Trial on liquidations of Human Rights Centre postponed till April

The Basmanny Court of Moscow has postponed consideration of the claim of "Rosregistratsia" (Federal Registration Service) demanding liquidation of the Russian Human Rights Research Centre (RHRRC), because of the claimant's failure to appear at the courtroom. "The court has postponed consideration of the claim of 'Rosregistratsia' on liquidation of the Centre till April 10 for absence of the claimants," Lyubov Vinogradova, director of the RHRRC, said on Monday.

She has noted that "on Monday representatives of the Centre gave the court all the necessary proofs of illegal actions of the "Rosregistratsia".

"In particular, we presented to the court our applications to 'Rosregistratsia' about the recent changes in the structure of the Centre, dated December 8, 2005; they were rejected because of small formalities as to formulations," Ms Vinogradova said. The "Interfax" reports that according to her story "after refusal we made a repeated attempt to get registered with account of corrected technical mistakes, however, the 'Rosregistratsia' rejected our application again, and then lodged a liquidation claim."

The RHRRC was founded in 1992, the "Regnum" reports. It is one of successful Russian examples of consolidating the efforts of independent human rights organizations, each of which is engaged in its particular sphere of defending human rights. Now, the RHRRC is the strongest charitable union of human rights activists uniting 12 organizations, Moscow-based and all-Russian human rights groups, among them: the Moscow Helsinki Group, Centre to Promote Reforming Criminal Justice, Group "Travel without Borders", Union of Russia's Committees of Soldier's Mothers, Foundation "Mother's Right", Association in Defence of Invalids' Rights, Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia and others. Every member of the Centre is presented in the Board, which defines the strategy of the organization and solves the main problems. The Board of the Centre includes such broadly known public figures like Valery Abramkin, Boris Altshuler, Valery Borschev, Yuri Savenko, Veronica Marchenko and Valentina Melnikova.

On January 10, 2006, the Ministry of Justice of Russia refused to enter the changes in the Board of the Centre into the United State Registry of Legal Entities. Earlier, Sergey Movchan, Director of the Federal Registration Service, said that the decisions of the Conference of the Centre of November 2, 2004, to form a permanently operating managerial joint body - the Board of the Centre - and election of the Director of the Centre acting without the power of attorney on behalf of the public association were illegitimate.

Knowing about the claim, Director of the RHRRC Lyubov Vinogradova was deeply indignant and immediately said that all the claims of "Rosregistratsia" were absolutely ungrounded. Irina Khrunova, a legal analyst of the Inter-Regional Association of Human Rights Organizations "AGORA", who is representing the interests of the RHRRC, has noted that the Ministry of Justice was frankly sticking to a formal approach in assessing the activity of Russian Non-Commercial Organizations (NCOs). In her opinion, the aim of the law, which had introduced the requirement to NCOs to present annual reports to registering bodies, was to exclude organizations-phantoms from the Registry. In practice, initially the Ministry of Justice, and now the "Rosregistratsia" are distorting the sense of this law provision by regarding a one-time delay of presenting data of an actively working organization as the basis for applying to the court on its liquidations. In any case, the situation with the RHRRC is still stranger, as all the documents were presented to the "Rosregistratsia".

"Today, we'll present all the proofs to the court that all the claim points have nothing to do with reality," Ms Khrunova said before the judicial session. "We'll prove that during the whole period indicated in the claim, that is, from 1999 to 2005, the Union of Public Associations 'Russian Human Rights Research Centre' operated in compliance with the current legislation of Russia and its Charter, on what fact the state bodies, including the Federal Registration Service of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, were duly informed."

Since September 2005, the Inter-Regional Association of Human Rights Organizations "AGORA" is engaged in complex monitoring of prosecution of Russian human rights activists and runs public investigation on such facts. During the above period, 31 facts of prosecution were registered, 11 cases are under public investigation held by advocates. Acting under the project of the Human Rights Centre of the city of Kazan named "Increase of the level of safety of Russian human rights defenders", the Association is ready to render gratuitous legal aid and present an advocate to all the human rights activists, exposed to pressure on the part of state bodies.