Moscow (AsiaNews
/ Agencies) - Strict checks are being carried out by the Russian authorities on
the "non-commercial organizations" present in the country which also
include the Catholic Church. On
April 4, the director of Caritas center of St. Petersburg, Natalya Pevtsova,
reported that inspectors sent by the prosecutor and by the tax bureau, along
with officials of the Institute for Consumer Rights (Rospotrebnadzor),
conducted an inspection at the offices Catholic
organization in the capital of the North. She
relays that the employees and volunteers present were shocked. "They
checked everything from the condition of our toilet, to the documents relating
to charitable activities," added Pevtsova.
The
agents took away some papers and promised to communicate the results of the
inspection on April 8.
The
initiative of the authorities is part of wider testing conducted last month on
nongovernmental organizations financed from abroad, under the law passed last
year that requires them to register as "foreign agents."
Human
rights activists have denounced the crackdown as a move by the Kremlin to
silence civil society.
In
St. Petersburg, the controls began on March 19 and are officially aimed at
checking the presence of extremists or terrorists and health and safety standards
of the structures. There
are 5 thousand NGOs In the city of the Czars, as reported by Interfax.
Meanwhile,
a small Catholic parish in Novocherkassk in southern Russia, was among the
first victims of the wave of inspections. The
church has been sentenced for violation of fire regulations. The
parish priest, Father Alexei, must pay a fine of 675 euro. '' There are many possible explanations,
it may be political or just another way to control the NGOs, but if the
authorities want to solve the problem of fire regulations, they can do it in a
completely different way,'' the priest pointed out, denouncing the excessive fine.
For
now, there has been no official comment by the Episcopal Conference or by the
bishops of the dioceses. (N.A.)