Valentina Cherevatenko is the first rights campaigner in Russia to be charged with evading the 2012 law on "foreign agents". Source: Facebook.On the morning of 24 June this year, a search began of the office of the Women of the Don human and civil rights organisation, based in Novocherkassk in southern Russia. Three days later, the organisation’s coordinator Valentina Cherevatenko became the first person charged with an offence under the law which punishes those who “maliciously evade” the 2012 law against “foreign agents” — the term used to define Russian NGOs that receive funding from abroad and “engage in political activity”.
Cherevatenko is charged with “malicious evasion” of the requirements of the Russia’s “foreign agents” law: not only did she refuse to register her organisation as a “foreign agent”, but she set up a parallel charitable foundation of the same name which she also refused to register. Having refused to register, she also continued her work at Women of the Don, a serious breach of the law in itself.
The investigation into Cherevatenko is due to end next week, and I sat down with her to find out what’s going on.
