“The government can catalog its buttocks if it wishes!”.
This is how Nadejda Tolokonnikova, founding member of the protest rock group Pussy Riot, reacted to the decision of the Russian government, Thursday, December 30, to catalog her as a “foreign agent”.
Four other people - including the famous Russian satirical writer Victor Shenderovich and the art collector and gallery owner, Marat Gelman - have also been added to this list.
But none of these new “foreign agents” reacted with the same sense of provocation and flippancy as activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who was already sentenced to prison in 2012 for her participation in an anti-“prayer”. -Putin at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
“Very infamous label”
On social networks, she added to her statements a photo of her doing the middle finger and promised not to comply with the obligations incumbent on "foreign agents".
An exit which may give the impression that this status can be taken lightly.
It is not so.
First of all because it is symbolically stigmatizing: “It is a very infamous label.
He is compared in Russia to the status of 'enemy of the people' under Stalin ”, underlines Elena Volochine, correspondent of France 24 in Russia.
It is also a status that can have very concrete consequences for who bears the mark.
Thus, it is he who caused the loss of the NGO Memorial, added to this blacklist in 2015. Justice was based on “repeated violations” of the obligations incumbent on “foreign agents” to pronounce the much contested dissolution of this historic Russian human rights organization, Wednesday, December 29.
"For each of us, it's very, very hard"
01:46
Russian investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov chose exile on December 28, assuring that he could no longer bear the pressure of “unprecedented surveillance” to which he had been subjected since he was added, he too, on the list of “foreign agents” in October 2021.
Originally, Moscow justified the adoption in 2012 of a law establishing the status of “foreign agent” as a simple Russian version of a similar regulation that exists in the United States.
“This law does not prevent anything.
It is not binding and only serves to improve transparency in public life in Russia, ”Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the time.
For some time, the Russian authorities took care not to have too heavy a hand in the matter.
But “from 2014 and the annexation of Crimea, Moscow really begins to use this law more often,” says Elena Voloshin.
It then became clear to opponents of Vladimir Putin that this status of foreign agent will above all serve to harass and muzzle the opposition.
An international award may suffice
Since the turn of 2014, the Russian authorities have continued to extend the scope of this device while making it ever more restrictive. Thus, initially, only NGOs funded from abroad could be added to the list. The legislator then extended the regulation to the media in 2017. Two years later, it took a new step forward by allowing journalists and no longer just entities to be considered as “foreign agents”. Finally, since December 2020, it is enough to have “a political activity” and “financial ties with abroad” to risk ending up on this list.
Moreover, the Kremlin was careful not to define precisely what constitutes a “financial link with the foreigner”. “It is clear that he has a very broad appreciation of it,” notes OVD-Info, a Russian media outlet itself designated as a “foreign agent” by the authorities, in a report on the application of this status in Russia published in November 2021. The simple fact of participating in a press trip organized by a foreign entity, of receiving gifts from friends living abroad or of winning a reward in an international competition, note the journalists of OVD-Info.
Since September 2021, the financial link with abroad does not even seem necessary.
The FSB - Russian domestic intelligence service - has published a document that includes some sixty subjects related to the military sector - corruption in the army, development of new weapons, morale of the troops, etc. - which can earn a journalist the status of 'foreign agent if he is investigating these matters.
In this context, it is not surprising that the list continues to grow.
It went from less than 20 entities and people in 2019 to more than 110 in 2021. For some, the number of foreign agents thus designated even represents a gauge of the intensity of the hunt for opponents.
“The more the repression increases, the more names there are added to the list”, summarizes Elena Volochine.
And the fact of appearing there "is very restrictive from a logistic and operational point of view", assures the correspondent of France 24. It is necessary to make a report every quarter to detail its activities, to say what sums were received from it. abroad and how it was spent.
“I no longer have any privacy because the Department of Justice knows absolutely everything about me, down to the brand of stamps I use.
I have to fill in 84 pages of forms every three months to justify all my expenses, ”said journalist Lyudmila Savitskaya who found herself on the list of foreign agents at the end of 2020.
“Mined land”
Another obligation for these individuals: to specify in all their writings - books, newspaper, business card, social network - that they are “foreign agents”.
The slightest breach can lead to a fine, imprisonment or closure, in the case of NGOs or the media.
“It is also a roundabout way of preventing these people from using Twitter to express themselves,” writes OVD-Info.
The block of text that these “agents” must insert in each post occupies 220 characters out of the 280 maximum of a tweet.
"This law is a weapon all the more effective as it can be used retroactively", specifies Mark Galeotti, specialist in security questions in Russia, contacted by France 24. But for this expert, the main interest of this law in the eyes of power is “that it weakens those who are concerned”.
“Once you are on the list, you become vulnerable to other types of attacks, especially legal ones, because there are so many new obligations that you have to follow,” he says.
In other words, once we are thus stuck, “we enter a minefield”, concludes Dmitry Treshchanin, editor of Mediazona, an information site, in a round table on the scope of this statute diffused on YouTube in November 2021.
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