Valentina Cherevatenko is the first rights campaigner in Russia to be charged with evading the 2012 law on "foreign agents". Source: Facebook.Russian civil society received July’s news happily: the case against Valentina Cherevatenko, the first person to face criminal charges under Russia’s Foreign Agent law, was dropped. In June 2017, Cherevatenko, head of the Women of the Don human rights organisation, faced court proceedings for “maliciously evading the requirements of a Foreign Agent”. The Rostov-based rights defender faced not only a fine and community work, but a potential prison sentence of up to two years. She was accused of trying to circumvent Russia’s Foreign Agents law and “having a criminal intention” in registering a non-commercial foundation under the same name. The case against Cherevatenko was eventually curtailed due to “lack of evidence of a crime”.
If we unpack the legal details of this case, then it becomes clear that Women of the Don did, in fact, create a new foundation under the same name. There were concrete reasons for this: in 2013, as the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office conducted a wave of inspections at over 300 NGOs across the country, they found signs of “political activity” in the activities of Women of the Don. Although Women of the Don did not receive any foreign funding (the second condition that ensures any non-commercial organisation is placed on the register of Foreign Agents), the General Prosecutor’s Office requested the immediate inclusion of Women of the Don on the register for their “political activity”.
The General Prosecutor’s Office found another violation: Women of the Don is registered as a regional organisation in Russia’s southern Rostov region, but its work travels far beyond its borders — including, for example, Ukraine. The new organisation was thus created in order to work outside of Rostov, but was added to the Foreign Agents register in 2015.
