The relevant State Duma committee considered the amendments to the article of the Criminal Code on extremism too vague

The State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation on Monday supported the concept amendments to the Criminal Code (CC) on introducing liability for public justification or propaganda of extremism. At the same time, the first deputy chairman of the committee, Irina Pankina, pointed out that the wording was too broad and the rules competed with existing articles of the Criminal Code. Therefore, the committee plans to finalize the document for the second reading.

Bill contributed to the Duma on July 18, a group of United Russia deputies, including the chairmen of the security and defense committees Vasily Piskarev and Andrei Kartapolov. They propose expanding Art. 280 of the Criminal Code, which provides for punishment for “public calls for extremist activities” (from a fine of 100–300 thousand rubles to imprisonment for up to five years). The authors believe that this composition needs to be supplemented with “public justification of extremism” and “propaganda of extremism.” The notes explain that justification should be understood as “a public statement recognizing the ideology and practice of extremism as correct, in need of support and imitation.” The deputies propose to consider propaganda as “the activity of distributing materials and (or) information aimed at forming in a person the ideology of extremism, the conviction of its attractiveness, or the idea that it is permissible to carry out extremist activities.”

As noted in the explanatory note to the project, the initiative is aimed at preventing extremist manifestations among young people, including shootings in schools and kindergartens, which is “acquiring the status of a “fashionable” movement.”

“And this is already purposeful activity, including with foreign participation, aimed at decomposing our society, at leveling Russian cultural and historical values ​​and, as a consequence, the value of human life, children’s life,” the authors emphasize.

The government, in its response dated April 3 (published in the Duma database), supported the bill “subject to its completion before submission” to the Duma. As stated in the document, these acts can already be qualified under other articles of the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) – the distribution of extremist materials, the propaganda of Nazi symbols, the incitement of hatred or enmity, etc. Therefore, the government fears that “The implementation of the bill will lead to a conflict between these norms and Art. 280 of the Criminal Code and difficulties in distinguishing them in practice.”

The authors assured that they took these recommendations into account and finalized the draft before submitting it. However, at the meeting of the relevant committee on September 25, the question of competition between standards arose again. “In general, we propose to support the concept of the bill,” reported the first deputy chairman of the committee, Irina Pankina (United Russia). “At first glance, it seems small and technical, but given the competition of norms with existing articles of the Criminal Code, including public calls for violation of territorial integrity , as well as with the already existing articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses, we have to work with this project for the second reading.”

As Ms. Pankina admitted, despite the “relevance of the proposed changes,” the committee believes that “the concept is very broad and we now understand a lot by extremism.”

Anzhelika Glazkova (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) announced that she would abstain from voting, complaining that under the current legislation “you can fight not real extremism, but dissent.” But real extremism often goes unpunished, she complained, citing as an example the words of Archpriest Andrei Tkachev that in Ukraine “we are at war with the red plague.” Regarding this phrase, Ms. Glazkova contacted the Investigative Committee and the FSB, and the first of these departments saw signs of extremism in the priest’s statement, but the second did not. At the same time, the communist remembered the sensational case in Abakan, where during the campaign for the election of the head of Khakassia on the street released a pig with a hammer and sickle on its side: “They put on the pig the symbols that are depicted on the Victory Banner. What’s the result? There is no extremism.” But the Primorsky District Court of St. Petersburg accused of inciting hostility and fined for 10 thousand rubles. member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Alexei Filippov for reposting the phrase of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre “Every anti-communist is a bastard,” the deputy recalled.

Dmitry Vyatkin (United Russia), on the contrary, stood up for the authors of the amendments, pointing out that the creation of a closed list of what can be considered extremism “will make the law on countering extremist activities unworkable.”

“In the current conditions, our enemies within the country act in a very sophisticated manner,” the deputy warned. “No matter what closed list we provide, in any case some actions will be carried out around this. Methods and methods of influencing society in order to destabilize the situation, artificially create conflicts on any grounds – inter-confessional, inter-religious, political and others – are becoming stronger every year, including the work of our enemies from abroad as part of a special military operation, It’s no secret to anyone. Therefore, of course, we will not close the list here and make their work easier for our enemies.” United Russia also noted that “any law can be understood differently, because there are always two sides – the prosecution and the defense,” and therefore more attention needs to be paid to adjusting law enforcement practice.

The outcome of the discussion was summed up by the chairman of the committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov (ER). In his opinion, in fact, there is no contradiction between the three colleagues who spoke: everyone says that the bill needs to be finalized “so that there are no vague formulations, and the norm should be universal.” The committee recommended that the Duma council submit the amendments for the first reading on September 28.

Ksenia Veretennikova