The Thugocracy Lands Another Punch
by Galina Stolyarova
16 August 2007
Just ahead of election season, Russia’s politicians change the laws so they can put more dissidents in prison.
The mud has been thrown. And much of it has stuck. These days, when Kremlin officials talk about “extremists” they usually mean the political opposition, and The Other Russia coalition in particular.
When the coalition’s best-known figure, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, was detained at an opposition rally in Moscow on 14 April the police said they were investigating him for “publicly calling for extremist action.” The charges were soon dropped, but the stigma persists.
The threat of “extremism” charges had been used two days before the April rally when police raided the St. Petersburg headquarters of Yabloko, the former liberal bloc in parliament.
Ostensibly the search was to seize publicity material about the same demonstration. But during the raid officers also demanded the names and addresses of those who had printed and distributed the leaflets. Despite the claim by police that the material was extremist, however, the case went nowhere.
These two cases – and others – fell apart for one reason: existing law was not strong enough to support a successful prosecution. But now all that is changing. As parliamentary and presidential elections approach, the State Duma has been busy amending the law.
In late July President Vladimir Putin signed a series of amendments that his majority party, United Russia, claims are targeted against nationalists and those planning violence. But the political opposition warns that the new clauses will amount to a crackdown on freedom of expression.
Under the new legislation no fewer than 13 aspects of extremism will become offenses. They include “public slander of state officials,” “hampering the lawful activity of state organizations,” “humiliating national pride,” and “hooliganism committed for political or ideological motives.”
And the intelligence services will be allowed to tap the phones of anyone suspected of extremism. In most democracies it takes reasonable suspicion of plotting serious offenses like terrorism, murder, or kidnapping to justify phone bugging.
Russian journalists and editors have every reason to be concerned. It will take only a stroke of the pen to brand a media report critical of the Kremlin as “public slander of state officials.” And those responsible will be at risk of up to three years in prison.
These loosely written and hastily adopted measures will make it much easier for the state to stifle its critics. And these clauses, with their vague wording, leave great scope for draconian interpretation. That could allow them to be used just as easily against peaceful democratic opposition groups as against real extremists who are ready to use violent means to gain their objectives.
Here is the full story.
Why is Kasparov doing this? Isn’t Russia fine the way it is?
I hope that Gary Kasparov comes out of this OK. I don’t agree with many of his positions but he created a lot of beautiful chess games and hope that he will one day come back to promote chess or play a lot of speed.
We are living in a time of great political “experimentation”. When the Socialist Bloc collapsed in 1991 (end of the USSR, Berlin Wall came down) simplistically these states could embark on one of two paths – one was to try to liberalize politically and economically at the same time or to just open up the economy first (so-called Chinese approach). It seems Russia tried to the former and now Putin is putting back many of the old controls.
If you live outside of the old Socialist bloc, you should still take an interest, if only for humanitarian reasons. For purely practical self-interest, were either Russia or China to descend into political chaos and turmoil, the resulting disruption to the world economy and the wave of emigrants trying to flee the mass to Europe, North America and elsewhere would be a worldwide calamity.
The one clear chess negative is that Putin seems to be quite tolerant of Kirsan Ilyzuhmov’s handling of things at FIDE, so it doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere soon.
Yes, Kasparov is quite an extreme person. an ‘extremist’ if you like…
He was an extremist on the chessboard, and is in his political thinking too.
He just uses the fact that he’s famous in politics now. A non-famous person would have had an ‘accident’ by now…
“Extemism” is not necessarily bad; it depends on what one is exteme about. In any event, if Kasparov–against all odds–should succeed, he would be a tremendous
improvement on the ex-KGB Putin.
About a year ago,in this same blog, I wrote something supporting Putin: In that time I thought honestly he was our defence against a possible return of the communism and the cold war again.
But everytime Russia has less freedom for their people,agressive style with the nearby countries and also with the European Union and NATO.Maybe Putin is not a communist leader but we are seeing the rise of a new enemy: a new czar.
Susan:I traslated all this notice for my blog in Spanish.It says clearly that I found it here,the newspaper name and the author…and in the last lines my own ideas about that.
The title of my post is “The Czar”(in spanish “El Zar”) and it is under a big russia map.
Tom Paine propagated extremism.
I’m sure Thomas Jefferson and B. Franklin were considered “extremists” in England 231 years ago!
In the “west” things are not much better. The only things that makes Kasparov special are that (a)He was chess world champion (b) The “west” for its own political reasons (ie making Russia more friendly to them and less indepedent) want to harm Putin. This second reason is the most important.
Now, I know several small left wing groups in western Europe (e.g Greece and UK) that have been treated by police as “extremists”. i.e. arrested when protesting not allowed to protest being held in custody for long time with no reason or charges and so on (similar incidents with Kasparov). We never hear about this and when we do, we automatically think “Oh, they were some guys that wanted to burn and destroy”, or “well whatever, is not so important, they were just 1,000 people protesting”.
Well, Kasparov in Russia really doesn’t have much support (pretty much as those left wing groups I am talking). Therefore, the fact that we do talk so much about him (and never about other groups in our countries) is because our media don’t like Putin and NOT because Putin is violating humman rights or is undemocratic (which he is, as most leaders of western europe as well).
The use of word “extremist” after all, is something we in the “west” first of all have been using, and are labbeling more and more people that disagree with us. Putin is just copying our un-democratic model.