MOSCOW, April 22 (RIA Novosti) – Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of the Kremlin human rights council, has proposed scrapping the law on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Kommersant daily reported on Monday.
In his letter to Veniamin Yakovlev, the chairman of the Council for Codification and Enhancement of Civil Legislation, Fedotov asks him “to consider the advisability of scrapping the NGO law in the light of modernizing the Civil Code.”
“The non-commercial sector should be regulated by the Civil Code, which contains everything required to streamline the work of public and human rights organizations,” the paper quoted Fedotov as saying.
The human rights council has been considering several variants of amending the NGO law for about a week. Fedotov said on April 17 that about five different variants are being discussed.
A law that tightens control on NGOs and obliges those that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” was passed in Russia last year.
State officials have inspected dozens of NGOs across the country in the past few weeks to see how the law is being implemented, but have come under fire from international human rights groups and Western governments for carrying out unannounced and lengthy inspections.