{"id":49056,"date":"2025-05-14T06:12:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T10:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/russia-convicts-a-prominent-election-monitoring-activist-and-sentences-him-to-5-years-in-prison\/14\/05\/2025\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T06:12:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T10:12:50","slug":"russia-convicts-a-prominent-election-monitoring-activist-and-sentences-him-to-5-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/russia-convicts-a-prominent-election-monitoring-activist-and-sentences-him-to-5-years-in-prison\/14\/05\/2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia convicts a prominent election monitoring activist and sentences him to 5 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"\" data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A court in Moscow on Wednesday convicted one of the leaders of a prominent independent election monitoring group on charges of organizing the work of an \u201cundesirable\u201d organization and sentenced him to five years in prison.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia\u2019s leading election watchdog Golos, has rejected the charges as politically motivated. The case against him is part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/russia-ukraine-politics-government-moscow-3b87b02f607e09bcedf39d4698f23710\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:monthslong crackdown on Kremlin critics;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">monthslong crackdown on Kremlin critics<\/a> and rights activists that the government ratcheted up after invading Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Golos has monitored for and exposed violations in every major election in Russia since it was founded in 2000. Over the years, it has faced mounting pressure from the authorities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In 2013, the group was <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/europe-russia-elections-cfe66389729bc5c4da5893dc036ac98a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:designated as a \u201cforeign agent\u201d;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">designated as a \u201cforeign agent\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations. Three years later, it was liquidated as a non-governmental organization by Russia\u2019s Justice Ministry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Golos has continued to operate without registering as an NGO, exposing violations in various elections, and in 2021 it was added to a new registry of \u201cforeign agents,\u201d created by the Justice Ministry for groups that are not registered as a legal entity in Russia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It has not been designated as \u201cundesirable\u201d \u2014 a label that under a 2015 law makes involvement with such organizations a criminal offense. But when it was an NGO, it was a member of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, a group that was declared \u201cundesirable\u201d in Russia in 2021, and the charges against Melkonyants stemmed from that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Independent journalists, critics, activists and opposition figures in Russia have come under increasing pressure from the government in recent years that intensified significantly amid the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Multiple independent news outlets and rights groups have been shut down, labeled as \u201cforeign agents\u201d or outlawed as \u201cundesirable.\u201d Hundreds of activists and critics of the Kremlin have faced criminal charges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/russia-convicts-prominent-election-monitoring-092805952.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A court in Moscow on Wednesday convicted one of the leaders of a prominent independent election monitoring group on charges of organizing<br \/><button class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/russia-convicts-a-prominent-election-monitoring-activist-and-sentences-him-to-5-years-in-prison\/14\/05\/2025\/\">Read More &rsaquo;<\/a><\/button><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/cv\/apiv2\/social\/images\/yahoo_default_logo-1200x1200.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}