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Law on NGO - foreign agents should not exist - Alexei Kudrin

Kudrin did not refuse the civil society should exist and stressed “we should not have this element of humiliation, insults, inspections, which would not allow to work”

MOSCOW, November 23, 11:28 /ITAR-TASS/. Head of the Civil Initiatives Committee, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin says the law on non-governmental organizations - ‘foreign agents’ should not exist.

“This law should not exist. Or, we should reword it completely,” he said on Saturday at the opening of the All-Russian Civil Forum, organized by his Committee.

Kudrin did not refuse the civil society should exist and stressed “we should not have this element of humiliation, insults, inspections, which would not allow to work.”

The All-Russian Civil Forum, which takes place on Saturday in Moscow, features representatives of 1,000 non-governmental organizations and civil activists. The main objective is to “outline key problems, which prevent Russia’s development, and to approach settlement of those problems by the civil society,” the organizers say.

The law, adopted in summer of 2012, reads a non-governmental organization, which carries out functions of a “foreign agent,” is a Russian non-governmental organization, which receives monetary funds or any other assets from foreign states, international and foreign organisations, foreign citizens, stateless persons or their representatives and/or from Russian companies, which are receiving assets or any other property from the said sources, and which participate, including in the interests for foreign sources, in political activities in the territory of the Russian Federation.