Complaints about the article on the discrediting of the army were submitted to the Constitutional Court
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Russian human rights defenders and lawyers appealed to the Constitutional Court with a request to cancel the administrative article on the discrediting of the Russian army, according to which more than six thousand cases have been opened in Russia today.
Russian courts consider the distribution of any information about the war that differs from the official position of the Ministry of Defense, as well as anti-war posters, drawings of the flags of Russia and Ukraine, and even posts with a retelling of a dream with Volodymyr Zelensky, to be so-called discrediting.
This is the most popular mechanism for censorship of anti-war voices. But it is illegal and should not exist, note the authors of the appeal.
The complaints of about 20 Russians were prepared by a coalition of lawyers, lawyers and human rights defenders, including from “OVD-Info”, the “Sitting Rus” fund and the unregistered “Memorial” Human Rights Protection Center.
In the near future, about a dozen more people will file such complaints, including Ilya Yashin, who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in the case of the so-called fakes about the Russian army. Earlier, he was fined under the administrative article on discrediting the army.
The applicants are asking the Constitutional Court to recognize that the article violates more than a dozen norms of the Constitution, including the rights to freedom of conscience, thought and speech, freedom of assembly and the prohibition of the establishment of any ideology as state or mandatory. In addition, in their opinion, the article violates the principle of equality and the prohibition of discrimination, since fines are provided exclusively for anti-war criticism. They ask the court to cancel this article and indicate that all decisions on fines under this article must be reviewed.
The administrative article on the discrediting of the army was adopted eight days after the start of the war in Ukraine. It provides fines from 30 to 50 thousand rubles for public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Russian Armed Forces in a “special military operation” (that’s how the Russian authorities call the war in Ukraine).
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