DUMA COMMITTEE RECOMMENDS SUPPORT
FOR DRAFT LAW ON RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS WITH FOREIGN FINANCING
Interfax-Religiia,
16 June 2015
The State Duma Committee on
Affairs of Public Associations and Religious Organizations on
Tuesday recommended the adopting on 30 June on first reading of
the government's draft of a law on religious organizations with
foreign financing.
The draft law proposes to
differentiate the object of inspections of the activity of
religious organizations, strengthening the right of the Russian
Ministry of Justice and its territorial agencies to conduct
audits of the financial and economic activity of religious
organizations in the event that they receive foreign financing.
The same pertains to cases where
there is in the activity of religious organizations signs of
extremism (terrorism) or other violations of legislation.
The draft law establishes the
obligation for religious organizations that receive financial
resources and other property from foreign and international
organizations or foreign citizens and persons without
citizenship to present to the Russian Ministry of Justice and
its territorial agencies a formal account of their activity, the
membership of administrative bodies, and information about
foreign financing.
"Other religious organizations
are exempt from the obligation to present an accounting," the
materials note.
The draft law reduces the number
of reasons for conducting unannounced inspections from five to
three.
The head of the duma committee,
Yaroslav Nilov, posed the question at a session of the committee
how to avoid incidents of sabotage during the implementation of
the provisions of this draft law and what would happen in the
event a noncommercial organization "of foreign agents" that
received foreign financing did not report this to the Ministry
of Justice.
"The ministry has the possibility
of receiving information about foreign financing not only from
religious organizations but, in particular, also from the
Rosfinmonitoring," the deputy director of the Department for NGO
Affairs of the Ministry of Justice, Anna Kotova, responded to
this.
"The Ministry of Justice will be
flooded with spam and letters will be written about how someone
has shown that somewhere some organization has signs of
extremism," Bishop Konstantin Bendas, the chancellor of the
Russian Associated Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith
(Pentecostals), expressed concern.
Meanwhile A. Kotova noted that a
similar mechanism already is being implemented in the case of NGOs "of foreign
agents," and cases of "spam" are rare.
The Russian Orthodox Church
supports the draft law, although there are several technical
points that require clarification for the second reading, Sister
Ksenia, the head of the legal service of the synod's Department
for Relations of Church and Society, told the session.
In his turn, Zinovei Kogan,
vice-president of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities
and Organizations in Russia also spoke in support of adopting
this initiative. (tr. by PDS, posted 19 June 2015)
FEDERATION OF JEWISH COMMUNITIES OF RUSSIA THINKS THAT NEW DRAFT LAW ON RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS WITH FOREIGN FINANCING UNDERMINES YET FURTHER THE PRINCIPLE OF SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM THE STATE
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR) sees a potential danger in the draft law on religious organizations with foreign financing. On 16 June a Russian State Duma's standing committee recommended the adoption of this document on 30 June on first reading, Interfax reports.
"The draft law evokes for me great caution. First, de facto, religious organizations have hitherto been singled out for sources of their income, and in this sense nothing will change," the director of the Department for Public Relations of FEOR, Borukh Gorin, said. He explained that for a religious organization that has foundations and charitable accounts "it is extremely difficult" to account for the source of all money and "this completely confuses the work of book-keeping."
"It is understandable that if there is an open account of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, some sums may be sent there from Australia or Argentina. It is extremely difficult to find the foreign funds and foreign origin of money, and a mistake may be made, and this will be in its turn a violation of the law, if it is adopted," the rabbi supposes.
In addition, in his opinion, "the new degree of control effectively changes yet further the separation of the church from the state."
"The new hooks on which any organization can be hung will make this organization extremely dependent both on government structures and on the Ministry of Justice. It is understandable that it will yet more be the case that if there is a person, then a law can be found," the news agency's interlocutor added [i.e., a case can be cooked up for anybody, if it is desired—tr.].
All of these factors are seen by the FEOR representative "as superfluous and potentially dangerous."
"We see what has occurred regarding the law on 'foreign agents' with public organizations. It is a monthly agitation of society: an organization either engages in illegal activity or its does not engage in illegal activity, but the question of from where it pays a salary is completely secondary, having nothing to do with the actual activity of the state," B. Gorin thinks.
In his opinion, if such an event involves religious organizations, then "we will become witnesses of how various organizations are continually being hung on this hook, primarily nontraditional organizations, and then also traditional religions," which, the news agency's interlocutor suggests, "will increase tension between religious organizations and the state."
"All of this outweighs the possible benefit that the authors of this draft law see," the representative of FEOR concluded. (tr. by PDS, posted 20 June 2015)
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