Russia: Online Petition Seeks to Increase Controls on Foreign-Funded NGOs
Russia: Online Petition Seeks to Increase Controls on Foreign-Funded NGOs
Posted 2 April 2012 9:34 GMT
Written by: Kevin Rothrock
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/04/02/russia-online-petition-seeks-to-increase-controls-on-foreign-funded-ngos/
Back in early February 2012, Vladimir Putin published the fourth op-ed of his presidential campaign: a lengthy treatise titled Democracy and the Quality of Government [ru]. About 1,500 words deep into that article, Putin proposed that the Russian parliament should automatically consider the legislative applications of any online petition successful in gathering more than one-hundred thousand signatures.
A few weeks later, Putin published the final installment of his platform, titled Russia and the Changing World [ru], where he wrote the following:
The distinction should be clear between free speech and normal political activity, on the one hand, and illegal instruments of 'soft power,' on the other. [
] [T]he activity of pseudo-NGOs' and other structures operating on external support, pursuing the destabilization of one or another country, is unacceptable. [
] We believe that influence on domestic politics and the public mood in other countries should be conducted only in the open allowing actors to take full responsibility for their actions.
In late March, less than three weeks after Putin's re-election to the Russian presidency, an online petition emerged, calling for stricter controls on foreign-funded Russian NGOs. Hosted at www.podkontrol.ru [ru], the petition calls on the government to adopt the Law on the Foreign Financing of NGOs, and has collected over 20,000 signatures in a little over one week (with more still pouring in).
Endorsed by 13 affiliate organizations, the initiative enjoys the support of pro-regime political groups like the Anti-Orange Committee, Dmitri Rogozin's Congress of Russian Communities,' and Alexander Dugin's International Eurasian Movement.'