Valentina Melnikova: Ministry of Justice is trying to close "Soldiers' Mothers"

Valentina Melnikova, Executive Secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia (UCSMR) stated that the authorities are planning to stop the public organization "Soldiers' Mothers of Russia" in a judicial procedure.

"Today we received a summon from the Basmanny District Court of Moscow stating that according to the statement of claim of the federal Registration Service of the Ministry of Justice, the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia has been recognized as terminated," Melnikova told "Interfax" on Wednesday.

In her words, the court session on the said claim was appointed on May 18 this year.

"As a rule, a court summon from the Federal Registration Service of the Ministry of Justice is accompanied by a copy of statement of claim, however, this was not the case, and we are now lost in conjectures on what are the grounds of the Ministry of Justice to ban the Movement of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, which exists in the country for 17 years already," Melnikova stressed.

We remind you that on April 17 a scandalous Law "On Non-Governmental and Non-Commercial Organizations" (NGOs) came into force; the Law caused criticism from Russian and foreign human rights activists.

The Law on NGOs stipulates to make amendments into four acting legislative acts - the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, and three Laws - "On Closed Administrative-Territorial Formation (CATF)," "On Public Associations" and "On Non-Commercial Organizations."

The Law details the procedure of state registration of Russian and foreign NGOs and defines a list of necessary documents. In particular, for foreign NGOs a notification manner of registration is introduced, which, however, shall be hold not by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as it was until now, but at the Federal Registration Service.