Soldiers’ Mothers, HIV/AIDS NGOs Under Attack & Anti-Fascist Murdered in Moscow
There are three rather disturbing articles in the April 20 edition of the Moscow Times that are worth mentioning.
The first, “Soldiers’ Mothers in the Crosshairs,” concerns how the Justice Ministry’s Federal Registration Service lawsuit against the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees. However, when the case was made public when the Soldier’s Mothers received a summons to appear at Moscow’s Basmanny District Court, it was dropped. Clearly, the government didn’t want to risk the bad press and potential public outcry that could potentially come by targeting this organization under the new NGO registration law. In addition, a court case would inevitably bring more attention to the horrible conditions in the Russian military. With increasing public disgust over dedovshchina, attempting to shut down the Soldier’s Mothers couldn’t produce anything positive. So writes the Times: Lev Ponomaryov, the head of For Human Rights, an NGO, said the ..read more
