Russia tightens control over foreign activists, businesses

MOSCOW — Russia is cracking down on foreign groups and businesses that support human rights, its latest effort to squelch dissent and a new sign of its growing tensions with the West over the conflict in Ukraine.

The Russian parliament on Tuesday passed a bill giving law enforcement authorities sweeping powers to ban foreign organizations deemed "undesirable" from working in the country and making it a crime for Russians to work for them. While the bill specifically targets non-profit groups, its wording makes it possible to ban foreign businesses as well.

The bill, which still must be signed by President Vladimir Putin, follows other measures cracking down on foreigners or domestic dissidents. In 2012, the parliament passed a law forcing groups with foreign financing to register as "foreign agents." That led to crippling checks from authorities and increasing public animosity toward organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The new bill could go beyond cracking down on groups receiving grants from foreign companies to the companies themselves, such as McDonald's, which saw several stores closed last summer over alleged sanitary violations, rights activists say.

"The bill has the potential to severely damage our work in Russia," Tatyana Lokshina, director of the Russia program at Human Rights Watch, wrote in an opinion piece published this week. "Nevertheless, I am genuinely convinced that it's not about us. The intended targets of this new legislation … are actually Russian activists and Russian groups. The bill is aimed at cutting them off from their international partners."

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has asked Putin to veto the bill, arguing that its "broad and imprecise wording ... would impose serious restrictions on a wide array of important democratic rights, including freedom of expression and media freedom," OSCE's Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović said in a statement posted on the organization's site.

The law allows Russia's Prosecutor General's Office to declare "international non-government organizations that pose a threat to the constitutional order of the Russian Federation, its defense capabilities or the security of its government" as "undesirable" and ban them from working in Russia, according to the text of the bill posted on an official parliamentary site. Those who continue working for such organizations could face up to thousands of dollars in administrative fines and a jail term of up to six years for repeat offenders.

Lawmaker Alexander Tarnavsky, one of the bill's two authors, conceded that it could affect businesses as well as non-profit groups, but says it is necessary. "The president will ultimately decide, but I see the term (non-governmental organization) as applying to any organization — both commercial and non-commercial," he told Paste BN in a telephone interview.

Tarnavsky justified the measure as an answer to U.S. sanctions against Russia imposed last year for Russia's incursion into Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea. An ensuing conflict between Ukraine's new pro-Western government and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 6,100 lives since last April, according to U.N. figures.

"We are merely adopting the same measure that is used in other countries, including the United States and Europe," Tarnovsky said. He cited Western sanctions against Russian oil companies and the Kalashnikov Concern, which makes assault rifles of the same name. "We want to have the same instruments" to use against companies.

Tarnavsky said the bill will be used selectively and hoped "the list (of banned organizations) will be empty." But he offered one example of companies that could be targeted: "certain international oil companies if it is proven that they deliberately brought down the price of oil."

Russia's oil-dependent economy was hit hard last fall by the drop in oil prices, which, along with sanctions, caused the Russian ruble to collapse by 50% against the dollar in 2014. Both the price of oil and the value of the ruble have since rebounded from their low points.

Independent experts blame laws such as the latest one on Russia's increasing fear of outside forces. "The government is increasingly afraid of so-called 'color revolutions,'" like the one that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, in Ukraine in February 2014, said Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Russia-based Center for Political Technologies. "They are starting to take conspiracy theories seriously."

While Russia actively courted foreign investors during Putin's first two terms as president, it has now "grown wary of them," Makarkin said. "Russia is returning to the (Soviet idea) that foreign capital undermines sovereignty."

Even if the intent of the law is to target organizations selectively, Makarkin said that in reality law enforcement officials could target "whomever they want."