Ministers showed that this law was essential given the absence of legislation governing this area, recalling that Russian picketers and demonstrators are currently covered by an order of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, issued on 28 July 1988, and by several edicts by the president of Russia. As a result, several regional authorities have passed their own local laws on pickets and rallies, thus undermining the competence of central government.
As a “distinguishing feature” of the proposed legislation, the government proudly cites the constitutional “procedure for notification” of mass demonstrations. But this procedure is only nominally for notification. If the Soviet decree simply banned protests against “the Constitution of the USSR or Constitutions of United and Autonomous Republics, or those which threaten the social order and the security of citizens”, the new legislation simply veils the word “ban” behind a shameful and deceitful mask. It goes like this: “The organiser . . . of a public event is not entitled to carry it out, if notification . . . has not been accepted by agencies of the governing authority or agencies of the local self-governing administration”.
Many of the conditions in the present draft are copied from the temporary order issued by President Yeltsin in 1993 concerning the notification of public demonstrations in Moscow. But in comparison with that, the government has significantly increased the ability of officials in practice to ban peaceful demonstrations. For example, legally incompetent or partially competent people are forbidden to organise meetings and pickets, as are parties or movements whose activities have been restricted or banned.
There follow a long list of places, where it is illegal to hold demonstrations. Firstly, this includes buildings “not equipped for public safety during mass activities”; secondly, areas of land immediately adjacent to harmful and dangerous materials (this bit must have been included especially for the environmental campaigners). Moreover, it is forbidden to stand with banners next to hospitals, health centres, nursery schools and schools during class time. Rallies may not be held alongside churches or cemeteries, or within a certain distance of the presidential residence, the government, the State Duma, the Federal Council, local administrative headquarters in the region, embassies and offices of international organisations. The government explains this ban on the grounds that “the safety of our citizens cannot be guaranteed in these places, or they (the places) are under special jurisdiction”. We must understand from this that if people started shooting at demonstrators from the windows of embassies, the State Duman or municipal offices, the police would be powerless to act. What this “special jurisdiction” is, and what it means for the draft law is generally not stated, and there is no reference to it in other legislation .
By contrast the Soviet decree said nothing about where demonstrations could and could not take place. Yeltsin’s temporary edict only “recommended that you avoid . . . holding mass demonstrations near to electricity cable . . . high-pressure gas pipelines, large diameter heating pipes, particulary explosive and inflammable materials, building materials and lines of communication”.
But that is not all. In the legislation drafted by this government they also state the reasons for which the authorities may “decline to accept” notification – for which read “ban the protest”. In the Soviet law this is stated simply: the aim of the protest must not be to contradict the Constitution, safety and public order, and demonstrators must be unarmed and orderly in their behaviour. Yeltsin’s temporary law not only fundamentally broadened the scope, but also darkened the tone. Thus, the aim of the protest must not be contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to moral norms, and when applying to hold the demonstration, the applicant had to write: I promise to guarantee order. Moreover, the demonstration must not create a “real threat to the normal operations of businesses, establishments and organisations”. I think we can guess what a government official would consider to be a real threat, and what would be a nonexistant one. To give one example, I recall how in 2001 officials banned a picket by a group of members of Falun Gong, who had set up a picket line in front of the Chinese consulate in St. Petersburg. The reason for this was that a diplomat looking out of his window might be distressed to read banners calling for an end to the killing of Chinese citizens who are members of the movement, and the diplomat’s health might suffer as a consequence.
Another aspect of Yeltsin’s declaration, which has entered into the new draft law, clearly contradicts the constitution: an application can be “rejected” if the organisers “repeatedly fail to meet their obligations with regard to earlier mass demonstrations”. The Russian government has adopted this part in its new law, along with the rule limiting the duration of public demonstrations: they can take place only between 7 am and 10 pm and for not more than five days in total.
The main innovation in the government’s draft is the establishing an institute of “authorised picketers”, whose role will be to “co-operate with demonstration organisers”. This would be “authorised by the governing body of the executive authorities or of local government” and the familiar “authorised agents of internal affairs”. Their rights are stated in enormous detail: they are now entitled not only to stop a demonstration, disperse the crowd and arrest the instigators, but also to suspend it, in order to end the “violation of law and order”.
The master-stroke of the law is possibly the section under which the procedure for holding mass demonstrations on Red Square is defined by the president of Russia. Either he will issue a separrate law for Red Square, or he will have to decide independently for each situation, never mind what the government and State Duma decide. Our government, as we all already knew, is above the law.