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English Language Page To illustrate the above, the Presnya district authorities refused to endorse a rally planned for July 13, 2001, at the International Trade Center in Moscow. This rally was in protest of Beijing being offered to host the 2008 Olympic Games despite the gross and persistent human right violations in China. In this particular case, the local authorities violated the established time period for issuing a denial (1). The negative ruling was received two (rather than three, as required by the law) days before the scheduled event. In addition, the denial was justified by “the specified grounds being too close to flammable and explosive sites,” this circumstance allegedly making it “impossible for the scheduled rally to be conducted (2).” Nearly the same farfetched reasons had been given in connection with the ban of a public rally in support of Chechnya’s independence arranged by a group of political activists from the Revolutionary Contact Association, Democratic Russia and Russian Movement for Chechen Independence. The picket line was barred because the Moscow authorities allegedly lacked the resources to assure security of the participants (3). Clearly, that denial was wholly groundless, particularly given that the numerouse similar protest events already held in Moscow against the ongoing military operations in Chechnya had never been accompanied by any sort of public disorder. What is more, in Moscow, there has not been a single event where the authorities failed to provide for security of participants. The reason underlying the decision to forbid yet another anti-war event — a rally by the activists of the Anti-Militarist Radical Association and Radical Party against the War in Chechnya, planned for May 25, 2001, in front of the building of the Podolsk-district military registration office — was the official knowledge that some of the participants would allegedly be residents of Klimovsk (incidentally, located within the Podolsk district) rather than Podolsk (4). The desire to ban any anti-war public events that might be against the country’s official domestic policy is known to have made local government officials come up with any and all “adequate solutions” (which happened to be absurd in this case) to prevent the targeted activity from taking place. There are also good reasons to believe that the Moscow–Grozny Peace March was aborted simply because the government wanted to restrict undesirable political events. On August 1, 2001, participants of a hunger strike (launched on July 14) in the tent-camp near Sleptsovskaya (Ingush Republic) and human rights activists (who had joined the strikers) led by A. Liuboslavsky (5) and V. Shaklein began the Peace March. They had walked less than 100 meters when the local law enforcers stopped them (6). While operating within the law, the police started to check identification papers of the participants of the march. Several persons were detained for lack of required registration markings in their passports. Those detained included A. Liuboslavsky and V. Shaklein, who later received an official warning (7) from a local court of law, even though it was in contradiction with procedural rules (8). Though the Russian human rights organizations did properly notify government officials of the event and asked them to provide the requisite support services along the Peace March route, as of July 31, 2001, they had not received any response from the relevant agencies. Thus, the authorities stopped the Peace March without even taking care of officially prohibiting it in advance. Farfetched reasons are used to terminate open-air public protest events that have already received authorization. The law enforcement officers assigned to maintain law and order often use any technical glitch to cut short an ongoing public action. To provide an example of this effect, on July 12, 2001, Greenpeace held a public rally protesting spent nuclear fuels being brought into Russia from other countries. The protest took place on the Red Square, after dark. While participants stood quietly holding burning candles, the police did not interfere. However, as soon as the protesters attempted to create a symbolic river out of the burning candles, law enforcement officers quickly moved in to disrupt the action. Sometimes, an effort to stage an open-air event that had already been permitted by authorities can be undermined by local officials, who resort to indirect measures designed to belittle the event’s social relevance or interfere with the end result. For example, many St. Petersburg residents seeking to attend a pro-NTV television network rally last year could not reach the specified location time because the nearby metro station Gorkovskaya was closed. Neither the city administration nor the metro management were prepared to explain why that particular metro station had its doors shut for the given period with out prior notice. Local procedural rules for processing applications for public rallies sometimes can result in the scheduled open-air functions never taking place. The Chita city administration, for example, in handling open-air public event notification matters, uses a local procedure under which any application filed after 16:00 hours is registered as an application filed the following day. This technical trap has resulted in some public organizations being unable to stage their events. Sometimes, already authorized political events can be denied for no apparent reason, right in the middle of the given activity. For example, on November 12, 2001, members of the Novoaltaisk town police department (Altai territory) interfered with a picket line that was staged with the proper authorization near the town hall. V. Bychkov, deputy of the local town assembly and one of the organizers of the event, was detained. The goal of the picketers was to incorporate a provision into the town’s charter that would reduce the mayor’s powers and enhance the legislative assembly members’ responsibilities. V. Bychkov spent about an hour in detention, during which time “the town police officials demanded that clarifications of some of the statements made at the open-air rally be given.” To emphasize, the local police blatantly violated the principle of immunity of members of representative power bodies. The 2001 human rights monitoring effort did not record any major violations of the right to create public associations. One exception to this has been the constraints placed on the rights of some religious organizations, specifically the denial of the Moscow-based chapter of the Salvation Army’s application for re-registration (as is described in detail in the Chapter “Freedom of Belief…”). Although most of the public organizations seeking to secure a legal status eventually obtain appropriate registration, it needs to be emphasized that the very process of registration often becomes excessively protracted. This often occurs because officials are reluctant to help interested parties fill out the needed documentation. Often, officials exert pressure on the applicants to make them amend certain points in their charters. Apparently, the registration procedure has been intentionally kept cumbersome because certain regional-level government agencies want to decrease the number of public organizations, especially those geared toward political activities. In another example, while the Volgograd regional administration’s legal department officials have persistently, though not always consistently, been critical of the documents