"Press only violence and calls to him"

Experts-about what is behind a public resonance around the 282nd article and how it needs to be changed

Pavel Chikov

Chairman of the Human Rights Organization "Agora"

- I do not share the confidence that the issue with the decriminalization of “extremist” articles has been resolved, and now they think about how to arrange it. All previous experience suggests that the probability of this is extremely small. Most likely, this is some kind of attempt to extend the issue without a solution that was authorized by the authorities.

Now everyone began to talk a lot about such matters for three reasons. Firstly, we, human rights activists, we threw half of these stories into a public space: many things have been going on since the beginning of the year, they have not begun yesterday. The second reason: after the initiatives and statements of the State Duma and the Ombudsman of the Moskalkov media, they began to study the practice more closely. There is a third reason: for the period of the presidential campaign, there was an instruction not to initiate new political criminal cases. This mitigation has been felt since the end of 2016, and I personally associate it with Kiriyenko’s advent of the presidential administration. The number of new criminal cases with a clear political background has clearly decreased. But the operational services and the same “E” center continued to “identify” - therefore, the expected surge occurred after the election and inauguration.

In the last one and a half to two years, a trend has been outlined for interagency confrontation-the FSB intercepts such cases from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and SK. This is clearly visible by the number of cases and sentences: their number according to the 280th article has sharply increased (“Calls for extremist activity”)-this article is used by the Chekists-and the number of cases according to the 282nd article, which is mainly used by SK and the Center “E”, began to decline.

In the ideal world and in beautiful Russia, such articles should not, in principle, should not be, since it is impossible to prosecute for words.

The current decriminalization scenarios depend on the presence of political will. Any options are possible, much will depend on who will be given the corresponding order. It is one thing if this is the Security Council, controlled by the Chekists, and another thing if it is the presidential administration. You can abandon one of two articles-the 280th and 282nd articles of each other duplicate each other. Given the growing influence of the FSB, they can leave the 280th.

There is another option: you can reduce the sphere of influence of the 282nd article, since it consists of two parts-the excitement of enmity and humiliation of dignity. They can leave, for example, only enmity. There is also a problem with the notorious “social groups”, which most often mean representatives of the authorities, and this is definitely necessary to remove.

The 280th article is worse, since in it, anything can fall under the calls for extremist activity at all. From the point of view of common sense, it is necessary to “kill” this particular article and keep the 282nd in a very truncated form. Although there are many other articles: about the insult of the feelings of believers, about disrespect for the memorable dates of Russia - even if there are few things on them. It all depends on what task will be set: if it is necessary to show the appearance of liberalization - they can limit themselves to cosmetic changes. If they want to reduce the number of criminal cases, then you definitely need to change the wording of the 282nd article.

Mikhail Fedotov

Chairman of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the President of Russia

-The solution to the problem of combating extremism is not that it is necessary to cancel the 282nd article or transfer it to the sphere of administrative offenses. This article is only one of the small details. First of all, it is necessary to amend the law itself on counteracting extremist activity itself, it is there that the definition of all concepts is given. You need to start with the foundation, and not with a window binding on the third floor.

If we correct the foundation, if we say that extremism is what is connected directly with violence, then a lot will fall into place.

And in this case, it will already be necessary to adjust both the 282nd and a number of other articles. After all, it was a speech in the president’s order just about the clarification of the conceptual apparatus. It is necessary to study the practice of applying the concepts of “extremism” and “extremist activity”, and they are used, I must say, very arbitrarily, as a result of which the same 282nd article is often charged with people completely inadequately.

Is it possible to punish for repost? Can. It depends on what repost. If you, for example, reposted the message with an appeal to kill representatives of some social groups, then this is definitely a call to violence, which can have very sad consequences, since there are many people with a non-stable psyche in society. Such a repost is dangerous, you need to punish it. As for all funny pictures, cartoons, “photojabs”-if someone is offended by them, then let him be offended in civil law. Sitting for it is simply ridiculous. The same “social groups” are such a blurry concept that for “incitement” can be planted after a joke about the seller in the store, as this forms hatred of trade workers. The practice of punishment for collages and jokes, to put it mildly, does not climb into any gate.

I can say that the Council is preparing its proposals about this. We have been involved in this topic for a long time - first of all, Alexander Verkhovsky, Kirill Kabanov and Vladimir Lyakhovsky work on it. In the coming days, I think, the Council will be able to submit its proposals to adjust the “anti -excess” legislation and send them to those who are instructed to do such an analysis - that is, to the ONF and the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Henry Reznik

Advocate

- On this topic I have been engaged in self -citing for 20 years, probably. I believe that it is necessary to remove the words about “social groups” from the text of the article, and it must be formulated so that calls to violence and limiting the rights of citizens on religious, racial and national affiliation are punishable. I have long been saying that the article should not completely decriminalize. In the USA, for example, there is an article only for calls for violence, but we have a different story: America never knew national contradictions (racial problems are another specificity). But in Europe, there is a punishment for calls for discrimination on a national basis, since Europe has constantly encountered this problem. And we need to do the same: you just need to significantly reduce the article and specify it.

When it comes to liberalization of legislation, this is always less likely to do it than usual.

But I must say that an unreasonably wide design of this article allows you to attract anyone at all - and this must be changed.

Moreover, it is imperative to insist on the need to prove the evil intent of a particular action-specially or not a person wanted to light something when he committed an act falling under the 282nd article. We are now automatically perceived as an objective opinion.