Deputies adopted in the first reading a bill on criminal liability for “justifying extremism”

The State Duma supported in the first reading a bill that would introduce criminal penalties for “justifying extremism.” The meeting is broadcast on the website of the lower house of parliament.

The project was supported by 278 deputies, 54 were against it, and another 16 abstained.

The bill amends Article 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremism). Now it will deal not only with calls for extremism, but also with “public justification of extremism,” as well as its “propaganda.” Punishment under the first part of the article is up to four years in prison, under the second – up to five years.

The article will also include a note on how “justification of extremism” and its “propaganda” should be understood. According to the document, “justifying extremism” is “a public statement recognizing the ideology and practice of extremism as correct, in need of support and imitation.”

According to deputies, “propaganda of extremism” is the dissemination of materials and information aimed at forming in people “the ideology of extremism, the conviction of its attractiveness, or the idea that it is permissible to carry out extremist activities.”

During the discussion of the bill, several deputies asked the co-author of the bill, Ernest Valeev, whether, for example, positive comments about the Decembrist uprising or the shooting of the White House in 1993 would fall under this article. These events, the deputies explained, fall under the definition of extremism under the Shanghai Convention, which ratified Russia . Valeev responded to this: “This is a question of the subject of proof in each criminal case.”

These amendments were proposed by United Russia deputies, including Vasily Piskarev, Pyotr Tolstoy and Andrei Kartapolov. Piskarev said that this bill is a reaction “to the propaganda of the so-called “mass shooting”” in schools and higher educational institutions.

“We have recorded other attempts to publicly justify various extremist movements and manifestations,” the deputy emphasized.