AFP/Moscow
President Dmitry Medvedev has promised Russian activists to push new laws to support NGOs, moving to burnish his image as a liberal reformer and further distancing himself from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“A relevant bill has been prepared,” Medvedev said as he received some of the country’s top human rights activists at the Kremlin. “Today I am submitting it to the State Duma.”
During his annual address to the nation on November 12, Medvedev promised he would do more to encourage non-profit “socially oriented” organisations by making them eligible for direct state support and tax benefits.
“Our common task is to bolster the authority of NGOs in society,” Medvedev told the activists. “We will continue to perfect the legal status of NGOs.”
At a similar meeting last April, Medvedev said laws governing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) could be amended, signalling a break with the policies of Putin, his mentor and predecessor in the Kremlin.
Putin in 2006 signed legislation requiring NGOs to register with the state and increased scrutiny of their financing, one of several steps widely characterised as a rollback of democracy in Russia.
Putin let it be known at the time that the new rules were meant to tighten controls on Western funding of projects at odds with Kremlin policy, but the blanket regulations also took a heavy toll on Russian charities and NGOs.
Activists who participated in the meeting last April told Medvedev that they longed for a change of atmosphere in Russian society and pleaded with the Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, to stop “witch hunts”.
Ella Pamfilova, chair of the Kremlin council to promote civil society and human rights, said the April meeting brought results and asked Medvedev to meet again to discuss violence in the predominantly Muslim Caucasus region.
“Not only do they kill rights activists there but also simply push out all those who disagree,” she said.
Medvedev, who in his state-of-the-nation address called violence in the North Caucasus the country’s single most important domestic problem, said the idea was “not bad”.
Despite the fact that rights activists were optimistic about the budding “strategic partnership” with the government, an end to the murders of activists and businesspeople was nowhere in sight, Pamfilova said.
“Murders of human rights activists are continuing,” she said. “Death in a detention centre is becoming a professional disease for Russian entrepreneurs.”
Last week, Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for the Hermitage Capital Management fund, arrested in a major tax probe, died of heart failure highlighting concerns over Russia’s overcrowded and disease-ridden prison system.
The state will spend 1.2bn rubles ($41.6mn) to prop up non-profit organisations this year and will spend another 1bn rubles in 2010, Medvedev said.
But he added: “The issue is not about the money but about attention” to the matter. |
