RUSSIA: Russia has suspended the activities of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and more than 90 other foreign non-governmental organisations.
Moscow says they failed to meet the registration requirements of a new law designed to bring activists under much closer government scrutiny.
Across the country, foreign grassroots organisations that investigate human rights abuses, promote democracy and work with refugees folded their tents until further notice, informing staff that all operations must cease immediately. The only work officially authorised was the paying of staff and bills.
The law, signed by President Vladimir Putin at the start of the year, drew broad criticism as part of a general roll-back of democratic freedom in Russia.
Activists say it is intended to rein in one of the last areas of independent civic life in the country. Mr Putin called it necessary to prevent foreigners from interfering in the country's political process.
On Thursday, officials said the suspensions resulted simply from the failure of private groups to meet the law's requirements, not from a political decision on the part of the state. The groups would be allowed to resume work once their registration is completed, they said.
"No political order has been given . . . to tighten the screws," said Vladimir Lukin, Russia's federal ombudsman, speaking at a Moscow forum hosted by the Council of Europe. "Colleagues from international NGOs are not in the habit of keeping their affairs and documents in order."
Many non-governmental organisations fear that the current bureaucratic tangle might be the beginning of a larger crackdown on activism that is not controlled by the Kremlin. They note too that successful registration would not end their dealings with the justice ministry. After that, they would have to report on planned activities for the year, and they worry that officials could reject their plans if they deviate from them.
Many of the suspended organisations are American, including adoption agencies, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. The latter two are funded by the US Congress but act independently to promote democracy.
Others suspended include two branches of Médecins Sans Frontières, the Danish Refugee Council and the Netherlands-based Russian Justice Initiative, which helps Russians bring cases to the European Court of Human Rights.
Activists complained that requirements of the law are so exacting that meeting the deadline was difficult. Officials, they said, nitpicked their way through the submitted documents.
The local Human Rights Watch operation, for instance, called itself the "Representative Office of the Non-Governmental Organisation Human Rights Watch in the Russian Federation." Officials at the registration office rejected that description and said the group should call itself the "Representative Office of the Corporation Human Rights Watch Inc. (USA) in the Russian Federation." That change, among others, required Human Rights Watch to send its submission back to its headquarters in New York to have the document revised and renotarised, then retranslated into Russian and renotarised in Russia.
Officials at the Human Rights Watch office in Moscow said they could not speak on the record to a reporter because they interpreted the strictures of the suspension to extend to news media interviews. The law says that suspended groups can do nothing that would advance the aims and goals of their offices in Russia.
"We are registering, and we are complying with the law," said Carroll Bogert, associate director of Human Rights Watch, in a telephone interview from New York.