Sign-in campaign in Internet for cancellation of Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code

An appeal to President of Russia with a demand to cancel Article 282 of the Criminal Code (CC) of the Russian Federation ("Kindling hatred or enmity and humiliation of human dignity") was placed in the Internet page of the Party "Homeland: Common Sense". The appeal already has some five hundred subscriptions, said Mikhail Delyagin, chairman of the organizing committee of the Party, at the press conference held at the Independent Press Centre.

As explained by Mr Delyagin, Article 282 of the RF's CC is used mainly to suppress the defence by citizens of their constitutional rights, rehabilitates extremism in public consciousness and is a powerful instrument of discrediting the state power.

The authors of the document ask the head of the state to sign-in.

According to Mikhail Delyagin, the above article of the CC is now applied, in most cases, to struggle against those who express their civil activeness and try defending their rights.

Angela Sineok, head of the Rostov Regional Centre "Law and Mass Media", agrees with him. As an expert, she took part many times in linguistic and other judicial studies on cases initiated under Article 282 of the CC. "Its use 'not to the purpose' is widespread in south of Russia," Ms Sineok believes.

According to her story, frequently the investigation is too freely treating the formulations of this article, acting in the interests of the prosecution, which "enables, for example, to convict a journalist or a paper, and shut up a free mass medium."

"The formulation of 'social group' is directly used by the legislator in Article 282 ("Kindling hatred or enmity and humiliation of human dignity") of the RF's CC. It should be noted that the formulation is not good and objectively admits several versions of interpretation," said the source of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.