Watchdog

MOSCOW -- Lyudmila Alekseyeva, one of Russia's most outspoken and widely respected rights advocates, has returned to President Vladimir Putin's council on human rights and civil society three years after quitting the advisory body.

Alekseyeva, 87, says she wants to defend nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) against what she called the "outrageous" abuse of a controversial law that has branded many NGOs as "foreign agents."

Under a decree signed by Putin, she returned to the council on May 26.

A Soviet-era dissident who was in on the founding of the human rights movement in the 1960s, Alekseyeva has been a vocal opponent of what she has described as a dramatic backsliding on human rights and democracy since Putin came to power in 2000.

She quit the council in June 2012 in protest over Kremlin interference in the process of selecting new members, becoming one of several activists to leave amid anger over Putin's return to the presidency, the "foreign agents" legislation, and restrictions imposed on the Internet and public demonstrations.

Alekseyeva had rejected previous invitations to return to the council, whose work she had said would be "pointless" after the changes made in 2012.

But she told RFE/RL earlier this month that the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights was one of the most reliable links with the authorities and "cannot be ignored during these difficult times."

She said that she wanted to return to the council to attract its attention to the "foreign agents" law.

"There are such outrageous things happening there," Russian media quoted her as saying in comments about application of the law, which requires foreign-funded NGOs deemed to be involved in political activity to register as "foreign agents" -- a term with Soviet-era connotations of treason and espionage.

"All hell has broken loose in the regions," state-run news agency RIA Novosti quoted her as saying. Authorities across Russia "are simply setting scores with organizations that are unfavorable to them, stripping them this way of their right to operate."

Rights activists say the government has clamped down hard on civil society since Putin returned for a third presidential term after weathering big opposition protests in 2011-2012.

Putin signed a law last week that enables the government to brand foreign and international organizations "undesirable" and shutter their Russian offices if they are deemed to pose a threat to the country's security.

Alekseyeva's return comes amid an uproar over a decision by the authorities to brand the Dynasty Foundation, a nonprofit group established by a former telecoms tycoon to fund scientific research and education, as a "foreign agent."

"I would like private foundations to be able to finance public organizations...without risk to their businesses," Interfax quoted Alekseyeva as saying. "I think this is totally realistic, but there must be a signal from above -- and as long as there is none, private business will be afraid to help public organizations."

MOSCOW -- Rights groups named as potential targets of a new law allowing the government to brand international organizations "undesirable" and shutter their Russia operations have criticized the legislation, calling it a "dangerous" new weapon in a Kremlin campaign to suppress civil society.

Activists expressed concern on May 26 that the "loosely worded" legislation could potentially be used against almost any organization, and would deepen the chill over advocacy groups within Russia by threatening to cut them off from the global network of rights groups.

The law signed by President Vladimir Putin late last week gives the authorities the power to shut down foreign and international organizations deemed a threat to Russia's security, defense capability, or public order.

The law "is formulated in such a way that they can brand whoever they want," said Svetlana Gannushkina, director of the Civic Assistance Group, which advocates for migrants and displaced people, and a member of the board of the widely respected Russian human rights organization Memorial.

Activists say it threatens to intensify a clampdown on civil society that began when Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third term in May 2012, after weathering big street protests he claimed were incited by the United States and other Western states.

Gannushkina compared the "undesirables" law to legislation Putin signed later that year under which dozens of NGOs with financing from abroad have been forced to register as "foreign agents" -- a term that evokes the Cold War days when dissenters were sometimes stamped as "enemies of the people."

On May 25, two days after the Kremlin said Putin had signed the bill, a little-known lawmaker from ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's party asked the Prosecutor-General's Office to check whether Memorial and four other prominent groups should be listed as "undesirable."

The other groups named by lawmaker Vitaly Zolochevsky were Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, and the Carnegie Moscow Center -- the Russian office of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

While most of those groups are based abroad, human rights advocates suspect the law is intended to isolate activists in Russia. Putin has frequently portrayed civil society groups, particularly those with foreign funding, as instruments used by the West to undermine his government and Russia itself.

After a number of warnings, alleged violators of the law can face criminal prosecution and punishment including financial penalties, forced labor, restrictions on movement, or up to six years in prison.

"The law is not so much about us, but primarily about Russian activists and Russian organizations," said Tanya Lokshina, Russia program director at Human Rights Watch. "The law aims to cut them off from international networks -- to put them in further isolation, in a vacuum of sorts. I think that's what's most important here."

"Frankly, in order to shut down our Russia office, the government doesn't need another piece of legislation," Lokshina said. "That could be done in a fraction of a second."

In comments to RFE/RL, members of four of the five groups named by Zolochevsky said his request suggested he was not acquainted with the text of the law and that he may have made the statement to raise his public profile.

Lokshina said, for instance, that Memorial is a registered Russian legal entity and therefore "cannot possibly be defined undesirable to begin with."

But Russian authorities have cast a wide net with past laws, and Memorial Rights Center Chairman Aleksandr Cherkasov was more cautious.

"No one knows yet what it means to have been placed on this list because this law has not been implemented before," Cherkasov wrote on Facebook.

Sergei Nikitin, head of Amnesty International's Russia bureau, said that the "wording of the law is unclear and itself represents a danger not only to foreign and international social organizations, but also for Russian organizations."

At the same time, he expressed doubt that the government would go so far as to brand Amnesty International "undesirable."

Amnesty and the other groups named by Zolochevsky "in no way work on issues that undermine defense capability or the security of the country," Nikitin said.

"Our work is primarily focused on defending the rights of people in Russia. If they want to shut our organization, they'll have to recognize all our activities as 'undesirable'. I think there'd be a big scandal," he said.

"Russia would be the only country that has branded Amnesty undesirable," Nikitin said. "It's difficult to predict what's going to happen, but this would really be a very strange step."

The Prosecutor-General's Office has not commented publicly on Zolochevsky's request.

Russia's rights ombudsman Ella Pamfilova has she was "seriously concerned" by the law, which has also drawn condemnation from the United States and European Union.

In a report released late on May 25, Pamfilova said the legislation was overly vague and that the power given to the government to tag groups "undesirable" without a court decision contradicted the Russian Constitution.

Under the law, authorities can ban foreign NGOs and jail Russians working with them for up to six years.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service and AFP