On May 9, 2005, during his visit to the Russian Federation for participation in the Victory Day Ceremony, President Bush met representatives of Russian non-governmental organizations, in particular human rights and ecological ones. There were 18 people from all over the Russian Federation and the American president had a brief talk with everyone. (14-MAY-05)
Then he heard speeches from three participants – Liudmila Alexeeva, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, the oldest and the most prominent human rights organization in the Russian Federation, Manana Aslamazyan, representing the Russian media-community and a representative of the “Physicians of World”. They said that Russian civil society hadn’t disappeared and hadn’t rotted away, but it has a lot of problems and difficulties because the good words of government don’t correspond with its actions.
Luidmila Alexeeva, in her short and emotional speech addressed to Mr. Bush, said that the Russian human rights community urgently needs financial support from abroad. “Socially oriented Russian businessmen have already become aware of the necessity to finance human rights activities, but they are afraid of oppression from the Government because human rights organizations openly criticize it”. Nobody wants to follow Hodorkovski, who was one of the most active donors for civil society and sponsored many human rights organizations. Summing up the results of that meeting she said that she didn’t expected any concrete consequences, it was a so called ritual obligatory meeting, but she considered it as an important sign for Russian authorities.
Liubov Vinogradova, the director of the Russian Research Center for Human Rights, commenting on this statement, expressed her deep concern about the limitation of international financial help for non-governmental organizations, because the Russian Federation has been going through a rolling-back of democracy and the situation with human rights has been deteriorating. In the conditions of rude violations of human rights, falsification of elections, strict limitations of media, total state control under court system and raise of xenophobia, intolerance and neo-fascist tendencies that are characteristic for present the Russian Federation, human rights organizations have to develop their activities and need international support more than ever before.
Meanwhile the authorities aspire to discredit independent NGOs in public opinion, pasting them with labels as the confederates of western interests. The Director of the Federal Security Service, Mr.Patrushev, has recently blamed independent non-governmental organizations for “preparing revolutions in the former soviet republics”. We hope that the democratic countries will use all possible means for putting pressure on the Russian Government with a goal to return the Russian Federation on the way of democratic development and strengthening rule of law and human rights values, as well as increasing their support for the civil society trying to oppose the anti-democratic changes in the Russian Federation.
Photos: Maria Paramonova
