Russia approves bill easing pressure on NGOs

MOSCOW — Russia’s lower house of parliament on Friday approved a bill easing restrictions on the country’s beleaguered human rights groups and other non-governmental organizations.

Observers say Russia is keen to show its liberal credentials ahead of President Barack Obama’s three-day visit to Moscow beginning Monday.

The Kremlin-loyal State Duma hurried through the bill’s second and third reading Friday. It cleared by a vote of 383 for to 57 against, with no abstentions.

The bill needs rubber-stamping by the obedient upper house of parliament before President Dmitry Medvedev can sign it into law.

The bill would amend a restrictive law passed three years ago under Medvedev’s predecessor Vladimir Putin, who said tight regulations were necessary to make sure that NGOs were not controlled from abroad.

The 2006 law requires organizations to file highly detailed reports about their activities for the previous year and the sources of their funding.

Medvedev has described it as “far from ideal,” and said it was wrong to see non-governmental organizations as “enemies of the state.”

His bill would also scrap a controversial clause in the current law that allows the government to close down NGOs that threaten Russia’s “national unity, uniqueness and cultural heritage.”

The Duma’s communist faction voted against the bill, saying the clause helped protect Russia from foreign influence.

Separate developments also likely — possibly designed — to please visiting U.S. officials were announced Friday.

Russia’s top investigator told Russian news agencies the probe into the 2004 murder of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov would be reopened. Obama was expected to bring up the subject during his trip.

Klebnikov dug deep into the darker side of Russian politics in his articles for Forbes magazine and was gunned down in central Moscow in a case that has come to trial several times but resulted in convictions that have been overturned.

Also Friday, the chief investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, told ITAR-Tass that authorities had composed a photo-fit of the suspected killer of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Markelov, who defended critics of the Kremlin and worked closely with opposition figures in Chechnya, was shot dead in a brazen broad-daylight attack near the Kremlin in January.

The cases of Markelov, Klebkinov and others are a cause celebre among Russia’s opposition politicians and independent media outlets.

Obama is expected to meet those figures during his visit.