Our Collective Conscience •  hatred” and that, in future, he would have to clear all his articles with the prosecutor’s office prior to publication.65 5. Excessively high fees and burdensome procedures for (and maintenance of ) registration. In some participating States, registering an NGO remains costly and requires complex bureaucratic procedures.66 Maintaining registration as an international NGO in one participating State required quarterly financial reports to the registration services,67 and certain international human rights NGOs had to temporarily suspend their activities due to burdensome registration requirements.68 Another participating State had only four registrations of independent NGOs in nearly three years.69 6. Visits, audits, and investigations. In some cases, NGOs faced investigations of their books, audits, and their premises were visited by state officials for reasons apparently unrelated to the needs of proper administration.70 Such officials included police71 and security services.72. After the head of a human rights NGO appeared on television and challenged certain government policies, the organization’s premises were visited by security service personnel who asked an individual employed at a company also housed there about the financing of the NGO, the movements of its staff, and whether it had paid its rent on time. The head of the NGO was also questioned herself on related 65 Case of Azimzhan Askarov of the NGO Vozdukh (Kyrgyzstan), AI, Central Asia Summary of Human Rights Concerns, January 2006 – March 2007, 26 March 2007, AI Index EUR 04/001/2007. 66 See the example of Bosnia and Herzegovina, IHF statement, SHDM, 29-30 March 2007, p. 4, <http://www.ihf-hr.org/documents/doc_summary.php?sec_id=58&d_id=4384>; also see the procedures in Serbia, which currently do not adequately regulate, in particular, the fiscal status of NGOs, which may be changed soon as a result of draft legislation (information sent to the ODIHR from the OSCE Mission to Serbia). 67 FIDH/OMCT, op. cit., note 19, p. 523 (Russian Federation). 68 The cases of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Penal Reform International (Russian Federation), FIDH/OMCT, op. cit., note 19, p. 475. 69 Turkmenistan; see M. Doucin, Guide de la liberté associative dans le monde (Paris: French Foreign Ministry, 2007), p. 781. 70 See, for example, the case of Aziza Abdurasulova of the NGO Kylym Shamy (Kyrgyzstan), FIDH/ OMCT, op. cit., note 19, p. 521; and of the NGO Romachka (Russian Federation), FIDH/OMCT, op. cit., note 19, p. 534. 71 Case of Aziza Abdurasulova (Kyrgyzstan), FIDH/OMCT, op. cit., note 19, p. 521; UN SRSG, op. cit., note 15, para. 399, for the government’s response, see para. 400. 72 Case of Yadgar Turlibekov (Uzbekistan), FIDH/OMCT, op. cit., note 19, p. 553; Case of Aziza Abdurasulova (Kyrgyzstan), FIDH/OMCT, op. cit., note 19, p. 521.