Article 19 and the Owl Center presented a report on counteracting extremism in Russia in the light of international legal standards

On March 14, 2019, the Rosbalt information agency hosted the presentation of the report of the Owl Center and the International Organization of Article 19 , which defends the right to freedom and access to information, “Anti -Existramism: Russian law enforcement practices and European standards of freedom of speech”. The presentation was attended by Sarah Clark, the head of the programs in Europe and Central Asia, Article 19, director of the Center for "SOVA" Alexander Verkhovsky and Maria Kravchenko, an expert at the SOVA center, one of the authors of the report.

The report describes the fundamentals of international legislation and the most authoritative recommendations of international organizations and experts in the field of restriction of freedom of speech, as well as decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on complaints of Russian citizens about the application of anti -ejecture legislation. These questions were lit in her speech by Sarah Clark.

The norms of Russian legislation on counteracting extremism in the report are distributed into three groups in accordance with the approach adopted in international practice: restrictions on freedom of expression aimed at protecting national security, restrictions designed to counteract the excitement of hatred, and restrictions that, from the point of view of Article 19 and the owl center, do not comply with international standards.

With the laws pursuing the legal goal, the norms of Russian legislation related to the first two groups are associated with a number of problems leading to numerous cases of unreasonable persecution. Some of them are a consequence of excessively wide or simply unsuccessful formulations and could be resolved by making changes to the legislation. Other disadvantages are directly appropriate to law enforcement, and here it would be helped to correct the situation here to follow the recommendations of international instances that provide for special mechanisms that allow us to observe the balance between the need to ensure security and peace in society and protect the right to freedom of speech. Finally, some norms and mechanisms should be completely abolished as inappropriate.

The report provides examples of court decisions from Russian and European practice characterizing the approach of Russian courts for compliance with international obligations. The problems of Russian legislation and law enforcement and possible measures to improve the situation were told during the presentation, Alexander Verkhovsky and Maria Kravchenko.

The report by Article 19 and the Center "Owl" will be published on our website at the end of March.

We bring to your attention a video of the presentation of the report.

Sources

• The owl center calls on to tie the definition of extremism to the use of violence // Rosbalt. 2019. 14.
• Center "Owl": 282 article of the Criminal Code must be even more decriminalized // ZAS.ru. 2019. 14.
• Who in Russia and Europe is planted for extremism? Director of the SOVA Center on a new report on anti -extremism // Rain. 2019. 14.
• Ekaterina Trifonova. The courts were reminded of the "Rabat plan" // Independent newspaper. 2019. March 25.