite daunting.
Memorials are researching the history of political repressions in the USSR and fighting against human rights violations in modern Russia. They dealt with human rights issues in Chechnya, the rights of migrants, supporting political prisoners, defending the rights of Russian citizens in the ECHR and has become one of the largest and most respected human rights organizations in the country, a symbol of Russian civil society, and their persecution is sending a clear threat message to all civil society and russian non-profit organizations. This is also a clear attempt to prosecute the organisations who work on the implementation of the ECHR’s judgments.
Unprecedented crackdown on NGOs and independent media in Russia
These incidents took place in a context of unprecedented pressure on civil society in Russia: dramatically active expansion of foreign agents registries (in 2021, 131 items were added to the registries, including the largest independent media, civil projects without state registration, 70 individuals: journalists, activists, ecologists, and lawyers); the liquidation of NGOs and independent media; active use of anti-extremist and anti-terrorist legislation to combat political opposition and human rights defenders. All this was accompanied by permanent massive arrests of peaceful protesters and hundreds of politically motivated criminal cases.
We believe that this new wave of pressure on human rights defenders and independent media is quite daunting and alarming, not only for all Russian NGOs, but the whole Russian society. The discriminatory law enforcement of the legislation on the Foreign Agent Act has reached an unprecedented scale. Currently, the lists of foreign agents include 75 NGOs, 36 media outlets, 67 individuals, four unregistered public associations, including OVD-Info. In addition, 50 foreign NGOs have been declared undesirable in Russia. It is a potential signal of the end of the openness period, and the ability to freely exercise basic human rights. Without proper defence mechanisms, even for human rights defenders, we will go only downhill from here.
European Parliament in its resolution 2021/3018 expressly called for the Member States to increase support for civil society, independent NGOs, human rights defenders, historians and independent media outlets active in Russia and urged the VP/HR and the Member States to take coordinated action with like-minded countries to increase international scrutiny of Russia’s restrictive laws, policies and actions and to persistently raise and condemn the restrictions of fundamental freedoms and human rights by the Russian authorities, including through high-level and public interventions.
Strengthening the coalition and horizontal ties
Despite the pressure from the government, there is a tendency of growing solidarity and coalition between human rights NGOs in Russia. On 18 January 2022, 11 NGOs and human rights projects collaborated and filed a joint submission to the Committee of Ministers regarding implementation of the general measures in the case of Lashmankin et al. v. Russia. Seven organizations out of these 11 filed such a submission for the first time, which shows that more institutions become involved in this dialogue.
On 26 January 2022, 4 organisations (OVD-Info, Moscow Helsinki Group, Committee against Torture, Public Verdict) filed reports and requests regarding the freedom of assembly situation in Russia directly to the Russian General Prosecutor, the Human rights ombudsman and the President’s Council on human rights.
We hope that expansion of horizontal ties between human rights institutions will help to ensure the productive communication between the government and civil society.
Conclusion
On the one hand, all described above shows how the conditions in which Russian NGOs work are hard. It also shows that Russian law enforcement agencies are conducting a campaign against the most important Russian NGOs and those who work on the implementation of the ECHR’s judgments. On the other hand, the main NGOs are continuing coalition efforts for the implementation of the ECHR’s judgments and even this coalition is growing.