10:59, 14 August 2016

Petition against "Yarovaya's package of laws" gains 100,000 signatures

Irina Yarovaya. Photo from social network VKontakte, vk.com/yarovaya_ia

100,000 signatures were gained by the petition posted on the state-owned portal of initiatives and directed against the package of anti-terrorism laws relating to Salafis and other non-traditional religious groups.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that after Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Evkurov had voiced the proposal to deprive of citizenship the Russian citizens who had left to fight for militants in Syria, politicians Irina Yarovaya and Viktor Ozerov developed a package of anti-terrorism laws. On July 7, the "Yarovaya's package of laws" was signed by the President.

The provisions of the "Yarovaya's package of laws" reduce the floor age for criminal responsibility for terrorism, toughen the punishment for most of "extremist" articles and introduce a number of new restrictions, in particular, ban to conduct any missionary activities on behalf of religious organizations, whose aims are contrary to the law. The new law also demands from mobile operators to store the content of users' calls and correspondence.

Today, the petition for rescission of the "Yarovaya's package of laws" has gained 100,098 signatures at the state-owned portal "Russian Public Initiative" (RPI). Then, the collection of signatures was stopped.

"The law requires a huge amount of money and may result in bankruptcy of many Internet companies and reduce state revenue from taxes imposed on them. Furthermore, it also infringes human rights," write the authors of the petition in support of their claim.

Under the Russian law, if a petition of the federal level posted at the RPI portal gains 100,000 signatures in its support during voting, it shall be then sent for consideration to an expert working group of the federal level. The expert group shall make a decision concerning the petition within two months.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.