MOSCOW: Russian authorities have placed a California-based environmental organization on its “undesirable” blacklist, claiming today it poses a threat to “Russia state security”.
The Pacific Environment group is the 15th body – but the first environmental one – to be blacklisted. It works to protect Pacific Rim communities and operates in the US as well as Asia and Arctic regions, according to its website.
But Russia’s General Prosecutor office said in a statement that it had been found to “pose a threat to the constitutional foundations of Russia and state security”.
The NGO would be added to the “undesirable organizations” register kept by the Russian justice ministry, it said.
The blacklist has so far targeted mainly American democracy-promoting organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, or groups controlled by people long reviled by Russian authorities, including George Soros and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
According to the NGO’s website, it helps locals, including indigenous people, with environmental projects in the Russian Far East and Siberia. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment about specific current activities in Russia.
A Russian environmentalist, however, said he was baffled by the news as the NGO had stopped supporting projects in Russia long ago. “It’s absurd,” said Mikhail Kreindlin, an employee of Greenpeace Russia.
Years ago, Pacific Environment “did a lot of good, including helping Russian NGOs fight American companies damaging Russian nature,” he said.
Entities put on the “undesirable” list are banned from issuing any publications in Russia and risk having their bank accounts blocked, while people cooperating with them could be hit with fines, jail time and Russian entry bans.
Russia has upped the pressure on civil society groups since Putin’s reelection in 2012 when it adopted the law which has allowed authorities to brand Russian groups engaging in broadly-defined “political activity” and that receive funding from abroad as “foreign agents”. The “undesirables” law targeting foreign organizations followed in 2015.
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