parijataka
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Russia enact law to regulate NGOs; terms NGOs with foreign funding 'foreign agent`
Can we have such a law in India too to ensure no more Kudankulams ?
Russia enacts law to regulate NGOs; terms NGOs with foreign funding as 'foreign agents'
Can we have such a law in India too to ensure no more Kudankulams ?
Russia enacts law to regulate NGOs; terms NGOs with foreign funding as 'foreign agents'
In Egypt, US NGOs were implicated in funding and triggering anti-Mubarak protests that finally led to his ouster, deaths of hundreds of people and
uncertainty to a fragile Egyptian economy.
India is showered with US$2 billion as 'donations' to Indian NGOs – which is more than what Africa gets as development aid. If that was shocking, look at Russia. The Russian Govt. estimates that NGOs in Russia got US$7 billion 'donation' from the West.
More than what Africa received as development aid in the last three years.
Not surprisingly, Russia's State Duma has given 'foreign agent' status to NGOs that receive foreign funding.
The initiators of the move, a group of MPs wanted the NGOs to fully inform Russian citizens about their foreign supporters and thus, about their real motivation. Besides, the MPs claimed the very term 'foreign agent' was copied from US legislation.
All Russian NGOs that receive monetary or other aid from a foreign source to submit a request in the Justice Ministry to be registered in a special register of foreign agent organizations. Those who fail to do so will be punished by fines of up to 3,300,000 roubles (over $100,000) and repeated violators can spend up to 2 years in prison. The Justice Ministry is charged with the task of conducting annual inspections to check if the NGOs are correctly reporting.
The author of the bill, MP Aleksander Sidyakin, dismissed all criticism as "hysteria and delirium" and stressed that the bill used similar US legislation as a "blueprint". The parliamentarian also said that foreign nations allocate up to $7 billion for Russian NGO activities and this sum was even bigger in 2011 when Russia was holding its latest State Duma elections. "Our nation had a poll that was smeared with dirt by such organizations. Let the citizens know from whose loudspeaker this dirt is pouring out and let them make their own conclusions," Sidyakin noted.
Another MP who backed the bill, Vyacheslav Nikonov, called the bill "a soft form of self-defense of Russian statehood" and that the amendments only (affected) about 1000 NGOs of a total 220,000 registered in the Russian Federation which makes only 0.4 percent.
The head of the Institute of Foreign Politics Research, Veronika Krasheninnikova, told that foreign funding was distorting competition within the civil society as significant support for a small number of NGOs leads to the disproportional rise in their importance. At the same time, people and organizations who get no funding from the West "lose their weight and lose their say". "This is not fair, it makes unequal conditions for political competition and thus we need to impose fair conditions so that all people have an opportunity to speak in equal conditions and in equal proportion," the expert said. (via Lower House approves foreign agent status for NGOs — RT).