Press Release, October 14, 2013

Andrei Babushkin, member of YABLOKO Bureau, head of the “For Human Rights” committee and member of Presidential Council for Human Rights, was invited to Dozhd (Rain) TV channel to talk about the amnesty draft act developed by the Presidential Council for Human Rights.

According to Andrei Babushkin, it was not the final version fo the draft yet. “We’ve prepared proposals on amnesty for the President. Of course, we understand how the principals and consequences of the amnesty should look like. The main principal for us is broad amnesty which will include as many people as possible convicted on different charges and having different sentences, but this refer to the imprisoned in the first place. This principle will create the conditions for a penitentiary reform due to the reduction of the number of prisoners. We realize that in the present conditions when over 800,000 people are held at places of detention and pretrial detention centers no penitentiary reform is possible. The amnesty shouldn’t violate the rights of the imprisoned and shouldn’t lead to the increase in crime. On the one hand, it must be the amnesty that will demonstrate the humanity of our state and help to increase the prestige of Russia in the eyes of the citizens and the society. On the other hand, the amnesty should help to save thousands of lives and families. I hope that people suffering from serious and lethal diseases will fall under the amnesty”.

Andrei Babushkin refused to answer which categories of the imprisoned will be included in the amnesty. “The worst thing we can do is to give a false hope”. The human rights advocate recalled the amnesty in 2001 when 60,000 people were supposed to be releases, but the number of the actually released was 2.5-fold less.

“I must remind you that the act of pardon is the President’s prerogative and the amnesty is the prerogative of the State Duma. We have prepared proposals on amnesty. The President will study them, agree them with the Duma’s factions and will work witn them together with the corresponding committees and Presidential Administration. Then these proposals will get to the State Duma. There are 450 deputies, each of them has a right to include someone in the amnesty or exclude someone. That’s why it’s possible that the final draft adopted by the State Duma will be very much different from what we have proposed”.

Vladimir Putin is supposed to get the proposals on amnesty prepared by the Presidential Council for Human Rights on October 15. We express hope that the final draft will be ready in a reasonable period time.