Russia fines the Committee for the Prevention of Torture for refusing to register as foreign agent
At the request of Russia’s Ministry of Justice, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture or CPT was fined 400,000 rubles for refusing to be registered as foreign agent, reported the head of the organization, Igor Kalyapin, writes Radio Liberty.
The CPT was previously named the Committee Against Torture. In 2015, human rights defenders reregistered the organization so that it would not have to be registered as foreign agent.
The organization is now being reregistered; therefore the fine imposed by the Ministry of Justice is assigned to an organization that, according to Kalyapin, has been under liquidation order for two months.
In January 2016, the CPT was added to the register of foreign agents ibn Russia. At that time, Kalyapin reported that the authorities had identified as foreign funding the donations from citizens whose employers had received money from abroad.
CPT was established following the termination of The Committee Against Torture in July 2015, which was also recognized as a foreign agent, after which the organization was closed.
Russian legislators are preparing a bill that would force some Western news agencies to register in the Russian Federation as foreign agents. They want to especially categorize Radio Liberty and Voice of America as such.
The reason for the bill was the request of the US Department of Justice to register the Russian foreign broadcaster RT in accordance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Russian government-controlled news agency Sputnik also requires the same registration.