Law on rallies: what was agreed upon

The State Duma has completed finalization of amendments to the law on rallies for the second reading. The chairman of the relevant committee, Vladimir Pligin, announced that the final text takes into account the opinions of experts and the wishes of the opposition, and invited everyone to be reasonable in order to avoid problems.

“Of course, anything can happen, but we proceed – and we advise you to proceed – from the principle of “presumption of reasonableness”: reasonable organizers and participants of street events, reasonable law enforcement officers, prosecutors and reasonable judges. This is a guarantee that no one will have any problems there will be no mass actions."

“What difference does it make how you are executed—by hanging or in the electric chair?” — argues A Just Russia deputy Dmitry Gudkov, who called the bill “repressive and aimed at eliminating popular protest.”

Concessions in the new version

Fines for campaigning on social networks. Calls on the Internet for so-called “public festivities” will not be punishable by fines—the corresponding provision has been removed from the text. Read more about the initiative on PublicPost .

Information in the media. The media can also safely inform the masses about the conduct of such actions, but they are obliged to foresee the consequences of their messages. However, these are considerations, rather, of a moral and ethical nature, and not a subject of administrative and legal regulation.

Fines have been reduced. The maximum possible fines have been reduced by 2.5–3 times compared to the original text, but 300,000 rubles for a pensioner participating in a rally who unknowingly violated something is no more realistic than the million from the first reading.

What is prohibited

You can't just walk around like that. Particularly noteworthy is a new article aimed at suppressing public festivities, which in the language of legislators are called “massive simultaneous presence and (or) movement of citizens in public places.” The bill now provides for organizers of such movements of citizens a fine of up to twenty thousand rubles or compulsory labor for up to 50 hours.

The document states, separated by commas, “if the mass simultaneous stay and (or) movement of citizens in public places resulted in a violation of public order or sanitary norms and rules, disruption of the functioning and safety of life support or communication facilities, or damage to green spaces, or created interference with the movement of pedestrians or vehicles, or citizens’ access to residential premises or transport or social infrastructure.” Again, life has already provided examples of discontent among the residents of Chistye Prudy.

Masks will no longer work. At the same time, changes are being made to the Federal Law “On Meetings, Rallies, Demonstrations, Processions and Picketing”. It is here that a ban is established on various “means that complicate personal identification.” One article addresses participants in a public event who “do not have the right to hide their faces, including using masks, means of concealment, or other items specifically designed to make identification difficult.”

Another article that duplicates the basic wording concerns event organizers, who are obliged to require participants not to hide their faces. In addition, organizers must monitor participants’ compliance with public order and regulations for holding a public event, and demand that they stop violating the law. And take measures to prevent the number of participants specified in the notification from exceeding if this excess poses a threat to public order. The organizer can theoretically avoid liability for failure to comply with these instructions if he contacts a law enforcement officer with a demand to stop the violation and remove the violator from the event.

Picket or no longer picket. Cases of single picketing are specified separately: it is confirmed that notification of such pickets is not required, but it is stipulated that the court in a particular case may recognize a series of single pickets as one public event.

Everyone - Hydepark. Another promised article has also been included in the bill - about the so-called “Hyde Parks”. “Single specially designated or adapted places for collective discussion of socially significant issues and expression of public sentiment, as well as for the mass presence of citizens for the public expression of public opinion on topical problems of a predominantly socio-political nature” should be determined by the regional executive authorities.

Administrations are obliged to ensure the possibility of achieving the goals of events in Hyde Parks and the transport accessibility of such “specially designated areas”. Approvals for holding events are not required here, but notification is still necessary: ​​as the committee explained, in order to, if several events coincide, separate them in time and ensure the safety of each group of “dissatisfied citizens.” It must be admitted that in this part the rules are spelled out fairly correctly: after these special places are identified, public events are held, as a rule, there. But there is no ban on performances in other areas - only in this case approval is already required. The authority will be able to refuse to hold such an event in the same cases and on the same grounds as now.

By the way, when preparing the document for the second reading, the electronic system in which the Duma document flow takes place somehow let slip a human word: on one of the pages of the bill a clarification was printed: “DELETED: “Definition of places in which it is prohibited to hold meetings, rallies, processions, demonstrations must not prevent citizens from exercising their right to assemble peacefully, without weapons."