Press Release, June 11, 2013 

Today YABLOKO activists and party leader Sergei Mitrokhin conducted a series of one person pickets against adoption of the bill on protection of religious feelings by the main entrance to the State Duma. The State Duma included examination of the bill in the second and third reading in its agenda.

The activists were holding a placard “The Law on the protection of religious feelings means Inquisition”.

“This law single out believers in a special privileged group and they will be more protected than any other group. This is a path towards the Inquisition. Believers and non-believers should enjoy equal protection, it is the basis of a law governed state, otherwise this will push us back to the Middle Ages,” Sergei Mitrokhin said.

YABLOKO activists are certain that protecting feelings of only one category of citizens in a criminal procedure the government thereby violates Article 29 of the Constitution envisaging equality of all the citizens.

Such sanctions have been applied up to the present only nearby religious buildings, however, from now on any representative of any religious confession in any part of Russia may make a criminal law suit against an “insulter” or get the patter imprisoned for two years.

“This bill virtually prohibits any distribution of information aiming at criticism of a religion. Already now we can interpret the works of Voltaire, d’Holbach, or even Karl Marx as an insult of religious feelings,” Mitrokhin noted.

YABLOKO activists are convinced that the present legislation is able to solve all the issues without encroaching on citizens’ rights and maintaining equality.

Sergei Mitrokhin believes that such amendments are welcomed by the Russian state aspiring to distance itself from European democratic values ​​and consolidate the conservative part of the society. “The law is created so that to apply reprisals against the dissenting,” Mitrokhin said.

In addition to the protests against the law on protection of religious feelings, a few people protested against homosexual sexual relations. Young people were holding placards with offensive slogans. Despite the fact that these protesters broke the law on rallies (as they were standing from each other at a distance clearly less than 50 meters envisaged by law for one-person pickets), the police began to act only after YABLOKO activists asked them to do so. Only after that the homophobes were asked to leave.