MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd August, 2018) The number of people convicted of extremism in Russia grew fourfold in 2011-2017, the definition of extremism should be narrowed down, the country's Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights said Wednesday on its website.
The graph published by the council showed that in 2011 there were 149 people in Russia convicted of extremism, while in 2017 there were 604 such cases.
According to the graph, most verdicts were connected to the charges of inciting hatred or demeaning the human dignity.
The council proposed narrowing down the definition of extremism since some of the phrases used in the existing definition, such as "sparking social discord," "establishing religious superiority," and some others, could be interpreted in more than one way.
The council insisted that only direct threats of violence and calls for violence should be classified as extremism.
"In this case, a possibility of criminal prosecution for statements that do not pose a tangible threat to the interests protected by the Russian constitutions, will be excluded," the council said.
The panel suggested separating extremist crimes into three categories and giving each of the three a different weight in the statistics reports submitted by the law enforcement agencies. In this case, certain, less serious, types of violations, especially online, could not be used to inflate statistics.
