Russia's "foreign agents," slander laws in tune with "intl practice" - official
MOSCOW. July 25 (Interfax) - Recent Russian laws to confer "foreign agent" status on foreign-financed nongovernmental organizations engaging in politics and tighten penalties for slander and libel "to no extent run against any of the international commitments" of Russia, said the Russian Foreign Ministry's human rights commissioner.
The new laws "take account of international practice and contain a whole series of provisions that are milder, calmer, more elastic that legislation in some other states," Konstantin Dolgov, commissioner for human rights, democracy and rule of law, told online newspaper Gazeta.ru.
He claimed that many of the international organizations and foreign officials who have criticized the laws had not properly read them.
"How can you publicly criticize anything without having read the product, without having read the object of your criticism, without familiarizing yourself with it? Well, this, you know, smacks of unprofessionalism, to put it mildly," he said.
