"Actual problems of hate crime prevention and application of anti-extremism legislation." Seminar in Moscow

On March 11, 2010, an expert council of the Ombudsman of Russian Federation and the SOVA center held a seminar entitled "Actual problems of hate crime prevention and application of anti-extremism legislation".

Participating in the seminar were government experts and representatives of the Ombudsman personnel, both houses of the Federal Assembly, the Office of the Attorney General, Supreme Court, Ministry of Interior (department of counter-extremism), UNHCR, Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the sphere of communications, information technology and mass communications), interested Russian and foreign NGOs, as well as ODIHR OSCE, including the collective authors of :Hate Crime Laws - A Practical Guide;.

Discussion focused on common principles of legislation against hate crimes (principles of evidence, defense of social groups and other debated topics), as well as concrete aspects of law enforcement (use of examination, law enforcement agency professionals and courts, etc.).

Opening speeches were made by the vice-director of the Ombudsman's Office, Georgii Kunadze, chairman of the department of tolerance and non-discrimination of ODIHR OSCE, Floriana Hohenberg, and vice-director of the Council of the Federation's Committee on defense and safety, Vladimir Melnikov.

The highlight of the discussion was a presentation of the book released by ODIHR OSCE, which contains a survey of founding principles and instances of disagreement between legal systems of countries in the OSCE in legislation against violent crimes grounded in hate. The book also contains recommendations for improving this legislation in terms of different parameters including historical legal systems and so on. The book was co-authored by Allison Jernow.

Additional speakers included: Innokentii Grekov (Human Rights First), Vladimir Makarov (Ministry's of Interior Department of Counter-extremism), Alexei Zhafyarov (Office of Attorney General), Nikolai Novikov (Roskomnadzor), and Alexander Verkhovsky (the SOVA Center).

Other participants included Valentin Gefter (Human Rights' Institute), Oleg Zatelepin (Supreme Court), Ashot Airapetyan (Center for Interethnic Cooperation), Evgeny Proshechkin (Moscow Anti-fascist Center), Ramil Akhmetgaliev (Association "AGORA"), Dmitrii Dubrovskii (Russian Museum of Ethnography), Simeon Charnii (MBHR), Anita Soboleva ("Jurix") and others.

We plan to publish recommendations made at the seminar later. Here we point out only a few items:

At the seminar, clarity was not achieved regarding one of the hardest questions - the use of examination. The Attorney General's office and Ministry of Interior believe, that examination carried out under orders of the prosecutor's office is the result of the fact that the court considers examination indispensible evidence.

The Attorney General's office and the Ministry of Interior agreed with the proposal of the representative of OSCE and civil society about the necessity of educating their personnel. In the discussion an opinion emerged that it is essential to combine international and domestic experience. For this, the experts of OSCE could help the experts at the Ministry of Interior Academy and other internal structures in the preparation of suitable courses.

V. Makarov announced that the active priority of Ministry of Interior 's Department of Counter-extremism is resistance specifically against violent crimes rooted in nationalism, racism, and religious hate.

A. Zhafyarov said, that the amount of registered crimes of extremist nature in 2009, by V. Makarov's statistics — 548, which represent an increase of 19% since 2008, are still behind the actual amount of crimes committed. He agreed with the observation that the lack of cases opened under article 282.1 (creation of an extremist community) and reported that the Attorney General will look into open cases with the objective of including article 282.1 of the Criminal Code.