Authorities close the office of international NGO PEN-centre

The Russian office of PEN-centre, international organization of writers and poets, will possibly be closed, announced Alexander Tkachenko, head of the centre, in an interview to Radio Liberty.

According to him, the tax inspectorate wants them to pay 2 million roubles within five days as the tax for the land under the building of the PEN-centre.

Tkachenko considers the tax service requirement as ungrounded because the organization is neither the owner nor the lease-holder of the land.

The PEN-centre head is sure that the true reason is "in the political independence" of the organization.

Last November the Russian PEN-centre published a statement containing severe critics of the amendments to the law on non-government and public organizations. "The law, if it is passed, will lead Russia to isolationism and incapability to work in the international legal space which we already share with democratic countries... In our view, it may be detrimental for the maturing of the civil society," the statement runs.

The Russian PEN-centre executive committee includes Liudmila Ulitskaya, Alexander Gorodnitskiy, Yevgeniy Bunimovich, Igor Irteniev and others.

For reference, earlier President Putin signed the notorious law on non-profit public organizations (NPОs).

Now, it is going to be very hard to work for human rights activists, ecologists and representatives of other public organizations. The law strengthens state control over their activity in Russia. It also prohibits opening offices and branches of foreign non-government organizations on the territory of closed administrative territorial units. The authorities may refuse registration to any public committee or organization if they do not like it or if its targets, tasks and forms of activity, in the opinion of functionaries, may run counter to the Constitution and the federal legislation. The financial supervision over the activity of non-profit organizations, including foreign ones, will be exercised by the Rosregistratsiya (registering) agency. However, this supervision is going to be indirect, via the tax service and the financial monitoring agencies. Audits should be conducted maximum once a year.

Despite the fact that the law caused sharp criticism both in Russia and in the West, the State Duma passed it in its third reading on December 23, and the Council of the Federation followed suit.

Active protests against the draft law have been undertaken by civil society activists in Voronezh, Samara, Archangelsk, Rostov, Riazan, Kirov, Vladimir, Moscow, St-Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, towns of Saratov, Pskov, Cheliabinsk and Kemerovo oblasts, in Chuvashia, Karelia and other Russian regions.

On November 10, the "Human Rights in Russia" internet portal (hro.org) started an action to collect signatures under the statement of non-government organization "No to strengthening control over civil society!" More than five thousand civil society activists have signed the statement against the law which deteriorates the situation of the NGOs. The statement was initiated by the Democracy and Human Rights Development Centre, the "Memorial" centre, the "Demos" centre, the Russian Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers, the Moscow Helsinki group, the Socio-environmental Union, the Institute of the "Public Agreement" national project, and a number of other leading Russian NGOs.