Russian Federation: Nizhny Novgorod Authorities Launch Final Crackdown on Russian-Chechen Friendship SocietyToday’s Protest Picket Dissolved after Five Minutes – Participants Detained
Vienna, 2 September 2005. Since the beginning of 2005, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS), a human rights NGO, has been the target of a concerted campaign of harassment by authorities in the region of Nizhny Novgorod. In the last few weeks authorities have taken steps toward completely halting the activities of this group.
The key weapon used by the authorities in their battle against the RCSF is a demand to pay around 28.200 Euro in allegedly outstanding taxes and fines. The regional branch of the Federal Tax Inspectorate has decided that all grants received by the human rights NGO in the past three years are to be treated as profit, and in accordance with this decision the Nizhegorodsky Tax Authority forcefully withdraw funds from the operational Rubel bank accounts of the RCFS on 26 August, and is in the process of doing the same from the Euro and USD accounts of the RCFS.
At the same time, a criminal case against Stas Dimitrievsky, RCFS Executive Director and Chief Editor of the RCSF Information Center, continues. Dimitrievsky has been charged with “inciting hatred or enmity on the basis of ethnicity and religion” (part 2b of Article 282 of the Criminal Code), offences which carry a maximum penalty of two years in prison, for allowing the publication of peace appeals by Akhmed Zakaev and Aslan Maskhadov in the Pravozaschita (Human Rights Defence) newspaper, co-published by the RCSF and Nizhny Novgorod Society for Human Rights (NNSHR).
Additionally, Dimitrievsky and the Oksana Chelysheva, co-editor at the RCFS Information Center, have been subjected to personal threats.
Attention: A picket held in front of the local Tax Inspectorate today was dissolved after 5 minutes, and its participants were detained.
On 2 September 2005, at 3 pm local time, the RCSF organized a picket in front of the building of the Tax Inspectorate of the Nizhegorodsky district of the city of Nizhny Novgorod. According to a statement by the RCFS, the aim of the picket was both to express disagreement with the “absolutely unlawful decision” to require that a public organization pay income tax on project funds and to “demonstrate contempt” for the tax officials who implemented this “dirty political order”.
This picket only lasted 5 minutes. Then, the twelve picketers were rounded up by twenty five OMON police officers, accompanied by five policemen and up to ten members of the Prosecutors Office, and taken to the Nizhny Novgorod ROVD (police department), where they remain detained as of this writing.
Background
The RCSF, which was founded in 2000, is based in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, and has branch offices in Nazran and Grozny. The NGO distributes independent information about the human rights situation in Chechnya, Ingushetia and other North Caucasian republics, defends the interests of victims of war crimes and assists children and disabled people victimized by the conflict in Chechnya. The RCSF has repeatedly criticised the authorities of the Russian Federation for severe human rights and humanitarian law violations in Chechnya and surrounding areas.
The ongoing campaign of harassment against the RCFS began in January 2005, when the Prosecutor’s Office of the Niznny Novgorod region initiated a criminal investigation into the publishing activities of the Pravozaschita newspaper. As noted above, RCSF Executive Director Stas Dimitrievsky was subsequently criminally charged. Then, in March 2005, the Federal Tax Inspectorate commenced an irregular audit of the RCSF’s accounts for the past three years and confiscated accounting and registration documents of the organisation. In April 2005, the Federal Registration Service (FRS) under the Ministry of Justice undertook an audit as well and initiated a court case against the RCFS because of its failure to provide the FRS with required documents (documents, which had been confiscated by the Tax Inspectorate just some weeks before). In June 2005, the Ministry of Justice issued a written notification to the NNSHR, ordering it to halt its activities, because they allegedly had not transmitted to them the documentation they had requested in the framework of an audit into the organisation’s activities.
Following talks, the FRS agreed to discontinue court proceedings against the RCFS in June 2005 and the NNSHR was eventually authorised to take up its activities again as of August 2005. However, the judicial and fiscal harassment of the RCFS continues, as well as a media campaign against the organization.
