VOA标准英语2012--Putin Introduces Measures to Curb Political Opposition

 

Putin Introduces Measures to Curb¹ Political Opposition²

For months, presidential candidate Vladimir Putin had to put up with protests. Now, President Putin is fighting back.

First, he pushed through a law dramatically raising fines for protest organizers. Now, he is pushing through a law that would require all foreign-funded non governmental groups, NGO's in Russia to carry the label: 'foreign agent.'

This would apply to the Russia chapters of such groups as: Amnesty International, Transparency International, and the World Wide Fund for Nature.

In 1976, Lyudmila Alexeyeva helped to set up the Moscow Helsinki Group to monitor human rights violations³ in the Soviet⁴ Union. Now 84, Alexeyeva says she prefers to let Putin shut the group down, rather than accept the label of 'foreign agent."

"I strongly declare to you that the Moscow Helsinki Group will never register as a agent of a foreign government, she said in an interview in her central Moscow apartment, because we are not an agent of a foreign government."

Olga Lenkova comes from the new generation of Russian dissidents. She works with Vykhod, or Coming Out, a St. Petersburg gay rights group. She says that the all-powerful Kremlin scares Russians away from giving money to opposition groups.

"There are a lot of NGOs that are funded from foundations that are based abroad, she said in her office in St. Peterburg. And if all of them are considered like foreign agents, then you are not supposed to criticize the government in any way. That is what our job is, to criticize the government and say things need to change."

Last week, one ruling party Duma deputy, Robert Shlegel, said that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, should be declared a 'foreign agent.' His Gorbachev Foundation receives foreign donations.

Aleksandr Sidyakin, who sponsored the foreign agent bill, wrote on his blog : "The ultimate goal of funding nonprofit organizations, as a form of 'soft power,' is a colored revolution." He added: "The United States is trying to affect Russian politics."

On Friday, the bill received the votes of 72 percent of members of Russia’s parliament, or Duma. A final vote is due in coming days.

The foreign agent bill comes after raids on apartments of protest organizers, arrests of protest participants and a new bill to control the Internet.

Carnegie Moscow analyst⁵ Masha Lipman says that Putin is steadily⁶ restricting freedoms in Russia in the two months since he was inaugurated to a third term as president, on May 7.

"Recently, there has been a clear trend toward a crackdown: The searchers; the raids; the new law; the ordinary protester being arrested, which is especially alarming because people identify very easily with somebody who is just a Muscovite, just a young person, just a businessman. And several of them have already been arrested. There is clearly the trend toward the crackdown," she said.

After all these restrictions⁷, the next test of Russia’s political opposition will come on July 26, the date for Moscow’s next big street protest.

1 curb   

n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制

参考例句：

• I could not curb my anger.我按捺不住我的愤怒。
• You must curb your daughter when you are in church.你在教堂时必须管住你的女儿。

2 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

3 violations   

违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸

参考例句：

• This is one of the commonest traffic violations. 这是常见的违反交通规则之例。
• These violations of the code must cease forthwith. 这些违犯法规的行为必须立即停止。

4 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

5 analyst   

n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家

参考例句：

• What can you contribute to the position of a market analyst?你有什么技能可有助于市场分析员的职务？
• The analyst is required to interpolate values between standards.分析人员需要在这些标准中插入一些值。

6 steadily   

adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地

参考例句：

• The scope of man's use of natural resources will steadily grow.人类利用自然资源的广度将日益扩大。
• Our educational reform was steadily led onto the correct path.我们的教学改革慢慢上轨道了。

7 restrictions   

约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则）

参考例句：

• I found the restrictions irksome. 我对那些限制感到很烦。
• a snaggle of restrictions 杂乱无章的种种限制