CoE SG Jagland urges Duma to amend law on foreign agents
MOSCOW. May 21 (Interfax) - The adoption of the law which rates foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations as foreign agents was a mistake which needs to be corrected, said Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland.
It was a mistake, he said, to name nonprofit organizations financed from aboard "foreign agents." Nonprofit organizations receiving funding from the Russian budget are not state agents, he said. Likewise, organizations funded from abroad are neither spies, nor traitors, he told the State Duma's International Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
Hopefully, lawmakers did not want to create this very image for nongovernmental organizations when they were adopting this law, he said.
But this is the way the term "foreign agent" is perceived by many, especially in Russia, where Soviet-era history is still fresh in memory, Jagland said.
Nongovernmental organizations all across Europe are the Council of Europe's important partners, he said, noting that he knows many of Russia's public figures who are respected globally.
"Their portrayal as foreign agents arouses absolutely inappropriate suspicions about all nongovernmental organizations, as well as the misconception that election monitoring is an anti-Russian type of activities, he said.
The thought that nongovernmental organization Memorial, or the Moscow Helsinki Group may be named foreign agents, arouses surprise among all those who have at least some idea of Russia's recent history, Jagland said.
