Russian lawmakers have advanced a bill letting federal prosecutors extrajudicially ban websites associated with organizations deemed “undesirable,” a label currently applied to a handful of American NGOs linked to the likes of former President Ronald Reagan and liberal donor George Soros, among others.
Members of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s legislature, approved a first reading of the bill Thursday, voting 327-0 in favor of adopting amendments to Russia’s already repressive internet law targeting non-governmental organizations.
Three lawmakers abstained from voting but no one opposed the measure, the Meduza news site reported.
Russia adopted legislation in 2015, the so-called undesirable organizations law, banning groups determined to pose “a threat to the foundation of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation, the defense capability of the country or the security of the state.”
Eleven groups are currently listed as undesirable, including the National Endowment for Democracy initiated by the Reagan administration and two groups tied to Mr. Soros, the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Foundation.
Russian law already lets the Attorney General’s Office extrajudicially blacklist websites promoting public unrest, extremist activity or unsanctioned protests. The bill advanced Thursday would amend this existing law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” by letting federal prosecutors ban the websites of undesirable organizations in the same manner as sites already covered.
Organizations considered undesirable by the Russian Attorney General’s Office are effectively barred under existing law from disseminating information inside Russia, including the internet. If the amendments advanced this week are passed into law, however, then the attorney general will be given the power to unilaterally ban the websites of groups deemed undesirable without judicial oversight, eliminating the odds of federal officials defending the bans in lengthy appeals courts proceedings, Meduza reported.
The bill “will allow timely blocking of distributed information materials,” according to an accompanying legislative filing.
Other American non-profits considered undesirable by Moscow include the U.S.-Russian Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Media Development Investment Fund, the International Republican Institute and the Institute of Modern Russia. Others in the same category include the locally-based Open Russia and Open Russia Civic Movement, as well as the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, an organization established under the U.S. German Marshall Fund in association with the Latvian and Romanian governments.
Passage of the bill’s first reading came the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin decried internet censorship during a meeting with the nation’s Security Council.
“We need to improve the security and stability of the infrastructure of the Russian Internet segment,” Mr. Putin said, according to Vedomosti, a Moscow-based newspaper. “At the same time I would like to stress that we can not talk about restricting the access of law-abiding citizens to the resources of the global network, some kind of total barriers and filters. It is necessary to strictly observe and respect the constitutional right to receive and disseminate information.”
Russian internet laws are among the world’s strictest, according to international watchdogs. Internet rights in Russia have steadily deteriorated during Mr. Putin’s tenure, the Freedom House think tank wrote in a 2016 report, and the nation ranked 148th out of 180 countries on the most recent edition of Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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