Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Russia

Putin Proposes Softening Bill On NGOs

President Putin (file photo) (epa)

9 December 2005 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed softening a highly criticized draft law that would severely restrict the activities of foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations.

TEXT SIZE - +

December 09, 2005

Russia's lower house of parliament backed the draft law in its first reading late last month.

International groups including Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International have said that if the law is passed without changes it might force them to close their offices in Russia.

Putin's proposals would do away with a clause in the draft law that would require foreign NGOs to re-register as de facto Russian legal entities.

Instead, Putin proposed that they could operate through Russian branches and only inform authorities they exist.

Putin also said that criteria for registering Russian NGOs should be made clearer.

The president's proposals were sent to the State Duma which is due to consider the draft law in its second reading later this month.

(Agencies)

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin covers his face during a conference of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in Moscow on February 9.

Administrative (Resource) Breakdown

Administrative resources make up the glue that holds authoritarian structures like Putin's power vertical together. And there have been plenty of signs recently that this glue is weakening. More

Syrians in the northwestern town of Kfar Nubul pose with a cartoon depicting Russia

Angry Over Syria, Arab World Threatens Russian Boycott

Groups in a number of Arab states, angry over the Russian-Chinese veto of a UN resolution aimed at stopping the violence in Syria, have called for a one-day boycott of Russian and Chinese goods on February 12. More

Alla Dzhioyeva attends a protest by her supporters in Tskhinvali on January 28.

South Ossetian Opposition Leader Hospitalized After Raid

Alla Dzhioyeva, the opposition candidate whose victory in a runoff ballot in November for de facto president of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia was swiftly annulled by the republic's Supreme Court, was taken to a hospital after a raid by some 200 masked security personnel on her headquarters in Tskhinvali. More