Russian authorities are using a law on funding from abroad to crack down on critical media and non-governmental organizations. It will be used again after the parliamentary elections.
Russian authorities have included the civil rights portal Owd-Info in the controversial register of “foreign agents”. That emerges from a communication from the Russian Ministry of Justice on Wednesday evening.
Owd-Info criticized this on the Telegram social network as an “act of political pressure”. The Russian non-governmental organization records arrests during protests critical of the government and provides legal support.
Several journalists, including the founder of the independent portal Mediazona, Pyotr Verilov, and editor-in-chief Sergei Smirnov, were also declared “foreign agents”. The press spokeswoman for the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Kira Jarmysch, wrote on Twitter that the law on “foreign agents” has now become a “universal baton” for the Kremlin in the fight against critics.
According to the controversial law, the media and non-governmental organizations in Russia must register as “foreign agents” if they finance themselves with money from abroad. Moscow justifies this with protection from political interference in internal affairs. Critics, on the other hand, complain that the organizations and people affected are stigmatized in this way and that the requirements are often difficult to meet.
The now affected civil rights portal Owd-Info had recently reported about more than 100 arrests in connection with protests against the result of the Russian parliamentary election. The Communist Party called for the unauthorized rallies, which ended up in second place behind the Kremlin party United Russia with 18.9 percent of the vote about a week and a half ago.
The communists consider the votes cast online by Moscow voters to be manipulated and do not recognize their results. In this context, they say they have already filed 29 lawsuits, which, however, are unlikely to be successful. In protest, communist MPs also boycotted a session of the Moscow city parliament on Wednesday.
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