December 7, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Russian government has refused to allow a Dutch nonprofit organization to resume providing legal assistance here to victims of human-rights abuses.
The decision not to re-register the Stichting Russian Justice Initiative has been described as spurious by the head of the Utrecht organization, which recently won a string of rulings in favor of Russian clients in the European Court of Human Rights.
In a letter sent to the charity, the Federal Registration Service, which is part of the Ministry of Justice, cited as grounds for the refusal what it said were inconsistencies in the paperwork submitted by the organization under a new law that imposes greater controls over civil society.
“We are highly surprised at this decision,” Jan ter Laak, chairman of the organization’s board, said in a written statement.
“We closely consulted with the officials of the Federal Registration Service over the past several months and prepared all the documents in accordance with their instructions.”
Mr. ter Laak said the organization is currently deciding whether to appeal the decision, or to resubmit the documents.
He said the organization’s office in Moscow, which has been open since 2001, ultimately might be forced to shut down its operations.
Forced to Cease Activities
The nonprofit group was one of some 74 such foreign organizations that were forced to cease their activities in mid-October because they had not been re-registered.
Most nonprofit groups have since been registered, including the branch office of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a Chicago philanthropy that has had an office here since 1992.
The foundation received word of its re-registration more than a month after it was forced to suspend its activities. MacArthur spends $11-million a year in Russia.
Registration officials have insisted that all their decisions in enforcing the new law are based on procedure, not politics.
Still, by refusing to register the Dutch nonprofit group, the agency has removed, at least temporarily, a thorn from the side of the Kremlin.
The Dutch charity currently is representing Russians in 100 cases before the human-rights court in Strasbourg, France.
In July, in a landmark case, the court ordered Russia to pay $45,000 to a woman whose son disappeared in Chechnya.
The decision by the human-rights court was expected to increase the number of complaints trying to hold the country accountable for arbitrary detention, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial execution.
And in October the court held Russia responsible for the summary execution of five members of a family in Chechnya.
In two separate judgments last month, the court blamed the government for the disappearances of a man and his son as well as the disappearance and murder of a woman whose body was found among 51 others in the largest mass grave yet to be uncovered in the republic.
