The National Endowment for Democracy — a Washington-based non-profit group funded largely by the US Congress — has become the first group to be banned in Russia under a law against “undesirable” international non-governmental organizations (NGO).
According to its Web site, the National Endowment for Democracy is “dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world” and has funded NGOs in more than 90 nations.
However, in a statement on Tuesday, the prosecutor general’s office said it “poses a threat to the constitutional order of the Russian Federation and the defensive capability and security of the government.”
“Using Russian commercial and non-commercial organizations under its control, the National Endowment for Democracy participated in work to declare the results of election campaigns illegitimate, organize political actions intended to influence decisions made by the authorities and discredit service in Russia’s armed forces,” the statement said.
Under legislation signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in May, the Russian authorities can shut down “undesirable” NGOs without a court order if the prosecutor-general determines they pose a threat to national security. The law’s vague phrasings mean foreign companies could also be shut down, although it primarily seems directed at NGOs.
Russian lawmakers have proposed that groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Carnegie Moscow Center and Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights organization, be banned under the law, but the National Endowment for Democracy is the first to be declared undesirable.
Russia has had a law against “foreign agents” — local non-profit groups that receive funding from abroad to carry out “political” activities — on the books since 2012, but the latest legislation has marked an expansion in the authorities’ scrutiny of democracy and human rights advocates.
The MacArthur Foundation, a US non-profit group that supports academic and human rights initiatives, last week said it would cease its activities in Russia after legislators put it on a “patriotic stop list” of foreign NGOs.
A number of Russian NGOs have recently fallen victim to the foreign agents law. Russian telecoms tycoon Dmitry Zimin was last month forced to close his Dynasty Foundation, which gave grants to scientists and graduate students, after it was declared a foreign agent.
Perm-36, responsible for administering Russia’s only fully preserved Soviet-era gulag, has been fighting its designation as a foreign agent in court.
The increased scrutiny of NGOs has come amid a deterioration of relations with the West after a pro-Western government came to power in Kiev last year. Putin, a former KGB officer, told security officials in March that Western intelligence agencies use non-profit groups to “discredit the authorities and destabilize the internal situation in Russia.”
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