Would make some on here very happy I think?
From International wing of NY Times:
April 1, 2013, 4:48 am
2 Comments Repression in Russia, in Black and White By
MASHA GESSEN MOSCOW — They came for the human rights activists, the environmentalists, the L.G.B.T. activists, the Catholics and every other nongovernmental organization they could find. Throughout the last week and a half,
authorities all over Russia have been conducting raids on nonprofit groups.
The work of the nonprofit sector has been effectively paralyzed.
There have been at least a hundred raids, and hundreds more are expected. The raids usually involved the prosecutor’s office and the tax police, but some organizations have also been visited by the fire marshal, health inspectors and even the Emergencies Ministry. The authorities have demanded financial documentation but also sifted through the trash and taken apart air-conditioners.
NGO staffers have been posting on their blogs
pictures of stacks of binders and papers — the thousands upon thousands of pages of documents assembled to satisfy the authorities’ demands. The work of the nonprofit sector has been effectively paralyzed and, if the raids continue, will be for months.
“Why now?” Western media have asked. Were the
Russian authorities this scared by last year’s protests? Has the
liberal part of the elite lost out to the hard-liners? President Vladimir Putin has in turn issued
an obtuse defense of the raids, claiming that they are at once routine and a response to an extremist threat. With the Kremlinologists trying to read meaning into nonsensical attacks and the Kremlin obscuring any sense that can be found, Russia has never looked more like the Soviet Union.
