"Like" amnesty

President Vladimir Putin introduced a bill to the State Duma, mitigating criminal liability for extremism and inciting hatred: the changes are proposed to be made to Article 282 of the Criminal Code. “Analysis of law enforcement practice shows that not in all cases, prosecution for the acts provided for in Part 1 of Art. 282 "The excitement of hatred or enmity, as well as the humiliation of the human dignity" of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is justified, "the explanatory note to the document says.

Exemption from handcuffs Pixabay.com

The bill signed by the President is proposed not to be prosecuted for acts that were committed once and did not pose a serious threat to the basics of the constitutional system and state security. The bill introduces criminal punishment for acts committed by man within a year after bringing him to administrative responsibility for similar actions.

Accordingly, it is proposed to supplement the Code of Administrative Offenses with the new article 20.3.1 - “The excitement of hatred or enmity, as well as the humiliation of human dignity”. According to it, for public (and therefore using the Internet), actions aimed at initiating hatred and/or hostility, at humiliation of the dignity of a person or group of persons on the grounds of gender, race, nationality, language, origin, attitude to religion or belonging to a social group, individuals are facing a fine of 10 to 20 thousand rubles, or 100 hours of compulsory work, or administrative arrest for up to 15 days. For legal entities, the fine will be from 250 to 500 thousand rubles.

If during the year the violation occurs again, then a criminal article is already applied, which prescribes the punishment up to imprisonment for a term of two to five years. The government has already supported the presidential bill.

Pavel Krasheninnikov duma.gov.ru

Pavel Krasheninnikov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation, said that after the adoption of the law, existing cases of extremism on the Internet will be transferred from the category of criminal into administrative or terminated. According to the parliamentarian, the presidential bill in the first reading can be adopted in November, and finally - until the end of the autumn session.

The explanatory note to the bill also gives a reference to the decision of the Plenum of the Supreme Court - that on September 20, he recommended the courts to take into account the nature and degree of danger to society when considering cases of emitting hatred or enmity. In addition, the courts of general jurisdiction should verify the presence of "not only a reason, but also the grounds for initiating a criminal case." The Supreme Court called on to qualify publications as crimes under Article 282 of the Criminal Code only if these publications were made consciously.

Vyacheslav Lebedev vsrf.ru

According to the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court, in total in Russia in 2017 under Part 1 of Art. 282 460 people were convicted, in 2016 - 389. At the end of September, the chairman of the Supreme Court Vyacheslav Lebedev said that at present a little more than 500 criminal cases were opened in Russia on extremism in social networks.

Things for “likes and reposts” have been actively starting for several years (although the Prosecutor General’s Office claims that there are no kinds of likes specifically for “likes”). The attention of society to the problem was attracted by the case of the Barnaul student Maria Motuznaya: she faces up to five years the imprisonment for images preserved in her profile in VKontakte. Two things were discovered against her - about the initiation of hatred, hostility, humiliation of dignity and violation of the right to freedom of conscience and religion.

Prior to this, the writer and State Duma deputy Sergei Shargunov spoke about the affairs “for likes and reposts” on a straight line with the president. On Wednesday, he wrote that partial decriminalization of 282 articles of the Criminal Code is still an extremely important step. “Now there will be no debutants in the case of extremely automatically enrolled in criminals,” he wrote . “Of course, I believe that in general the 282nd is bad. But this is the desired signal - especially for local performers. I would like the cessation of many criminals that already exist, ”he said.