submitted for registration of pubic organizations, they have been unwilling to provide even basic guidance (posting samples of the filled-out documents, etc.) for persons seeking to establish a public association. Members of local advocacy groups have repeatedly told the various NGO in the Chita region that the regional justice department official who deals with registration of public organizations has been rather harsh with applicants. They report that instead of responding to queries about public organization charter requirements, this official would rather direct visitors to the nearest law firm. In denying registrations, he usually referred to one particular technicality. When the application would be resubmitted with the relevant technical error corrected, he would point out another minor technicality, etc. Thus, the applicants often had to resubmit their charter documents many times, with the waiting period (fixed by law) for the application to be reconsidered each time being one whole month. Similar reports of difficulties related to registering public organizations have been coming from the Lipetsk and Sverdlovsk regions. The July 2001 Federal Law “On Political Parties” has made the process of creation, registration and operation of political parties in Russia even more difficult. Under the said law, a public organization can call itself a political party only if it includes no fewer than 10 000 members (Sub-Clause 2, Clause 2, Article 3), maintains regional chapters in more than one-half of the subjects of the Russian Federation (Sub-Clause 1, Clause 2, Article 3), and has regional chapters of no fewer than 100 members (Sub-Clause 2, Clause 2, Article 3). In addition, one subject of the Russian Federation can only have one regional chapter (Sub-Clause 1, Clause 2, Article 3), and members of any given regional chapter shall not hold membership in the relevant political party chapter located in another Russian region (Clause B, Article 23). Any newly created political party is required to provide the pertinent governmental agencies the information related to its members (Clause 6, Article 19; Clause 16, Article 27). Political parties already in existence that did not take part in the 1999 parliamentary elections are required to re-register. And for that, they need to meet the newly established rules as to the total number and size of regional chapters (Sub-Clauses 3d and 3e, Article 41). The documentation should be submitted to the registration authority within six months (Clause 3, Article 15). Though regional chapters are registered only after a given political party has been registered nationally, the lack of a single document (like the minutes of a general meeting of a regional chapter where membership is appropriately indicated) can be sufficient grounds for a registration application to be turned down. Clearly, the establishment of membership quotas serves to limit participation in the country’s political system to parties that can maintain a federal level of organization. Political parties created to push political and legal interests on the regional or local levels can easily lose the status of a political party. Their only alternative option is to convert their status into a public organization. Importantly, the legal requirement for a newly registered political party to keep the registration authorities informed of the party’s membership can significantly complicate the effort pursued by some regional party chapters to recruit new members. On the other hand, the goal of having political parties larger in size and better equipped for effective growth would be achieved, and this could be beneficial for society. But the smaller and low profile political parties will be affected particularly negatively by the new legal constraints. To come back to the issue of regulating open-air public events arranged by public organizations in the provinces, it should be pointed out that regional lawmakers have passed ambiguous statutes containing provisions that could be used to either ban or severely constrain political events by specifying authorized locations for public activities. On October 17, 2001, deputy head of the Krasnodar city administration issued Directive ¹803R “On New Measures to Bolster Public Order Within the City of Krasnodar.” The document ruled to “ban through January 1, 2002, any and all pickets, rallies or marches in the area of government or local administration buildings within Krasnodar.” Karachaevo-Cherkessia had a presidential decree issued on April 17, 2001, to impose a moratorium on holding large functions arranged by ether public or political organizations. The decision was motivated by the need to appropriately pursue the “Vikhr-Anti-Terror” operation, with local lawmakers of all levels turning to the President of Karachaevo-Cherkessia with a request to temporarily veto all meetings, rallies and pickets, except for public gatherings on national and religious holidays. There have been a number of cases when the local courts of law ruled in support of individual appeals against regulatory acts designed to constrain the freedom of peaceful assembly. For example, the head of the Khabarovsk territorial administration issued a directive on October 29, 1998, to confirm the regulations for social and cultural activities to be conducted on the city’s Lenin Square that had just been completely renovated. Sub-Clause 2.2 of these regulations, for one, bans any political (in fact, any public) functions on the Lenin Square. The October 12, 2001, ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation retrospectively invalidated this restrictive document. (1) Notably, a Presnya district authority confirmed in his conversation with one of the action participants that the denial decision came from a technicality. Also, he referred to a directive from the parent authority . The Moscow-based special police moved in to detain the protesters against the 2008 Beijing Olympiad. See:Prima (July 13, 2001, ¹297). (2) Ibid. (3) Participants of the rally in support of Chechen independence were detained by the police. See: Kolokol.Ru (December 25, 2001) The local district authority’s banning orders notwithstanding, the public event was held on September 6, 2001, in Moscow in the area of the Kitai-Gorod neighborhood. The police detained participants because slogans were too provocative. (4) “No Rallies in the Town Next Door.” Prima (May 16, 2001, ¹255). (5) The hunger strike participants unanimously voted to have A. Liuboslavsky head the Peace March. Steering Committee. See more in A. Liuboslavsky’s “Official Moscow Wanted No Peace March on August 1, 2001. It Hated to Hear of It.” of Human Rights and Freedoms: All-Russian Magazine of Regional Human Rights Organizations (August–September 2001, ¹16). (6) “Police Disrupted Peace March.” Prima (August 1, 2001, ¹310). (7) The court proceedings had been conducted with an incomplete body of the requisite participants, without a secretary, with no records being taken, with no judgment being made public. See more in A. Liuboslavsky’s “Official Moscow Wanted No Peace March on August 1, 2001. It Hated to Hear of it.” Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms: All-Russian Magazine of Regional Human Rights Organizations (August–September 2001, ¹16). (8) “Grozny–Moscow Peace March Disrupted. Statement by Human Rights Organizations.” Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms: All-Russian Magazine of Regional Human Rights Organizations (August–September 2001, ¹16). Back |
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