[CivilSoc] Moscow Denying Visas to NGO staff

[Center for Civil Society International]

from Johnson's Russia List
#5368
27 July 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com
#2
Moscow Times
July 27, 2001
String of NGO Workers Denied Visas
By Nabi Abdullaev and Yevgenia Borisova
Staff Writers
Petra Prochazkova, a former Czech journalist who runs two orphanages
in Grozny, cannot get her visa renewed to get back into Russia. And
she is not the only one.
Several foreigners connected with nongovernmental organizations--some
active in Chechnya, others concerned with protecting the environment
or promoting democracy--have been denied Russian visas in the past
year or so. Most had been living in Russia for years.
The government's apparent reason for denying them visas is that it
considers their work a state security risk.
"I am asking for the visa for the fourth month running," Prochazkova
said in an e-mail message from Prague. "The Czech Foreign Ministry
and President [Vaclav] Havel try to resolve my problem, but no
success so far."
Prochazkova, whose husband is a Russian citizen, had been living in
Russia for about 10 years and had reported extensively on both wars
in Chechnya. Last year, she quit journalism to provide a home for 50
Chechen children who lost their parents.
She was expelled from Russia in February shortly after being
questioned by the Federal Security Service in Nazran, the capital of
Ingushetia, U.S. News and World Report said in its July 30 issue.
Since 1995, Chris Hunter from Britain has headed the Center for
Peacemaking and Community Development, a nongovernmental charity that
runs schools for Chechen refugee children and offers psychological
counseling to children traumatized by the war. He was not allowed to
return to Russia after going to Britain for a vacation in March.
"No explanations on the visa denial were given to me, and actually I
don't have firm reasons to seek political motives behind the
authorities' decision to keep me out of the country," he said by
telephone this week.
In March 2000, Hunter was among the humanitarian workers and human
rights activists who signed an appeal accusing the Russian leadership
of a "consistent and systematic policy of genocide" in Chechnya.
Japanese Buddhist monk Jungsei Teresawa put his signature next to
Hunter's. Teresawa, who had been distributing food in Chechnya and
Ingushetia since 1995, had his Russian visa denied in June 2000.
Teresawa spent 10 years in Russia, met Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev several times, and was the only Buddhist monk to come to
defend the White House in Moscow in August 1991, according to a
biography posted on Sangha.Narod.ru, a Buddhist web site.
"And now my activities in Russia, which began with the birth of the
new country, have been stopped because somebody put my name on the
FSB 'blacklist,'" Teresawa wrote in an open letter to President
Vladimir Putin in July 2000, which was posted on the web site.
Tobias Munchmeyer, a German national with Greenpeace International,
was denied a visa to enter Russia in December 1999.
"I connect the denial of a visa for me with my professional
activities as an environmentalist who opposes nuclear contamination,"
Munchmeyer said by telephone.
Munchmeyer sought explanations from the Foreign Ministry and in two
Moscow courts: the municipal court where the ministry is located and
the city court.
"The judges referred to Article 27 of the federal law on the Russian
Federation's entry procedures. The article permits the denial of
visas on security motives. But how I can be a threat to Russia's
security is what the judges failed to explain," he said.
Munchmeyer, who first came to Russia in 1991 as a graduate student,
was among the organizers of an environmental conference in Ukraine in
1995 dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear
disaster.
In 1999, he took part in publicizing protocols between the Russian
government and a Swiss company that indicated Russia's intention to
import nuclear waste, which at that time was illegal.
"We showed everybody the strength of nongovernmental organizations
and the international solidarity of the environmentalists,"
Munchmeyer said.  "I believe somebody above was scared, and my visa
denial proves it."
He actually received his new visa on Dec. 28, 1999, in Berlin, but
two days later he got a call from the Russian Embassy asking him to
come in because of some bureaucratic problems. His visa was annulled.
Munchmeyer also has been blacklisted in Ukraine, which he discovered
when he tried to visit his in-laws, U.S. News and World Report said.
His case and at least one other suggest renewed cooperation between
the secret services of former Soviet countries.
Pawel Kazaniecki, president of the Polish branch of the
Washington-based Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, was
stopped at Sheremetyevo Airport as he tried to enter Russia in
January. His group has been working in Belarus since 1994 providing
assistance to nongovernmental organizations and the independent
press.
"Our organization had no activities in the Russian Federation, and my
visits to Russia were sporadic and rare. I don't understand the
decision of Russian authorities to grant me person non grata status,"
Kazaniecki wrote in an open letter to the Russian ambassador in
Warsaw, which was published on the Human Rights Online web site.
His aide, Joanna Kowalska, said by telephone from Warsaw that he also
had trouble entering Belarus the last time. "He was repeatedly
searched and had his passport examined for a long time at the
border," Kowalska said.  "Since that time he hasn't tried to visit
Russia and Belarus--it just seems useless."
After Kazaniecki was denied entry to Russia, the Memorial human
rights group circulated a statement saying the decision was backed by
Russian, and probably also Belarussian, secret services.
An official in the Foreign Ministry, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said decisions on visa denial are not made by the
ministry.
"There is another organization in charge of that and you understand
which one," he said, going on to make clear he was referring to the
FSB.  The official confirmed that CIS countries coordinate their visa
decisions.
Although no explanation for visa denial is usually given, the usual
reason is state security concerns, said Valentin Gefter, the head of
Moscow's Human Rights Institute. The other reasons allowed by law
include a criminal record or refusal to provide an HIV test
certificate.
"Visa denials for certain groups, like human rights activists and
environmentalists, have become systemic. But I wouldn't connect them
with Putin; they started before his coming into power," Gefter said.