MINELRES: RFE/RL: NGO defending Meskhetians is threatened
MINELRES moderator
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Sat Jul 27 13:44:22 2002
Original sender: Emil Adelkhanov <[email protected]>
RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL (Un)Civil Societies
Vol. 3, No. 30, 24 July 2002
WHO IS REALLY THREATENED BY RUSSIA'S LAW ON EXTREMISM?
By Aleksandr Verkhovskii
... Recently the Novorossiisk Committee for Human Rights, an NGO
helping Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar Krai who are currently suffering
intense discrimination and denial of citizenship, was accused on local
television of "helping extremists with foreign money" and "grossly
interfering in the internal affairs of the krai." The group's leader
was summoned to the regional administration and told by the deputy
governor, "we will test the new law on extremism on your
organization." Within two days, police investigators came to their
office to collect legal and financial papers.
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Aleksandr Verkhovskii is a Moscow-based free-lance writer and analyst
for Panorama, a nongovernmental research institute monitoring social
movements in Russia, which will be releasing a detailed study of the
new law on extremism in August. Their reports can be found at
http://www.panorama.ru/works/patr/govpol. This article was translated
by Catherine Fitzpatrick.