Human rights activists protest against ineffective use of anti-extremism legislation

On January 31, 2006, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation Vladimir Lukin and the head of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for promoting the development of civil society institutions and human rights Ella Pamfilova sent a letter to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Vladimir Ustinov, the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Lebedev and the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika, which expresses concern about the ineffective application of the current anti-extremist legislation, especially in cases related to manifestations of xenophobia and racism.

“Threats against representatives of ‘non-indigenous nationality’, judges and senior government officials are published openly and, as a rule, with impunity by a number of nationalist organizations and groups,” the letter says.

The authors of the letter believe that most often law enforcement agencies do not even investigate such actions to incite ethnic, racial and religious hostility and hatred - on the part of public figures and officials, including through the use of the media.

The letter also notes that even if criminal cases are initiated based on these facts of incitement to hatred, they often take an unreasonably long time to investigate, so that the statute of limitations under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (two years). Moreover, in approximately half of the cases, when under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, the case comes to a guilty verdict, the sentence is suspended. This does not stop convinced propagandists of racial and other hatred, and they continue their activities. “We by no means insist on the universal use of imprisonment for propaganda of enmity and hatred, but Article 282 of the Criminal Code also provides for such penalties as large fines and deprivation of the right to engage in certain activities,” write the authors of the letter.

In addition, special attention is paid to cases of application of anti-extremist legislation against civil activists and journalists, in which a broad interpretation of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is allowed. This creates a threat of “excessive restriction of freedom of expression in contradiction with Article 10 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as well as with the precedent decisions of the Strasbourg Court, which provide only legitimate and necessary restrictions on this fundamental right.” Among similar examples they include the case of the organizers of the exhibition “Caution - Religion” at the A.D. Museum on charges of inciting interreligious hatred. Sakharov in Moscow and the case against the editor of the Nizhny Novgorod newspaper "Pravozashchita" Stanislav Dmitrievsky .

Emphasizing their disagreement with the content and form of such publications, V. Lukin and E. Pamfilova state: “We are convinced that the incriminated texts do not call for any kind of hostility, including interethnic ones, other than a harsh and not always adequate assessment of the actions of the leadership Russia in the North Caucasus" .

In this regard, the applicants point out the need for uniform application of existing legal norms in the field of combating extremism and call for the introduction of additional measures to control how officials respond to requests from citizens and public associations with reports of cases of incitement to hatred.

Sources

• State human rights activists protest against the ineffective use of anti-extremist legislation // REGNUM news agency. 2006. January 31.