MOSCOW — A Moscow court on Friday ruled that the country’s sole independent election watchdog had broken Russian law by publishing citizens’ complaints of campaign abuses during the run-up to parliamentary elections this weekend.
Early Saturday morning, Golos’s director, Lidiya Shibanova, was detained for questioning after she flew into Sheremetyevo airport, said her deputy, Grigory A. Melkonyants. State-controlled television on Friday aired a documentary suggesting that Golos was being used by Western governments to spark Arab-spring-style civil unrest after the Russian elections.
Friday’s court ruling related to Golos’s “Map of Violations,” which has attracted more than 4,500 reports alleging illegal campaign tactics, including stories of employers threatening workers with pay cuts and local officials ordering business leaders to pressure subordinates. Most of the reports concern the ruling party, United Russia, which, with its popularity sagging, is struggling to preserve its control of Parliament in Sunday’s vote.
The Obama administration criticized the court decision and “what appears to be a pattern of harassment directed against this organization,” said a spokesman for the National Security Council, The Associated Press reported.
Judge Svetlana K. Kalantyr ruled that Golos had violated a law that prohibits news outlets from publishing polling data during the five days before an election, and levied a fine of 30,000 rubles, or about $1,000. The major complaint voiced in recent days, however, is that Golos, which was established in 2000 and whose name means “vote” in Russian, receives funding from the United States and other Western governments.
Pressure from authorities has mounted to the point that Golos’s 3,000 election monitors may not be able to observe voting on Sunday, Mr. Melkonyants said. Police on Friday searched a Golos field office in Siberia, and several election observers were warned not to take part, according to the group.
“They are trying to discredit our work in the eyes of the public,” Mr. Melkonyants said. “I think there will be more cases against us. This is only the first one.”
The Kremlin is scrambling to shore up United Russia, which is almost certain to lose the two-thirds majority it has enjoyed since 2007, and to dissuade those inclined to cast a protest vote. During an appearance in St. Petersburg on Friday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin appealed to the public to support a consolidated government, lest “the entire mechanism stops operating.”
If “ you and I sitting at TV screens see lawmakers pulling each other’s hairs, beating and spitting at each other, as it happened here once and happens in some of our neighboring countries, we will not have concerted, effective work,” Mr. Putin said. “If someone wants to see a show, they should go to the circus, or the movies, or the theater.”
A documentary that aired Friday on the NTV channel, which is owned by the national energy giant Gazprom, juxtaposed footage of the group’s training sessions with images of street protests and fistfuls of hundred-dollar bills.
The legal charges were triggered by a letter from Vladimir Y. Churov, the head of the Central Election Commission, to the Russian prosecutor, which describes the organization’s work as “an attempt to appropriate the powers of state authorities.”
Mr. Churov’s letter, which was read aloud in the courtroom on Friday, argued that most of the complaints on the “Map of Violations” were against United Russia. He went on to say that “the activities of the association actually inhibit the election of registered candidates from one (particular) political party, and the party’s achievement of a certain result in the election.”
Aleksandr V. Kynev, chief of analysis at Golos, said Mr. Churov’s letter made it clear that the case had political goals.
“We can see the underlying political motivation is now flying right into the middle of this legal proceeding,” Mr. Kynev said, describing the hearing as “theater of the absurd.”
Russian law allows organizations to accept funding from foreign governments, but bans such organizations from campaigning for candidates.
The documentary broadcast on Friday said that during a search of a Golos office in the Russian Far East, the police found fliers that encouraged voters to check every box on Sunday’s ballots, rendering them invalid, a tactic being promoted as an act of protest. A local representative explained that a visitor had left the pamphlets behind, but the announcer apparently was not persuaded.
“The question arises,” he intoned, in an ominous voiceover, “what are supposedly ‘independent election observers’ doing with fliers from the radical opposition?”
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