Russian push on treason raises fears
By Michael Schwirtz
Sunday, December 21, 2008
MOSCOW: In a country where government critics already feel vulnerable, legislation to expand the definition of treason has inspired a new round of hand-wringing about how far the state will go to rein in dissenters and regulate Russians' contact with foreigners.
Even certain conversations with a foreign reporter could be "considered treason under the new legislation," contends Ernst Chyorny, the leader of a human rights group in Moscow, because they could be seen as "consultative" support to a foreign entity. And that, he says, could land a violator in prison for as long as 20 years.
As with existing law, the legislation would forbid actions considered detrimental to Russian security. But the legislation, if passed, would remove qualifiers that require such actions to be "hostile" and directed against the "external security" of Russia.
In addition, it would prohibit Russians from passing certain information not only to other countries but also to foreign nongovernment groups.
Many of those groups, which the Kremlin often accuses of fronting for spy agencies, have been among the most vocal critics of the government's curtailment of media and civic freedoms and the consolidation of power under Vladimir Putin, the former Russian president who is now prime minister.
Taken together, critics say, the changes could further muddle what they say are already ambiguous espionage laws and perhaps - at worst - presage a return of the Soviet-era practice of prosecuting government critics as traitors. But it remains unclear whether the bill will pass the Parliament in its current form, and, even then, whether and how the government would employ the rules.
Gennady Gudkov, a former intelligence officer who is a deputy chairman of the security committee in the State Duma, or lower house of Parliament, said some elements of the new legislation were unclear and could be amended when the Duma begins deliberating it, perhaps in January.
Government officials have defended the proposed changes, backed by Putin and his allies in the Russian security services, saying they are needed to clarify and update current laws that have failed to keep pace with the law-dodging ingenuity of modern spies, who, officials say, increasingly work through foreign nongovernment organizations.
The government became especially concerned about such groups because it was suspicious of their ties to the protagonists in the so-called "color revolutions" that toppled Kremlin-friendly governments in Georgia and Ukraine.
The new bill accompanies other legislative changes proposed recently that would appear intended to strengthen the control of the authorities as Russia succumbs to the effects of the global financial crisis.
In particular, some see the maneuvers as part of a strategy by Putin, who was an officer in the KGB and then the director of its successor, the FSB, to expand further the authority of his former security service colleagues, who have come to dominate the government since Putin came to power as president in 2000.
"The secret police de facto captured the government a long time ago," said Lev Ponomaryov, who leads the Moscow group For Human Rights. "Now they want to capture it de jure."
More worrisome, critics say, is that it comes on the heels of legislation, which hinges on the signature of the president, Dmitri Medvedev, that eliminates jury trials in treason cases, handing them instead to judges who are beholden to the government for their jobs.
Even the Public Chamber, which includes many Kremlin-appointed civic leaders, has condemned that measure.
"The legislation is motivated by the interests of the security services, which seek to eliminate the need to investigate criminal cases without legal violations as well as the need to prove the guilt of suspects in a real contest with defense attorneys before courts that involve representatives of the people able to hand down not only guilty verdicts but also acquittals," the group said in a statement last week.
People on both sides of the debate over the latest legislation agree that the old laws on treason and espionage were too vague. But critics say the proposals could further endanger those who run afoul of the security services, including employees of nongovernment organizations, journalists and academics - especially scientists.
Scientists have suffered the brunt of what critics have deemed "spy mania" by the security services in recent years, in good part because their work often involves sharing information with foreign colleagues - something that was intensely regulated in the Soviet era.
"Scientists are not able to communicate with one another, because it is unclear how this contact will be interpreted by investigators," said Anna Stavitskaya, a prominent human rights lawyer who has defended several scientists in recent years.
At least a dozen scientists have been charged with espionage, in cases pursued by the security services since Putin came to power. Prominent academics and human rights groups inside Russia and abroad have accused overzealous officers of fabricating evidence and pressuring judges in many of these cases.
In a rare embarrassment for the security services, investigators were forced last year to dismiss a case against two Siberian physicists, the brothers Igor and Oleg Minin, who were accused by the FSB of revealing state secrets in one of their academic works, even though their manuscript had been cleared by their university as containing no classified materials.
Chyorny, whose human rights group has defended scientists at the European Court of Human Rights, said he feared that the new legislation would make it much more difficult to overcome such accusations.
) or the believe in a slow transition to some milder forms of socialism. Very few people in the West actually believed that Eastern Bloc would collapse in few years, that Germany will be reunited and that countries like Poland could become members of the European Community (now called EU).
in Russian means exactly that, "Russian". With no pejorative connotations. 
