Recently the State Duma adopted the law returning the article “Defamation” to the Criminal Code and stiffening penalties for this crime. 238 PMs voted for the law, 91 – against the law. The situation is commented by experts.
Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, believes that "for about 15 years, all the progressive community has been struggling for removing the article on defamation from the Criminal Code and putting it to the system of civil relations. And finally, six months ago, this was done, however, after convincing the ex-President, Mr Medvedev, in the necessity of this change. Since the final word in this case is always for the first person of our country, then one must assume that the entire unit of laws was prepared, perhaps with the active consent of the current president. Obviously, this is the degree of divergence between the so-called liberal president and a so-called authoritarian president. They played football, one knocked the ball out of bounds, another returned the ball to the pitch. The laugh is on us, as usual. In fact, no one checked how the new article of the civil legislation should be implemented. We did not have time to get used to it, did not have time to track it. Moreover, there has been some confusion in the law enforcement bodies and courts, and they did not have time to seriously practice For example, on memory, we had were a few troubles with monitoring at this time, but, nevertheless, in our monitoring, we did not detect during these six months, by and large, no defamation on the level of the Administrative Code. The only thing that was strange and seemed dangerous was that in the Administrative Code there were huge fines. Fines were preserved, article on defamation returned to the Criminal Code and the only things which Mr. President who, as usual, had no direct relation to this, agreed not to do, was making the imprisonment a punishment for defamation. But the only thing that reduced the risk of the incorrect application of this article six months ago and all of the previous 15 years, i. e. cognizance, disappeared. The fact that it is obviously known that the facts are not what I pictured them is difficult to prove. As a result, there were not so much accusations of defamation was not so much. There were more claims for defamation than indictments, and much more, because it was necessary to prove actual cognizance, and it was insanely difficult. In fact, maybe we should not touch upon this article. We wanted to make the legislation civilized, and for 15 years we sought to remove defamation from the Criminal Code, and in the end we were quite happy and glad that this article was removed. But then it was returned in a rather aggressive and, in my opinion, much more active and applicable form than it was earlier. Accordingly, it threatens not only to professional journalists and professional politicians, but also quite unprofessional employees of the media sphere that communicate with each other, and this makes this information particularly dangerous."
Alexander Brod says: "This haste with which the laws were adopted by the State Duma last week is something from the works of Kafka. This never occurred before; the authorities completely ignored the protests of civil society, critical articles, opinions of experienced experts, international outrage. There was a task to adopt this set of laws very quickly and to implement it. Interestingly, during this period, the members of parliament in Tajikistan, a country which is not referred to as a democratic country with rule of law, have just decriminalized defamation. This is an indicator that it is possible to fight against defamation, publications and declarations of this nature, not necessarily putting it to the Criminal Code and increasing penalties and fines. This haste with which the deputies removed this article from the Penal Code eight months ago and returned it today shows that it is very far from the legal culture; all the consequences of the decriminalization of defamation were not taken into account. And, indeed, there is a political motive here, when the government tries to protect itself from the critical arrows of the opposition, of politicians and civic activists. And it is significant that, for example, the head of the Altai Territory, Berdnikov, filed a lawsuit for defamation against the local newspaper "Listok" just when the law was accepted. The newspaper published an article entitled "Berdnikov is a thief" within a few numbers; the author of the article, Makarov, expounded in his writings the following statement: "Berdnikov draws 36 million from the pocket of the adoptive parents each year. Each year he steals 30 million rubles from orphans. "These assertions were supported by evidence and documents. Now, of course, the penalty for it will be tough enough. Of course, in our country we do not value our good name, reputation, honor and dignity. We see that even during the election campaign there is a lot of defamatory material. Defamation is also used against competitors in business in hostile takeovers. I myself was involved in protecting the interests of farmers of the Stavropol district of Samara region. There was the publication on the victim of the raiders, a conscientious farmer; there was a publication in several media that all the killings in Togliatti in the 90s were carried out by his direct order. The media have created the monster of a mafia. And when his lawyers appealed to the Public Prosecutor's Office and the investigative authorities, they absolutely did not react; our courts are not independent, they carry out the will of those who have money or of the executive branch. This raises the question: then and now defamation would be considered by those in power, government officials, heads of subjects, regions and districts as a personal insult. And all the articles of the critical nature against corruption, against abuse, against other human rights violations can be construed as defamatory material and cause a very severe punishment for the authors of the media. Fines are quite high; they are capable of simply blocking even a very small edition or any website. Therefore, the risks from this new law are quite high. I do not think it will be used as repressive, but it is possible that in the "hot spots" there will be quite tough repressive measures with respect to journalists, human rights activists, opposition politicians. No wonder that Human Rights Watch issued a critical statement that the initiative of the State Duma goes against the international norms, because in most developed democratic countries defamation is decriminalized. These risks remain in the mainstream of the protection against civic initiatives, civic activism and protest."
