The toughening of the Criminal Code of the Criminal Code will hit women who have talked about sexual violence

The State Duma adopted a law on toughening the punishment for slander. In one day, December 23, he was approved immediately in the second and third, final, reading. Now a person accused of slander may threaten up to five years in prison. Prior to this, Article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provided for the maximum punishment in the form of a fine of five million rubles and up to 480 hours of compulsory work. Experts note that the law can be aimed against women telling about the experience of sexual violence.

In total, in article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, five parts, changes are made to four of them:

• for slander, committed publicly using information and telecommunication networks, including the Internet, including for slander in relation to an “uncertain group of persons”, maximum punishment may be up to two years in prison;

• for slander, committed using its official position, threatens up to three years in prison;

• For slander that the person suffers dangerous to others, provides for imprisonment of up to four years;

• For a slander, combined with the charge of a person of committing a crime against sexual integrity or a serious or particularly serious crime, up to five years in prison or a fine of five million rubles.

The author of the bill was the deputy from United Russia Dmitry Vyatkin, who received the mandate back in 2007. Vyatkin refused to answer the questions of the new correspondent, citing a lack of time.

In 2011, an article on slander was decriminalized, but already in 2012, at the suggestion of Putin, it was again introduced to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, but it did not provide for imprisonment.

Vyatkin proposed to tighten the punishment for slander on December 14, and already on the 23rd, literally in one day, the bill was adopted in two readings. The deputies of three factions opposed him: from the Communist Party, the LDPR and the Just Russia.

“This phenomenon, slander, is not such a general nature, to make such a gift for the New Year,” said Sergey Ivanov, deputy from the LDPR during the discussion of the bill.

“We have all the slander has moved to the Internet, and this slander is almost unnecessary. The slanderers are hiding behind nicknames, nicknames, signing other people's names, hoping for permissiveness, ” -

Vyatkin answered questions about why such a bill needed.

"The bill will untie the hands of the rapists"

Most of all the indignation was caused by changes in part of the fifth of Article 128.1 - on punishment in the form of five years in prison for slander about committing a crime against sexual integrity. A number of public figures believe that this tightening is aimed at ensuring that women are even more afraid to talk about cases of sexual violence.

“Gradually, women are getting worse with women's rights. This is obviously discrimination. Not only did we have home violence decriminalized, now it is still. Now, if a woman complains of her rapist, she will be in prison for this and put her. And this is a very bad sign in the context of everything else. The situation of women who are subjected to violence is completely hopeless. We think that [violence against women] does not matter. We think that it beats means loves, ”the chairman of the gender faction of the Yabloko party, Galina Mikhaleva, comments on the bill.

In her opinion, the bill was adopted in such a hurry, because it was lobbying for Orthodox and conservatives, which, as Mikhaleva says, in the State Duma: the State Duma:

“For our authorities, female NPOs fall under the category of“ foreign agents ”.

They believe that female organizations act against the authorities, and a woman should fulfill the "traditional" female role. "

With the opinion of Mikhaleva, the lawyer and head of the Center for Protection of the victims of domestic violence Marie Davtyan agree.

“For the so -called“ speech crime ”, imprisonment should not be provided. Changes in the article suggest that slander can be the spread of information about any crimes against sexual integrity, and we turn out that there is part of [sexual] crimes that are punished less than five years of imprisonment. For example, depraved actions, forces to sexual actions. These crimes will be punished less than slander about them. That is, the imbalance in punishment is obvious. Naturally, the basic principle of criminal justice is the justice and adequacy of punishment. As the ECHR and the UN bodies have repeatedly emphasized, there should be no imprisonment for crimes that are not related to causing as such harm. The point is that [the victim] a person can always be satisfied with a refutation, ”says Marie Davtyan.

According to the lawyer, because of this bill, fewer women will talk about sexual crimes committed on them. The main problem of such crimes is that the conversations about them are taboo, and the taboo greatly interferes with both prevention and in help from the victims. Davtyan believes that in the interests of society to give women the opportunity to speak freely about what happened to them, since this is a very important part of the prevention work.

“Of course, this will untie the hands of potential rapists. Of course, this law gives a clear and understandable messenge: sit and be silent. Women who underwent sexual violence understand that this law was invented to be silent. Here and so scary, here and so problems. First of all, now women will think, if at all, it makes sense to contact somewhere if the laws do not protect us. They will write less for all cases related to Harassment. Very often, publicity for a woman is the only opportunity to protect themselves, now they are deprived of such an opportunity.

This law is a clear struggle with the #Metoo movement, ”Marked Marie Davtyan summed up.

In order for the bill adopted by the State Duma to enter into force, the Council of the Federation and Putin must be approved.

Journalist Larisa Zhukova created a petition on Change.org addressed to the Federation Council, the Constitutional Court and the President with a request to cancel the amendments to the article on slander.

QUOTE

"We demand to cancel the amendments to the Law on slander!"

“This bill is aimed at depriving us of the last tool available to us to defend civil rights - publicity! We demand to cancel the introduction of inadequate amendments to the article on slander. We demand to stop increasing the protection of rapists and criminals. We demand that we return the right to publicity and freedom of speech. ”

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At the time of writing, the petition was signed by almost four thousand people.