Statement by the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO

January 16, 2014

The YABLOKO party expresses its categorical disagreement with the bills submitted to the State Duma by its four factions on Wednesday. Under the guise of combating terrorism the united bloc of the authorities and the pseudo-opposition parties pursues the policies of curbing rights and liberties.

Bill 428889-6 aims at ceremonial increase of criminal liability for terrorism and aiding to terrorists. This measure is meaningless, as persons linked with terrorism certainly admit the possibility of death due to their activities, and not due to the courts’ decisions: the Criminal Code is the last thing which would interest them.

This measure is also meaningless in the circumstances when the FSB (Federal Security Bureau) is not interested in the investigation of the attacks: suspects in the acts of terror are in most cases eliminated while trying to arrest them. Thus, according to official statistical data of the courts, in the first six months of 2013 courts made verdicts with a reference to Article 205 of the Criminal Code “Act of Terror” only in relation to six people.

Considering such weak law enforcement against terrorists and their accomplices, these draconian measures are clearly targeting innocent civilians rather than terrorists.

FSB officers get the right to inspect personal identity papers, conduct personal search and search of vehicles. And there is virtually no restriction to this right: [the authors of the bill] used loose formulations like “wrongdoing” and “unlawful purposes”.

Bill 428884-6 severely restricts the rights of Internet users. From now on every website owner and even owners of personal pages must be registered with the authorities. Website owners will be required to store all the information – commentaries, users’ personal correspondence, web search queries, and so on, for six months and make it available for the police and the FSB.

The bill extends its action on organisations located outside of Russia but having Russian users. If, for example, Facebook, refuses to store data of its users, this may become the basis for banning Facebook in Russia.

We do not dispute the importance of FSB access to personal correspondence of terrorists. However, this access should not be overly burdensome for ordinary citizens and providers. More importantly, it must take place under the control of the court and only for the purposes specified in the law.

Countless unpunished cases of publication of correspondence and “wiretapping” allow us to assume that the bill is aiming, first, at the control over the dissenting and, second, the development of profitable business in saling personal data.

Finally, the third bill of the package, Bill 428896-6, aims at the destruction of electronic payment facilities. The maximum allowed amount of payment without identification of the payer will be reduced from 15,000 [approx. Euro 340] to 1,000 roubles [approx. Euro 22-23]. We believe that the real goal of this bill is counteraction to fundraising by political and non-profit organizations, including charities.

We are stating herewith that the government does not offer anything for real fight against terrorism, and is cynically uses horrible crimes to further curbing of civil rights and liberties.

As for the State Duma, its duty to the citizens of Russia is to raise the question of the efficiency of the security services.

The YABLOKO party reiterates its demand: to create a parliamentary commission to study the activities of FSB in their investigation of three monstrous acts of terror in Volgograd.

We urge the State Duma deputies to reject the proposed amendments and instead imitation of a violent reaction to the acts of terror to urgently address the real issues of Russia’s security.

Sergei Mitrokhin,

Chairman of the YABLOKO party