Human rights activists from Kazan tell about pressure from power agencies

In the afternoon on July 29, the Independent Press Centre hosted a press conference "Searches, interrogations, provocations, charges of tax crimes and terrorism against human rights defenders in Kazan", related to persecution by law enforcers of the Kazan Human Rights Centre and the inter-regional human rights association named "Agora".

Let us remind you that earlier the Human Rights Centre "Memorial" has already made a statement that the work of these two human rights NGOs was in fact paralyzed by law enforcement bodies.

Pavel Chikov, Chairman of "Agora", has emphasized that the human rights organizations have attracted attention of six agencies at once - the tax service, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), FSB, Prosecutor's Office and "Rosfinmonitoring" (Federal Agency for Financial Monitoring). However, as he said, the majority of auditors behaved rather correctly, except for MIA officers.

Thus, on July 20, officials from this Ministry held searches in the premises of the Association and Kazan Human Rights Centre. Under the description of Igor Sholokhov, Chairman of the Board of the Kazan Human Rights Centre, the search there lasted for more than 10 hours and ended at 2 a.m.

The same long search, according to Mr Chikov, was conducted in the rooms occupied by the "Agora" Association. Militiamen were mostly interested in documents on foreign grants received by the organizations. Numerous materials to this end were withdrawn.

As stated by advocate Irina Khrunova, the actions of MIA agents were accompanied by numerous violations - starting from the fact that they had the right only to make a survey in connection with one transaction executed by the "Agora" this year, but in fact they made a search and confiscated documents on the activity of both organizations for 3.5 years. Militiamen also demanded "to give out the documents obtained in the criminal way."

Candidate of jurisprudence Sergey Nasonov, expert of the NESP and Associate Professor at the Moscow State Law Academy, has noted that the decision on conducting "public operative-search actions" in the premises of human rights activists of Tatarstan is a mixture of legal regimes of two different types of operative-search actions"; the list of documents subject to withdrawal from civil activists was not specified; withdrawal of carriers of personal electronic correspondence without the decision of the court is illegal, as well as the whole law-enforcing act, presented to examination, proved to be illegal.

On the following day after the search, Messrs Sholokhov and Chikov were summoned to the Prosecutor's Office, where they were questioned again on reception of foreign grants.

At the present moment, inspectors try to find evidences of financial frauds and complicity in terrorism in the materials of the Association and the Centre.

Igor Sholokhov has named one of the most probable reasons of such energetic actions of power agents to be in the work of the Kazan Human Rights Centre and "Agora" Association aimed to bring some high-ranking officials of the MIA of Tatarstan to responsibility.

Mara Polyakova, a member of the Council at the President of Russia on contributing to development of civil society institutes and human rights, told in her interview to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent about her vision of the reasons of persecutions on human rights defenders. "Most likely, the case refers to spy scare, obsolete Soviet-time stereotypes that everyone who has contacts with foreigners; moreover, the one who gets money from them, acts against his state. They have no idea about charity that has no borders, that people from one country can and do help people from other countries. Besides, regional officials try to guess on the moods of their higher bosses and think that such prosecutions make a reliable way to demonstrate their loyalty. Another possible motive is in already mentioned professional work of human rights defenders," said Ms Polyakova.