The head of the “Nasiliyu.net” center will be deported from Georgia after being declared a “foreign agent”

The founder of the Russian crisis center “Violence.net”, which provides legal and psychological assistance to women who have suffered from abuse, was not allowed to enter Georgia, reports “Holod”.

According to Ryvyna, she flew to Georgia, where she has been living for the past few months, from Armenia. After three hours spent at the border, she was told that she would not be allowed to enter the country and deported, but did not inform about the reasons for such a decision.

The “Violence.net” center was created in 2015. Every year, its volunteers treat hundreds of women who have been victims of violence. In 2018, the center received the status of an autonomous non-profit organization. The management of “Violence.net” repeatedly appealed to the Russian authorities for financial support and applied for presidential grants, but did not receive a positive response. In fact, the organization exists on voluntary donations, including from abroad.

In December 2020, the Ministry of Justice of Russia entered the “Violence.net” center into the register of non-profit organizations performing the functions of a “foreign agent”. Anna Ryvyna said then that the decision was revenge for the organization’s promotion of the law against domestic violence, as well as for LGBT support. Later, the center was fined several times for non-compliance with the law on “foreign agents”. The total amount of these fines reached almost one million rubles.

On February 10 of this year, the Ministry of Justice of Russia declared Ryvyna herself a “foreign agent”. The department motivated this by the fact that the “Violence.net” chapter “distributed negative information about the activities of state bodies”, in particular – the Ministry of Defense.

• In March last year, the American magazine Time put Anna Ryvyna on its cover. In the material inside the issue, it was noted that Russian centers for helping victims of violence “are facing growing hostility from the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church,” and that the authorities “actually declared groups fighting domestic violence traitors.”