1. Judicial case against the Pravozaschita (Human Rights Defence) newspaper, a joint publication by RCFS and the Nizhny Novgorod Society for Human Rights (NNSHR):
On 11 January 2005, the prosecutor’s office of Nizhny Novgorod Region initiated a criminal case against the Pravozaschita newspaper for publishing statements of Akhmed Zakaev and Aslan Maskhadov, calling for a peaceful end to the Russian–Chechen conflict. On 20 January 2005, a group of officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB) burst into the RCFS office, seized documents and computers, and then “invited” Dimitrievsky to come to the local FSB office for questioning him “as a witness”. He abided. Then, several board and staff members of the RCFS and the NNHRS, both in Nizhny Novgorod and Chechnya have been summoned and interrogated in relation to the investigation. This was particularly intimidating to the correspondents in Chechnya, and some of them subsequently decided to quit their jobs at the Information Centre.
Originally the criminal case was referring to article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, “Public calls to carry out extremist activity”, which is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Security Service (FSB). After having commissioned an expert report, which came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of the crime specified in Article 280, they passed the case to the Prosecutor´s Office. The case was amended so as to refer to Article 282 now (“Inciting hatred or enmity, as well as diminishing human dignity”). This is liable to up to two years imprisonment. It is now the responsibility of Oleg Kiryukov, a Senior Investigator responsible foe especially serious crimes.
On 20 June 2005, the Prosecutors Office of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast held a press conference at which Konstantin Moiseyev, an Assistant Prosecutor, confirmed that a further expert report had found no evidence of the commission of a crime under Article 282.
Nevertheless, on 11 August 2005, Stas Dimitrievsky was for the first time interrogated as a suspect in this criminal case, at the prosecutor’s office of Nizhny Novgorod Region by the senior investigator Oleg Kiryukov. Mr. Dmitrievsky’s lawyer, Mr. Yury Sidorov, was present at the interrogation.
He was summoned to come to the prosecutor’s office again on 2 September 2005, 11 am. In this meeting he was officially charged.
2. The fiscal harassment of the RCFS, threatening the continuation of its activities
In March 2005, the Federal Tax Inspectorate commenced an audit of the accounts of the RCFS for the past three years. It was halted on 20 April, started again 14 June and was completed on 16 June 2005. While the tax office insists that an audit of this kind is carried out every two years, and is absolutely of a normal planed nature, the RCFS credibly fears that they have been singled out for a special audit as part of an orchestrated campaign against them.
On 3 June 2005 the accountant of the RCFS, Natalia Chernelevskaya, was called to an interview and allegedly threatened.
In the preparation of their record, the Tax Inspectorate referred to Article 100 of the Tax Code, providing that if a grant is received by an organization is considered not to be for a particular purpose, then it is to be taxed as profit. On 16 June 2005, the RCFS received an order from the Tax Inspectorate, according to which they have to pay 1’000’561 roubles (corresponding to 28,200 Euro or 35,000 USD) for non-payment of income tax and fines. It appears from the Record of the tax inspectorate that they decided that all grants received from RCFS for the past three years have been treated as profit. This refers to grants received from the European Commission, the National Endowment for Democracy Foundation (whose budget mainly comes from the United States Department of State) and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
While the Tax Inspectorate argues that these institutions are not included in the Russian government´s list of donors whose subsidies are not taxable, the RCFS appealed against this decision on 28 June 2005, arguing that in their opinion the claims were unlawful and groundless, as the European Commission appears on that list, and as according to the bilateral agreement between the Russian Federation and the USA financial support allocated to non-profit organisations by US government agencies is not subject to taxation. On 11 July 2005, a meeting took place in the office of the Tax Inspectorate devoted to the examination of the RCFS complaint. The Tax Inspectorate maintained its decision to allege tax irregularities and to bring out further claims.
On 15 August 2005, the RCFS received another order, confirming the order to pay the same amount of taxes and fines. In this order, the deputy chief of the Tax Inspectorate, Mr. Trifonov, admitted that the European Commission is included in the list of donors from which grants are not taxable, but claimed that the RCFS had used this subsidy for “publishing and diffusing publications”, an activity that is not included in article 251 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation. According to this article, tax free grants must be dedicated to “education, arts, culture and environmental defence fields”. The order further states that the bilateral agreement between the Russian Federation and the USA, signed in April 1992, does not concern grants awarded by the National Endowment for Democracy.
