generalspeaking

Resurrecting Repression

The current situation in Russia with the Kremlin crackdown on protest is considered by members of the opposition A Just Russia party, to be "a step toward the degradation of civil society and aimed at setting citizens against each other.  It is aimed at creating a schism in society", according to Ilya Ponomarev, opposition deputy.

Divide and conquer, after all, create an 'us' and 'them', and line up the support against those accused of an agenda of doing harm to Mother Russia.  And so, Moscow's Foreign Ministry has accused the United States of "absolutely inappropriate attempts at gross interference" as a result of Washington criticizing the new legislation voted into place by the Russian parliament for repressive laws that seem to emulate the former Soviet dictatorship of Josef Stalin, a leader much admired by the current president of Russia.

The lower house in voting to force non-governmental organizations involved in political activity to proffer a declaration identifying themselves as "foreign agents" on their websites and publications when they are in receipt of funding from abroad, has many within Russia concerned.  The aura of foreign interference in the sovereign activities of Russia does gain the Kremlin in furthering suspicion of those critical of President Vladimir Putin's agenda.

Secretary General of the Council of Europe, the democratic and human rights body of which Russia has membership, has himself stated that the law seemed to echo the Terror of the 1930s in revolutionary Russia.  "Some of those executed during the Stalin era were called foreign agents", thus legitimizing their capital punishment penalty for interfering in Russian affairs.

The Duma voted as well to criminalize libel as a punishable offence by establishing fines of up to $150,000.  Any who describe President Putin, as example, in less than admiring terms, can anticipate paying quite the penalty through this new libel offence.  This represents a reversal of Dmitri Medvedev's decision to decriminalize label a mere six months earlier, when the game of musical chairs was yet in the future.

The United Russia party is in fine fettle, ensuring the Duma, which it controls, expedited the NGO reform before the summer recess.  Dissent in Russia has been effectively outlawed.  Judges, prosecutors and investigators effectively given carte blanche to proceed with doing the Kremlin's bidding.  "It will be used to prosecute people who are not happy with the government", lamented former prosecutor, MP Yuri Sinelschikov.

"We are lagging farther and farther behind the normal rules of regulating public life", observed a former key advisor to Dmitry Medvedev, and risking further confrontation between citizen-protesters and the state through this deliberate provocation.  "I'm sure libel is becoming a criminal charge because of the slogans 'Putin is a thief', and 'United Russia is a party of swindlers and thieves', observed head of the Agora human rights association of lawyers.

"The law about meetings, the law on NGOs, the law on libel, it's all one train and they're probably thinking up something else", insists the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, the country's most venerable human rights organization.

And right they are.

Labels: Communication, Conflict, Political Realities, Russia

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, July 15, 2012