MOSCA – The last cleaver fell on April 22nd. Like every Friday for the past few weeks, the government has updated the infamous register of individuals considered “foreign agents”. Among others, the videoblogger ended up in the list Jurij Dudthe political scientist Ekaterina Shulmanthe cartoonist Sergei Elkin and even Aleksandr Venediktov, the now defunct radio director Ekho Moskvyj who last September had been insulted by various opponents for having accepted the position of head of the Civic Center for the control and monitoring of parliamentarians judged a farce. Now the list includes 142 names, but many – such as Shulman and Elkin – have already left the country. All considered in fact “enemies of the people” or “traitors”.
Since ten years ago Russia’s Vladimir Putin it has exhumed the ancient stigma from the archives of the Stalinist Terror, the law on “foreign agents” has been updated over and over again to include four lists: NGOs; average; associations and finally natural persons who carry out activities considered “political” and receive funding from abroad. For anyone who ends up on the lists, there are fiscal and accounting obligations, unsustainable for many non-profit organizations that have therefore decided to close, as well as the obligation to mark all their contents with the infamous label. An oversight can lead to fines, imprisonment or death, as happened to Memorial, the historic Russian human rights NGO “liquidated” a month ago.
Now the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, has proposed a new bill pompously titled “On the Control of the Activities of Persons Under Foreign Influence” which further broadens the scope of legislation. It will no longer be necessary to receive funding from abroad. To be included in the registers, it will be enough “to receive support” or to be “under foreign influence in other forms”, “including through coercion, persuasion or in other ways”. A formulation so vague that it can justify any interpretation.
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“In other words, if the” authorized body “(ie the Ministry of Justice) decides that someone from abroad is trying to” influence you by persuasion “, then you will immediately be registered as a” foreign agent “.” Convinced ” by whom and how it doesn’t matter. Even if you weren’t at all aware that they were trying to “convince you.” Or “force you.” Or they were acting in “other ways.” It goes without saying that this wording allows anyone to be recognized as a “foreign agent.” . At any time, “he commented Boris Vishnevskyj, columnist for Novaja Gazeta Europa.
The Duma’s proposal does not end there. The document provides for the creation of a single register and the registration of “persons affiliated with foreign agents”: from employees to family members. As well as numerous prohibitions: organizing events, holding public offices, conducting didactic or educational activities, receiving state support, investing in businesses. According to this law, Vishnevskij concludes, “without any trial, one can declare a” foreign agent “and make a person of” second class “, deprived of some constitutional rights, anyone”.
The lawyer Tatiana Glushkova agrees: the aim is “to make the absurdity of this legislation even less obvious”. So much so that on social media there are those who ironically: “Just listen to jazz to end up in the list”. But there is little to laugh about. Since Russia launched what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, the repression has grown tougher. Dozens of media and websites were blocked. Thousands of people have been indicted under the law signed on 4 March which provides for fines or imprisonment of up to 15 years for “false information” or “defamatory” on the armed forces. And finally the allegations of Soviet memory have multiplied after Putin spoke of “true patriots” who know how to distinguish “traitors” and “spit them out like you do with a gnat accidentally flown into your mouth”.
The goal of the new reform on “foreign agents” is clear: to divide the Russians more and more into friends and enemies of the people. The “foreign agents” are none other than the new traitors to the Fatherland.
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by our correspondent Rosalba Castelletti
