„Toate actele de violență rămân sancționate de lege” – Pavel Parfentiev, familyPolicy.ru
Presa românească (din păcate chiar și cea apropiată nouă) și cea internațională au relatat cu o adevărată voluptate anul trecut despre faptul că în Federația Rusă s-ar fi dat „liber la bătutul nevestelor”. Prilej pentru masele de manevră care populează așa-zisele „rețele sociale” să mai atace o dată inițiativa cetățenească de revizuire a Constituției României pentru protejarea căsătoriei pentru că… „e sprijinită de Rusia” (afirmație lipsită de orice temei) care iată ce modele oferă pentru viața de familie!
În toiul războiului informațional Occident – Rusia și cu bariera lingvistică dificil de trecut am considerat necesar să solicităm informații „de la sursă” despre aceste modificări legislative. Au existat ele într-adevăr și dacă da, care a fost natura lor?
Pavel Parfentiev, de la centrul de advocacy FamilyPolicy.ru a avut amabilitatea să ne răspundă la întrebări privind articolul din The Guardian. Pavel este președintele Organizației Publice Interregionale „Pentru Drepturile Familiei” din Federația Rusă, expert în politici și legislație internațională în domeniul familiei.
Noua lege prevede pedepse egale pentru infracțiuni de gravitate egală comise în afara și în interiorul familiei, explică Parfentiev.
Reproducem integral explicațiile sale, în limba engleză.
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Russian law does not allow beating or hurting anyone
This article is part of demonization campaign against Russia, don’t trust it.
Reality is that any beating including inside the family has always been, is, and will be severely punished by law in Russia. The new law that they mention just made it an equal punishment for hurting a child or a wife INSIDE and OUTSIDE of the family, because since last June when they’ve passed another new law (which caused a lot of protests from our pro-family activists) there became a discrepancy when small injuries inside the family were punished by 2 years in jail, while same small injuries of a child/woman by anybody on the street was pushed with just a small fine (giving a wrong message that home is more dangerous place). So now this is both punished in the same way (and 2 years in jail was removed, and it was welcomed by pro-life people here).
In general intrusion of the State and social workers into family life is a potentially dangerous thing, so this new law in Russia is actually a move in the right direction. Of course it does not allow beating or hurting anyone, that is still punishable by this and many other laws in Russia.
1. In the past the Criminal Code was covering different types of violent crimes against person. This included different types of assault, depending on the seriousness of the objective results. E.g. grave injuries are punished by Art. 111 if intended, by Art. 113, 114, 118 if not intended in different circumstances. Intended easy injuries are covered by Art. 115.
Art 116 of the previous version of the Criminal Code covered the most minor offence – any violent action without any consequence for the health.
All such occasions were covered by the Article. Some of them, aggravated by the racial hate, extremism, and similar motives constituted the second part of the article with the heavier penalty. No special mention of “domestic violence” or things like that were present there.
2. Within the general line of relenting Criminal legislation the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation prepared a bill decriminalizing some minor criminal offences. All of them were to be punished within the frame of the Administrative legislation.
Among the reasons there was an understanding that some minor offences of this kind could be casual and the social consequences of criminal punishment are very heavy in Russia.
Among the misdeeds that the Supreme Court offered to move from Criminal to Administrative field was that covered by Art. 116. According to the proposal of the Supreme Court these offences should be punished administratively if done for the first time, and criminally if repeated afterwards.
This logic in itself was quite sound and convincing and didn’t cause any substantial polemics for the moment.
The part 2 of Art 116 was to be preserved – that is, aggravated by racial hate or hooligan motives actions remained punishable criminally.
The new articles were introduced in the Administrative Code – punishing first time offence previously associated with Art. 116 of the Criminal Code – and in the Criminal Code – Art 116.1 punishing second and other repetitions of the offence criminally.
3. The bill by the Supreme Court was approved by the Parliament last Summer. But there was a problem. An MP (guided it seems by feminist organizations) introduced an amendment. This amendment added to the aggravated offences, remaining criminally punishable under Art. 116 the offence incurred by the “close persons”. i.e. relatives and ex-relatives. The law passed with that amendment.
This amendment was quite bad in the term of the legal logics and inconsistent with the whole system of reasoning underlying the Criminal Code. In fact it was a sort of discrimination against a group of people based just on the fact of their familial relationships. The definitions were unrefined.
In fact the minor offence done by the relative was punishable under this new version of Art. 116 heavier than the more serious offences done by the same person (up to 2 years in jail) and heavier than the same offence done by a stranger.
More than that the language of an article made it possible for the parent smacking its children to be punishable criminally with up to 2 years in prison.
All those things made mad people and pro-family groups in the country. They asked lawmakers not to pass this norm. We gathered tens of thousands signatures against it on CitizenGO site. After the law was finally passed meetings and actions against it were conducted in different parts of the country and more than 200.000 signatures against it were collected by different organizations.
Finally the lawmakers and president did understood that it was wrong to introduce such a groundless and discriminatory norm alien to the logics of the Code.
Under the pressure of people they decided to remove the discriminatory amendment.
This was done in January [2017, n. red. CV] by the Lower Chamber of the Parliament.
This is exactly what was called by the biased media “decriminalization of the domestic violence” or “letting to beat people at home”.
This is a complete lie.
1) All the offences remain punishable. Even the slightest offence is punishable for the first time administratively, if repeated – criminally.
2) This concerns only the slightest offence – without any harm for the health. All the more serious offences harming people’s health remain criminally punishable.
and.
3) Even the first time slightest offence made out of hooliganism is still criminally punishable. That covers, in practice, nearly all the cases of real intended domestic beatings.
We regard this change as a victory for many of our organizations, removing anti-family discrimination and non-proportional threats for the parents smacking their children etc.
Personally I believe that it’s quite wrong to introduce a special language in the law against “family/domestic violence” as it’s being strongly used by anti-family ideologies everywhere. All the real violence at home should be punishable under the general criminal criteria. I also believe that reasonable physical correction of children done by parents should not be punishable at all (notwithstanding any moral discussions in this regard).