2023-08-17 16:06:00
Golos plays a key role in observing elections in Russia. Now Russian authorities are taking action against employees of the organization. Golos suspects that the Kremlin’s main concern is the presidential election.
Russian authorities are taking action against the independent election observation organization Golos with house searches and arrests. Several employees were taken to police stations for questioning. Allegedly, Grigory Melkonyants, one of the leaders of Golos, prepared activities of an organization undesirable in Russia, which could lead to criminal proceedings.
Specifically, this involves cooperation with the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), an association of election monitoring organizations in Eastern Europe, to which Golos also belonged until 2021.
However, co-chairman Stanislav Andreychuk said it had been a long time since we had actively worked with ENEMO. But over the past two years there have been repeated attempts to initiate proceedings “because one of the participants from Golos allegedly interacted with her. The reason was “that the ENEMO website said that Golos was part of this association even though there was no real interaction for two years,” says Andreitschuk.
“Rather because of the presidential elections”
He suspects that the actions of the Russian authorities are related to the upcoming elections in Russia. According to Andreichuk, this is intended to make it more difficult, if not impossible, to observe local, regional and gubernatorial elections in September. But the presidential election in spring 2024 will probably play the greater role.
“Now it’s said that criminal proceedings were opened because of the elections in September. That’s clear, but more likely because of the presidential elections in March,” Andreychuk suspects. “The wording of supporting the activities of an organization not registered in Russia only recently appeared in our legislation.” Searches are currently underway in several regions, according to Golos’ co-chairman.
Golos received the Andrei Sakharov Prize
The Golos election observers have existed since 2000. The organization was founded with the aim of guaranteeing the right to vote for the Russian population and contributing to the development of a free society.
After Golos was awarded the Helsinki Committee’s Andrei Sakharov Prize in 2012, the organization was declared a “foreign agent” in Russia. Golos denied accepting the prize money and refused to register as a “Foreign Agent”. A ban of several months followed.
But even after the Golos movement was re-established, the Russian authorities continued to take action against them – including fines, house searches and confiscations.
A Moscow court even ordered the dissolution of the Golos movement. In 2021 she was again put on the list of so-called “Foreign Agents”.
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