Russia orders to expel American human rights activist

Vanessa Kogan has been living in Russia for 11 years

Credit: Handout

Russia has ordered to expel a prominent American human rights activist in the latest attack on NGOs speaking out against official abuse.

Vanessa Kogan, director of the Moscow-based Justice Initiative, told the Telegraph on Thursday that she was informed on Wednesday that her citizenship application had been rejected and her residence permit cancelled. The mother of two has been given two weeks to leave Russia.

Mrs Kogan, who has been living in Moscow for eleven years and is married to a Russian, was told that her residence permit was revoked as the FSB security agency deemed her to be a “threat to national security.”

Justice Initiative has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for years, providing legal support for people affected by counter-terrorism operations in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus as well as victims of domestic violence.

While Russian courts would often rule against people caught up in violence in the North Caucasus, they would often turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg as the final destination for legal redress.

Justice Initiative has helped over 1,200 people win more than €25.5 million in compensation from the Russian state in ECHR rulings in the past two decades.

Russia has long bristled at ECHR decisions which allowed thousands of Russians to find justice in Strasbourg after losing multiple cases in their own country.

Mrs Kogan on Thursday described impending expulsion as a payback for her work, revealing that she was “repeatedly” approached by FSB agents in 2017 when she first got her residence permit in Russia.

“I refused to cooperate with them,” she told the Telegraph.

“They were probably under the impression that I owed them something since I received my residence permit.”

She decided to apply for Russian citizenship earlier this year as a way to protect herself from state pressure.

US human rights activist Vanessa Kogan says Russia's decision to expel her could separate her from her family amid the global pandemic

Credit: Handout

Several foreign human rights activists were expelled from Russia at short notice in recent years in an apparent retaliation for their work.

“This Damocles’ sword is always over your head: that you can be sent out of the country that you love, so you begin to self-censor,” Mrs Kogan said, adding that she recently stopped speaking publicly and even cut down her social media presence in order to ward off unwanted attention from officials.

Justice Initiative, a partner of the Netherlands-based Stichting Justice Initiative, has been under increasing official scrutiny. Its office in the North Caucasus was recently labeled foreign agent, and several of its branches in Russia were raided by authorities.

Dozens of Russia’s most prominent human rights advocates on Thursday signed an open letter in Mrs Kogan’s support and urged authorities to reverse their decision to revoke her residence permit.

“If Russian authorities believe that protecting the victims of domestic violence, torture, abductions and forced disappearances is a ‘threat to national security’, that means that their idea of a ‘threat’ contradicts opinion of the majority of people in our country,” the letter signed by the Moscow Helsinki Committee and others said.