On 24 August 2005, the RCFS duly appealed to the Arbitration Court of the Nizhny Novgorod oblast against the decision of the tax inspectorate, and simultaneously asked to stop any further court procedures until the appeal was heard. The RCFS regarded as illegal and unreasonable the order of the tax inspectorate to treat the operational grants to them as if they were profits, for activities that are within the limits of authorized activity for public organisations. The Arbitration Court rejected the second part of the appeal, and on 26 August 2005, the regional tax authority forcefully withdrew funds from the operational Rubel bank accounts of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, and also began withdrawing the money from their Euro and USD accounts.
Due to this action, the RCFS loses the ability to continue its programs under these grants. Both the office in Nizhny Novgorod, the program for invalids from Chechnya, and the network of human rights monitors in Chechnya and Ingushetia are endangered to be destroyed. This also concerns 13 workplaces created by the RCFS in Chechnya, where there is an extremely high unemployment rate.
The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, signed in June 2005 a new federal law (“Modification of the second part of the tax code of the Russian Federation and some other acts of the Russian Federation for taxes and tax collection”), which clearly and unambiguously states that means received for the protection of the rights and freedoms of persons in the Russian Federation, are exempted from the profit tax. However, these changes come into effect only from the beginning of 2006 and cannot be used retroactive. Therefore, contractions in the current law make it possible for the tax authorities to destroy any NGOs they like by selectively applying parts of the existing law while ignoring others.
Therefore, this action creates a dangerous precedent.
3. Media Campaign against the RCFS
From February to April 2005, RCFS members and Mr. Stanislav Dmitrievsky in particular, were subjected to a smear campaign that was launched in mass media venues of Nizhny Novgorod.
Local media have tried to associate the work of the group to Chechen terrorism. On 29 January 2005, the internet news agency of Nizhny Novgorod, APN, published an article on its web-site with the title “Freedom fighters or helpers of terrorists?” (http://www.apn-nn.ru/pub_s/126.html), in which legal experts accused the RCFS of open complicity with Chechen insurgents and warned that their activities in Nizhny Novgorod are dangerous for its inhabitants. On 12 March 2005, several local Nizhny Novgorod television channels, including RTR, aired a five-minute report, which claimed that the activities of the RCFS and its newspaper “Pravozashchita” (“Human Rights Defense”) are connected with Chechen rebels.
On 14 March 2005, the co-editor of Pravozaschita, Oksana Chelysheva, faced numerous threatening leaflets in her own neighborhood. The flyers contained slander, insult, and direct threats to Oksana Chelysheva in connection with her work at RCFS.
Conclusion
In past months, authorities have interfered with the activities of the RCFS and the NNHRS in a way that gives rise to concern. The series of investigative and other measures targeting the two organizations, which have been described in this statement, have apparently been aimed at obstructing their activities. As a result of official action taken in the most recent period, the important human rights work of the RSCF is now seriously threatened, while the physical and physiological integrity of the members of the organization is endangered because of continued harassment in media and elsewhere.
The International Helsinki Federation (IHF) urges the authorities of the Russian Federation to:
- Put an end to all harassment against the RCSF and take effective measures to ensure the safety and integrity of Stanislav Dmtrievsky, Oksana Chelysheva and other members of the RCSF;
- Protect the rights of all human rights defenders in the country in accordance with international standards, including the Declaration on Humans Rights Defenders (adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1998), article 1 of which states that “everyone has the right, individually or in association with others, to promote the protection and realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels”;
See also :
IHF statement, “Continuing Persecution of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. Its Partner Organisation Nizhny Novgorod Human Rights Society Closed Down by Authorities”, 10 June 2005
IHF statement, “”We Fear for the Safety of our Colleagues in the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society… Russian Human Rights Organization Threatened”, 19 March 2005
IHF statement, “FSB Raids the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society”, 20 January 2005
IHF/NHC Report, The Silencing of Human Rights Defenders in Chechnya and Ingushetia, Sept. 2004
For further information:
International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
In Vienna: Aaron Rhodes, IHF Executive Director, +43-1-408 88 22 or +43 -676-635 66 12;
Henriette Schroeder, IHF Press Officer, +43-676-725 48 29
In Moscow: Tanya Lokshina, +7 -916-624 19 06
Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, Stas Dimitrievsky, Oksana Chelysheva, +7-8312-171 666 or +7-920 0115 3306 (mobile)
Source: IHF (T/B) |
