Translated material
We will answer for the "goats"
The Duma will still toughen the fight against extremism
On Wednesday, July 4, at the penultimate plenary meeting before the holidays, the State Duma will nevertheless consider in the second reading amendments to a number of laws that tighten the fight against extremism . The document caused strong public discontent, so its discussion was postponed twice by deputies. As a result, the text of the amendments, according to one of the initiators of the bill, United Russia member Mikhail Yemelyanov, was rewritten by 80%.The government also raised complaints about the bill, which considered it unnecessary to supplement the Code of Administrative Offenses with the article “Production and Distribution of Extremist Materials,” since the Criminal Code already has similar articles - “Public calls for extremist activities” and “Incitement of hatred or enmity.” And the Supreme Court did not agree with the proposal of the authors of the bill to establish a fine of 3 thousand rubles for the distribution of extremist materials, since the maximum fine for administrative offenses by law is 2.5 thousand rubles. The deputies took these comments into account, and in addition, they decided to punish only for calls to commit grave and especially grave crimes.
The bill initially increased the punishment for a crime committed based on national, religious or social hatred. For mass riots, the upper limit of liability was increased from eight years of imprisonment to 12, for hooliganism - from seven to eight, for desecration of monuments - from five to eight. However, by the second reading, the provision on increasing sentences for mass riots, which, for example, includes participation in the “Dissent Marches,” disappeared from the amendments. Like another controversial article - “Public justification of extremism”, which, according to critics, any law enforcement officer could interpret to the extent of his depravity.
However, a number of serious questions about the bill still remain.
“I called this law “Back to the USSR.” “He takes us back to the times of the KGB,” Gennady Gudkov, a member of the A Just Russia faction, told a Vremya Novostey correspondent. - Firstly, the law removes almost all restrictions on wiretapping. Now it will be possible to wiretap suspects of committing crimes of medium gravity, of which the majority are in the Criminal Code. And not only them, but also people who can provide information on these cases, for example, a friend or partner of the suspected banker. The concept of “inciting hatred towards a particular social group” has emerged. That is, if I said publicly “the damned goats of the officials, they are screwed, they are drinking the blood from the people’s veins” - that’s it, I can be imprisoned for up to seven years, because officials are a separate social group. There will be lists of extremist literature. This is reminiscent of the lists of ideologically harmful literature that were compiled by the CPSU Central Committee for insufficiently educated KGB employees.”
However, Deputy Gudkov believes that the law also has positive aspects. “Finally, we evaluate vandalism and hooliganism committed for religious and national reasons; we evaluate the desecration of cemeteries . But this is where the list of advantages ends.”
The bill also imposes significant restrictions on the work of the media. If any organization is recognized by a court decision as extremist, then journalists will be forced to report this every time it is mentioned.
It is unknown what exactly the text of the bill will look like for the second reading. “We are still finalizing it,” Pavel Krasheninnikov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Legislation, told a Vremya Novostei correspondent. However, he refused to talk about the details of the revision until the text was brought to the committee meeting.