HRC "Memorial" reports NGO checks in Chechnya

In Chechnya, power agents check the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that receive foreign funding; their employees are accused of "engagement in subversive activities," the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" reports.

According to the HRC "Memorial", power agents started checking Chechen NGOs in late January 2017.

The checks are conducted by employees of the department for economic security and counteracting corruption of the republic’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the Centre to Combat Extremism (CCE) under the same Ministry, the local department of the FSB, as well as employees of the Chief Department of the Russia’s MIA for the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD), the HRC reports.

"First of all, the checks cover the NGOs, which receive foreign funding. Activists and employees of these NGOs are questioned and blamed for involvement in subversive activities, act as foreign agents, but appeal to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) asking not to put them on the ‘Register of NGOs that perform the functions of foreign agents’," says the release of the HRC "Memorial", received today by the "Caucasian Knot".

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.