 Source: HRO.org (info) Once again the Prosecutor’s Office is carrying out an unscheduled inspection at the office of the Committee Against Torture, Mediazona reports, citing the organization’s director Igor Kalyapin. The representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Justice have not clarified the reasons for their visit. “The inspection is being carried out on the instructions of the Prosecutor’s Office of Nizhny Novgorod region. They demanding all our documents: our financial reports, correspondence with the police, petitions to government bodies and all the rest. Now they have realised that the volume of all the documents weighs at least a hundredweight, and they are deciding which ones exactly they need,” Igor Kalyapin explained. According to Kalyapin, the inspection is being carried out on the basis of a complaint by a certain Mr Evgeny Makashov, “but what is in the complaint exactly they don’t know themselves”. Makashov is coordinator of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) in Nizhny Novgorod. He confirmed to Mediazona that the complaint was written on his initiative. “One of the main activities of the NLM is to combat the fifth column. We have been watching the Committee Against Torture since the end of March. We found out that the members of the Committee make speeches at rallies of the extra-parliamentary opposition and its leaders make anti-Russian statements”, Makashov explained. He is certain that the Committee Against Torture receives foreign grants and must be included in the list of foreign agents. Igor Kalyapin wrote on his Facebook page, “The Nizhny Novgorod NLM have been ‘watching’ the activities of the Committee Against Torture for several months and could understand only one thing, that the organisation receives foreign grants (this information has been published on the home page of the organisation for the past 10 years). Because the organisation’s activities turned out to be beyond the understanding of the ‘observers,’ they concluded that “the Committee’s activities are anti-Russian by nature”. Consequently they wrote a complaint to the regional Prosecutor’s Office. Evidently the NLM intends to protect the right of Russian public officials to torture and kill people with impunity, and it is in precisely that that they see the Russian national spirit.” In May this year a new wave of inspections of the NGOs began. The inspectors have actively sought out “foreign agents” and evidence of extremist activities. At that time inspectors visited the Committee Against Torture, also saying that they had received a complaint about the organization. Translated by Olga Cable |
HRO.org in English >
