Reverse decriminalization

When Medvedev was president, the article on libel was decriminalized. When Putin took his place again, the article returned to the Criminal Code. Now members of Putin's Human Rights Council are trying to at least soften the punishment for libel.

More than one member of the presidential council understands that the libel article is aimed, in particular, at those who criticize the government. The council members are not ready to completely remove it from the Criminal Code, but they propose to clarify: as Kommersant writes, we are talking about deliberately false information that not just discredits the honor and dignity of another person or undermines his reputation, but about information “about the private life of another person with the aim of defaming his honor and dignity.” It should also be mentioned here that the investigation and the prosecution do not always take the trouble to prove the deliberate falsity of information: by slander they (and the injured representatives of the authorities) are ready to understand any assumption from the lips of critics that they do not like.

Currently, Article 128 of the Criminal Code has five points: simple libel, “slander contained in a public speech, publicly displayed work or the media,” “slander committed using one’s official position,” “slander that a person suffers from a disease that poses a danger to others, as well as slander associated with accusing a person of committing a crime of a sexual nature,” as well as “slander associated with accusing a person of committing a serious or especially serious crime.” Representatives of the Human Rights Council propose to leave only the first two points, and reduce the maximum penalty from a fine of 5 million or compulsory work for 480 hours to a fine of 120 thousand or work for 240 hours, the newspaper writes.

In addition, the HRC Commission on Freedom of Information, which is working on the amendments, proposes to initiate libel cases only at the request of the victim.

As for the article on insulting a government official, the commission wants to remove it from the Criminal Code. After all, previously, insulting any citizen was considered a crime, but since December 2011, only insulting a government official has remained in the Criminal Code, and thus, as the chairman of the human rights association “Agora” and member of the HRC Commission on Freedom of Information Pavel Chikov says, the rights of government officials have been protected more than the rights of any other citizen.

Human rights activists under the president are also trying to protect journalists (against whom the libel article is largely directed) and, on the other hand, clarifying the article about obstructing the legitimate activities of a journalist. They propose making interference “in any form” a crime. Council members even want to introduce an article in the Criminal Code on persecution for criticism and punish it with a fine of up to two million or correctional labor for up to two years. This is how much courage we mustered, however.

But it seems that the authorities will not support all these initiatives. It is not for nothing that at the extended meeting of the Duma Committee on Information Policy a real show was staged with the participation of singers Stas Mikhailov and Grigory Leps. They passionately accused journalists of interfering in their personal lives, Leps even threatened to “break someone.” As a result, we agreed that it would not be a bad idea to introduce the concept of “special subject” into the Civil Code, by which we mean a person whose personal life is legally protected from intrusion by outsiders. That is, there is inequality again. We must assume that such special subjects will be the same representatives of power, as well as the pop stars who merged with them in ecstasy.

What can I say, the methods of the yellow press may diverge from ideas about morality, and even from the Criminal Code. But it seems that in the spirit of fighting the immorality of the paparazzi, deputies will want to protect themselves from revelations in the spirit of those published on Alexey Navalny’s blog. Outsiders shouldn't care who has what apartments in the US. But deputies, potential special subjects, on the contrary, can, if they want, expel from their close circle someone whom they suspect of something bad, as happened with Gennady Gudkov.