The Interior Ministry has slapped restrictions on aid workers in Chechnya, adding to difficulties posed by new rules that require nongovernmental organizations to produce paperwork such as the death certificates of founding members.

The new rules mean NGOs must obtain approval from the security services for their staff movements weeks in advance and report to police on their trips when they leave Chechnya.
"This is terrible. We are checking what these regulations are. They will make work impossible," said a worker at one foreign NGO active in Chechnya, who asked not to be identified.

Meanwhile, NGOs have until mid-October to register under a new law, which sharply increased state monitoring of foreign and local organizations and sparked controversy when rushed through the parliament last year.
NGOs active in the North Caucasus were diverting resources to pulling together the paperwork required by the new law when they suddenly received the new rules about their Chechen operations. They must report to the authorities on arrival and officially accredit and check all local staff with the Federal Security Service.

The rules sent to NGOs this month, in an Interior Ministry letter dated June 2, add strict controls on movement, as well as requiring notice of all staff movements to be given in advance and reporting to the ministry on departure.

NGOs provide food, medical care, psychological help and other services to Chechens, whose homeland has been wrecked by more than a decade of armed conflict.

Other NGO workers contacted also asked not to be identified, citing the sensitivity of attempts to secure registration, but said the regulations clearly exposed the lie in Kremlin statements that the Chechen war was over.
"It seems so hypocritical that after so many statements that the counter-terrorist operations are over, such a thing comes out," an aid worker said.

Western leaders have criticized President Vladimir Putin for allowing the liberties of rights groups and NGOs to be eroded.
An aid worker said it was necessary to provide passport details for all people on the original founding document of the NGO "and death certificates, if they are dead."

Another described needing to have documents officially translated and repeatedly sent back and forth between their organizations' home country and Moscow. "It's like Kafka's wet dream. There's this many documents," the worker said, indicating a thick file with two hands apart.

Stephen Tull, head of UN humanitarian coordination agency, said he would raise the NGOs' concerns with the government.
"This Monday, we had the first UN convoy in two years turned back," he said. "We go in on a regular basis, but we were told on a couple of checkpoints we did not have the right papers. Our convoy leader decided to turn back."