Alexei Simonov thinks: "I have a feeling that we really have not got out of that state, when the freedom of speech is a private matter provided by your own conscience and bad temper. We did not come out of this state. It has not been the general state of our society and the existence of the media. We have all kinds of processes which occur in parallel, and not all of them go in one direction. They are very contradictory. For example, the process of the liquidation of censorship is very well fit into the process of nationalizing the private media. Why do they need censorship if the government owns more than 80% of the mass media? It is not necessary. The media cease to be the media. Often when you begin to understand the situation, you suddenly discover that they are not even the newspapers. They are the establishments owned by local authorities, funded by local budgets, etc., etc. They have lost all the signs of the media, except for the fact that they are printed on the same paper by the same presses. So we do not really need to exacerbate panic. There is no panic. Those who enjoyed the freedom of speech, will enjoy the freedom of speech. Those who are afraid to enjoy freedom of speech, will be afraid to enjoy freedom of speech. It is inevitable. Nowadays this is the situation. Yes, of course, it would be safer if the protest could be based on the realities of life. But it is impossible, because the realities are such that extremism in the country is called the disagreement with the superiors expressed in sharp form."
According to Alexander Brod, "we are always in the lead of the rankings of international human rights organizations and research centers as a country with non-free media. If, remembering the statistics of the UK, about three journalists suffered there over 20 years, we have beatings, killings, harassment of journalists, hundreds of facts in a variety of regions. It is significant that there is no murder or assault on a journalist which is investigated in the proper degree. In my opinion, only the murder of Yudina in Kalmykia was investigated somehow. For the rest of the episodes there is absolute silence, despite the fact that the presidents, prosecutors, investigators leaders swear that they always take personal control, but it may lead nowhere. Therefore, talking with the reporters in the region, you do see that they themselves decide what is possible to write. They say everything frankly’ we have a family, we are afraid of being unemployed. Therefore, the brave people who are able to perform the investigation are not numerous. We even see that the editor of "Pravda" in Khimki became disabled and even then was attacked by the head of the urban district; he tried to blame him of defamation. So, of course, the overall situation has already a lot of barriers and restriction. The law "On Countering Extremist Activity", which was adopted 10 years ago, also contained a lot of loopholes in order to blame the journalists and the bloggers of extremism. It came even to the point of absurdity, when the works of art were tried to blame of extremism, such as the anti-fascist film by Pavel Bardin, "Russia-88", which was tried to be recognized extremist and prohibited to be shown publicly. His demonstration was accompanied by detective cases when the cinemas were closed, the film was stolen, etc. Therefore, the new step is probably a complementary tool in the overall mechanism which is rather formidable. Journalists and social activists will, I think, suffer even more. Two paths are accessible to the power. The first is to implement reforms, and it will change the configuration of power and cause political competition, criticism, someone will have to leave the portfolios in the best case, and in the worst case somebody will have to serve the sentence; serious abuses will be revealed, etc. They should share their influence and power. And the second way - it's more simple, it would seem, for the government – is to act by prohibitive methods, while maintaining the political power configuration, but enclosing the power from the protest, disturbing politicians, human rights activists and journalists. But it is obvious that this road is very dangerous, because, according to the laws of physics, all these protests are like a steam which will explode in this closed space, and then collecting it will be much harder, more dramatic than it could be with the implementation of reforms."
Alexei Simonov believes that "the problem is that nobody needs the truth. Law enforcement agencies do not need it, as usual. In this sense, the Soviet tradition, which went to Russia, is that law enforcement is repressive bodies, and courts, unfortunately, are still regarded as an integral part of these repressive bodies. This tradition is very strong in Russia, and without a huge, clearly expressed will of the executive branch, this trend cannot be broken in any case. And there cannot be a countertrend, when they encourage law enforcement officers to do exactly what they are currently doing. In fact, in my opinion, there were some provocations in May. But no one is not looking for agents provocateurs, because why should they look for them? If you want to find them, they are well known. So why do we need the law enforcement agencies? That's why it's very fraught for those who have used these appearances: the media, politicians, opposition, etc., etc. It seems to me that in fact we are in a state of permanent war, and this war is really for common sense and dignity, not for anything else. So far, I think, the program is not formulated, the opposition has no program. But this program is to restore human dignity, it is a worthy program, not very popular in Russia, but decent. It is worth for going to meetings. I think that now people behave with dignity. In this atmosphere, which is currently under attack, people behave with dignity. They are trying to negotiate with each other, which is a rare phenomenon. In fact, there are some processes within the opposition which are extremely unpleasant to the authorities, but they cannot affect these processes. And thank God that they cannot. If there are processes in the country which the power can not affect, it is the evidence that there is still something going on, and not all the people of the country are asleep, even in summer."
