Under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, people who fraternized with foreigners or criticized the Kremlin were “enemies of the people” and sent to the Gulag. Now there’s new legislation backed by Vladimir Putin’s government that human rights activists say could throw Russia back to the days of the Great Terror.
The legislation, outspoken government critic and rights activist Lev Ponomaryov charged Wednesday, creates “a base for a totalitarian state.”
The bill would add non-governmental organizations based anywhere in the world that have an office in Russia to the list of banned recipients of state secrets. The government has repeatedly accused foreign spy agencies of using NGOs as a cover to foment dissent.
Critics warned the loose wording will give authorities ample leeway to prosecute those who cooperate with international rights groups.
Under current treason statutes, some NGOs are not considered “foreign organizations,” meaning a person who passes a state secret to an NGO might not be considered a traitor.
Some of Russia’s most prominent right activists, including Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Civic Assistance director Svetlana Gannushkina, said the bill in fact gives authorities the power to prosecute anyone deemed to have “harmed the security of the Russian Federation.”
It is “legislation in the spirit of Stalin and Hitler,” the activists said in a joint statement — legislation that “returns the Russian justice to the times of 1920-1950s.”
The legislation expands the definition of treason to include damaging Russia’s “constitutional order,” and “sovereignty or territorial integrity.”
The activists believe each proposed addition cynically targets potential threats to the Kremlin, shattering what remains of civil society in Russia.
The bill broadening the definition of state treason is the latest in a series of measures taken since Putin’s rise to the presidency in 2000 that have systematically rolled back Russia’s post-Soviet political freedoms.
Read the full article by David Nowak at Yahoo News here.