Malign Influence or Free Speech?

By

WASHINGTON D.C., September 20 (C-Fam) The Biden administration has condemned the government of the Republic of Georgia for adopting a law requiring foreign agents to register with the government during the same week that the Biden Justice Department obtained convictions of four Americans accused of being undisclosed foreign agents under similar U.S. laws.

The Biden administration announced sanctions against the politicians and officials who supported the new law on Transparency of Foreign Influence in the Republic of Georgia. The law requires groups, including news organizations, to register with the government as “serving the interest of a foreign government” if they receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad.

It is expected to affect groups funded by the U.S. government and EU powers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that work to drum up political support for Western causes, including LGBT issues.

At the same time, a federal jury convicted the leaders of a small black nationalist group based in St. Louis, Missouri and St. Petersburg, Florida for conspiracy to spread Russian propaganda.

The Department of Justice accused four members of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement of taking part in an ongoing “malign influence campaign” under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires foreign agents in the United States to register with the U.S. State Department and disclose their funding and activities.

The charges included spreading “Russian propaganda, as well as other information designed to cause dissension in the United States and to promote successionist ideologies.” Members of the group attended a 2015 meeting in Moscow and are said to have received $12,000 dollars to spread the message that the U.S. government was committing genocide against African people.

The indictment charges that the alleged Russian alliance with the Uhuru group is part of Russia’s efforts to “create wedges that reduce trust and confidence in democratic processes, degrade democratization efforts, weaken U.S. partnerships with European allies, undermine Western sanctions, encourage anti-U.S. and anti-Western political views, and counter efforts to bring Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European and international institutions.”

The jury acquitted the four black Americans of acting as Russian agents but found them guilty of “conspiring” to act as Russian agents. They face five years in jail.

In recent years, the FARA law has been used to prosecute Trump allies Paul Manafort and casino mogul Stephen Wynn.

The Western backed Geneva-based group Human Rights Watch tried to explain the apparent discrepancy between the Biden administration’s condemnation of countries who have laws against foreign influence and the prosecution of Americans who are found guilty under similar laws in the United States.

Human Right Watch argued there is no comparison between the new law in the Republic of Georgia and the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act because the “US law does not equate receiving foreign funding, in part or in whole, with being under the direction and control of a foreign principal. It primarily regulates lobbyists and does not serve as a mechanism for weakening civil society organizations and media.”

The Uhuru group insist they acted on their own accord and not at the behest of the Russian government and that the issue is one of free speech and persecution by the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter