Russia adds investigative news outlet Proekt to ‘undesirable’ organization registry

News

Russia adds investigative news outlet Proekt to ‘undesirable’ organization registry

July 18, 2021 10:02:09 am

The Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia on Thursday added Proekt, an independent investigative news outlet, to its registry of “undesirable” organizations. This move significantly reduces the scope of Proekt’s activities, labeling many of its journalists “foreign agents” and putting all its staff at risk of imprisonment. The designation also bans other news outlets from linking to Proekt’s materials or directly quoting them.

Referring to results of a purported study, the Prosecutor General’s Office stated that this decision was based on Proekt’s activities posing a “threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation.”

Proekt Editor-in-Chief Roman Badanin and journalists Olga Churakova, Yulia Lukyanova, and Maria Zheleznova were added to the registry of “foreign agents” by the Russian Ministry of Justice.

This was not Proekt’s first scuffle with Russian authorities. Russian police raided Badanin and journalist Maria Zholobova’s homes and detained Deputy Editor-in-Chief Mikhail Rubin in June after Proekt announced a new investigation into Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev’s alleged hidden wealth.

Those found to be working with an “undesirable” organization’s work in Russia in any capacity, including fundraising, can face between four to six years in prison. Additionally, individuals labeled “foreign agents” are subject to stringent financial auditing requirements and heavy fines. These individuals are required to include boilerplate text clearly displaying their respective designations on all items published, including social media posts.

As a further development in this matter, Proekt responded that the government’s action will not stop or reduce the scope of their journalistic investigations. It further stated:

The company Project Media, Inc. [US-based legal entity], registered in the United States…is being liquidated and no longer has a financial relationship with any journalists working in Russia . . . However, we as journalists continue to believe that our work is important and needed by our motherland. We’ll announce separately in what form our journalistic collective will continue its work.

Altogether, Russia has now blacklisted 40 foreign groups as “undesirables.”

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.