The State Duma adopted in the second reading a bill according to which information from recognized extremist organizations and any messages “justifying extremism” will be blocked at the request of the Prosecutor General without a court decision. Resources selling forged documents and false reports of terrorist acts will also fall under the law, Kommersant writes.
Now, according to Russian law, the prosecutor's office has the right to block, without a court decision, calls for riots, the implementation of extremist activities and participation in unauthorized rallies, as well as inaccurate socially significant information and information from foreign organizations recognized as undesirable.
Amendments to the law "On information, information technology and information protection" in July 2020 were developed by a group of deputies from "United Russia", "Fair Russia" and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Initially, they only provided for the possibility of blocking information that contains the rationale and justification for extremist activities. As follows from the explanatory note, this bill was developed by the State Duma commission to investigate the facts of foreign interference in the internal affairs of Russia, and the purpose of its consideration and adoption is to protect Russian social and political institutions from destructive influence.
Subsequently, the document expanded - the government added false reports of terrorist acts to the list of information subject to pre-trial blocking. In turn, United Russia deputies Alexander Khinshtein and Sergei Boyarsky proposed to envisage announcements for the sale of forged documents and materials from organizations recognized as extremist. Khinshtein explained that not only sellers of fake coronavirus vaccination certificates, but also other documents, such as diplomas and driver's licenses, should be covered by the law.
At the same time, Khinshtein found it difficult to give examples of materials from banned organizations that should be blocked without trial, Kommersant notes. According to the parliamentarian, in theory, these could be materials from the structures of Alexei Navalny, for example, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (recognized as an extremist organization and banned in Russia). Nevertheless, the decision on blocking will in any case be made by the prosecutor, says Khinshtein.
The bill will give even more control to the prosecutor's office over the information space, says Stanislav Seleznev, senior partner of the Network Freedoms project. He noted that now the recognition of this or that organization as extremist will not entail an automatic ban on its materials - prosecutors are forced to go to court to prove that it is harmful or extremist. At the same time, the authors have the right to defend their materials and even seek the cancellation of the ban. The new amendments will allow the prosecutor's office to block not only the information itself from extremist organizations, but even their repost, which does not contain a critical commentary on the material.
Seleznev also noted that the definition of extremist activity in Russian legislation is still vague, and any harsh statement can be interpreted as extremism. The number of people prosecuted for inciting hatred is also growing - if in 2019 there were 383 such citizens, then in 2020 there are already 757, and this year, according to preliminary data, it could reach a thousand people.
bbabo.Net