According to human rights activists, the law on peaceful assembly will bury peaceful assemblies in Ukraine
Adoption of the bill No. 2508a on freedom to peaceful assembly in Ukraine even in the first reading is a political suicide of all parliamentary opposition in anticipation of presidential elections of 2015. It was declared by the NGO "Institute Respublika," a member of the All-Ukrainian Initiative For Peaceful Protest! consisting of 138 human rights and mass civic organizations, and trade unions.
"Legislative way of narrowing freedom of assembly is not actually beneficial for political powers of the majority fractions in the Verkhovna Rada, and for the civil society it is a disaster. While the main repressive leverages, such as courts and police, are in hands of only one political power, any legislative changes in this sphere have to be done very carefully," said Volodymyr Chemerys, the head of NGO "Institute Respublika.
Human rights activists claim that adoption of the bill No. 2508a can cause sharp increase in quantity of illegal court bans of peaceful assemblies. Also, the bill will promote the widespread criminal and administrative prosecution of peaceful assembly participants on the grounds of "deliberate non-performance of a judgment" or "malicious disobedience to the lawful order or the requirement of the employee of police." The draft law No. 2508a suggests to legalize a duty to report the authorities about peaceful assemblies not later than 48 hours prior to their beginning (part 1 of Article 7), suggests to allow courts to limit the right to assembly at any time till the beginning of meetings (paragraph 1, part 2 of the section entitled "Final and Transitional Provisions"), and also provides additional opportunity to ban assemblies in court which the authorities wasn't informed about, or not informed in 48 hours prior to their beginning (part 7 and part 2 of Article 17). It will be extremely difficult or practically impossible to hold assemblies without the preliminary notification, as it will be necessary to prove "spontaneous nature" of assemblies, to police, bailiffs and judges according to item 5 of part 1 of Article 1, part 1 of Article 15 of the draft law No. 2508a. In addition, the bill No. 2508a will promote authorities to apply Article 382 of the Criminal Code, and Article 185 of the Code of Administrative Offences against participants of assembly, which foresee such repressive sanctions as high fines, administrative arrest and imprisonment. Besides, the bill provides opportunity to adopt new unconstitutional orders of local authorities, urged to limit freedom of peaceful assemblies in an unconstitutional way according to a newly adopted special law on peaceful assembly (p.2 item 4 and p. 5 of the section entitled "Final and Transitional Provisions").
The NGO "Institute Respublika" also notes that the bill was initiated by the Presidential Administration and now its lobbyists "deceptively present the bill as part of the European integration process." "Actually, the EU doesn't demand adoption of a special law on peaceful assembly, it is enough to make changes to the current legislation where it has flaws," said Volodymyr Chemerys, referring to the text of the Decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of "Verentsov vs. Ukraine."
Read more about threats of the draft law at: http://zmina.org.ua/2013/10/2508
For more information, please contact: +380503806268 (Volodymyr Chemerys), +380681217741 (Mikhailo Lebed`).