Russia: Repressive Laws Stifle Civil Liberties

• Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian government has continued to erode civil liberties, a dramatic escalation in its more than a decade of ongoing violations of fundamental rights.
• Hundreds of people have been jailed or imprisoned under new repressive laws. A wide range of issues cannot be discussed openly, and many dissidents, journalists, and activists have gone into exile.
• The Russian government should repeal its draconian regulations, bring the law into line with its international obligations, and create a Civilized Society able to flourish.

(New York, August 7, 2024) – Russian The government’s undermining of civil liberties since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is a dramatic escalation of more than a decade of ongoing violations of fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 205-page reportRussia’s legislative minefield: stumbling blocks for civil society since 2020focuses on a range of repressive legislation and policies adopted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government since 2020, and how the Kremlin has used them to suppress internal dissent and weaken civil society. These laws severely restrict the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, and impose state-enforced historical, social, and political narratives on public life.

All Russian activists released in the planned prisoner exchange on August 1, 2024, were charged under the laws described in the report. But hundreds more remain jailed or incarcerated under these laws. Critical discussion of a wide range of issues cannot take place in public, and many dissidents, journalists, and activists have gone into exile.

“The Russian government is forcing citizen activists and journalists to tread dangerously on legislative minefields, testing their resilience like never before,” Rachel Denber“Yet independent groups and media outlets are holding out, offering hope that Russia is finally transforming into a country committed to protecting and promoting fundamental rights.”

Human Rights Watch examined the repressive legislation in eight broad areas: “foreign agents,” public assembly, voting rights, free speech, sexual orientation and gender identity, treason and similar concepts, historical truth, and education.

The signature legislation of the government’s legislative crackdown is the “foreign agent” law, which seeks to smear any person or entity that independently criticizes the government as “foreign” and therefore suspicious or even treasonous. Russian authorities first enacted the “foreign agent” provisions in 2012, and have since repeatedly made them more stringent, using them as a pretext to shut down some of the country’s leading human rights organizations. The report traces how these provisions first targeted nongovernmental organizations, then unregistered groups, media outlets, journalists, and other categories of individuals, and by 2022, anyone deemed by the state to be “under foreign influence.”

The penalties have grown more severe over time and now include fines, jail terms and the revocation of citizenship for naturalized citizens. By 2022-2023, the amendments also exclude so-called “foreign agents” from many aspects of public life, including the civil service and teaching, as authorities seek to create a “untouchable class,” in the words of one activist.

Human Rights Watch said a series of amendments shredded what little freedom of peaceful assembly there was left, effectively outlawing legal protests. The authorities introduced a strict licensing system that requires protest organizers to apply for and receive explicit public assembly permits. They equated public walks and a series of one-person protests with large-scale protests, closing the few loopholes that people have used to hold protests and get around Russia’s repressive public assembly rules. They introduced highly unrealistic requirements to verify the sources of funding and donations for public events and to report on their management.

The war censorship law, hastily passed after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, prohibits the dissemination of information or views about the conduct of the Russian armed forces that are inconsistent with official information. Penalties include long prison terms, stripping naturalized Russians of their citizenship, and confiscation of property. More than 480 people have faced criminal prosecution on war censorship charges.

Other amendments make it a criminal offense to criticize the work of security agencies under the vaguely defined concept of “public calls for endangering national security” and provide for tougher criminal defamation charges and penalties.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have long faced discrimination, harassment and violence, especially in the context of the 2013 anti-gay “propaganda” law. Human Rights Watch said the legislative amendments passed since 2022 marked an all-out attack as the Kremlin positions itself as a global defender of “traditional values”.

The amendments expand the scope of the propaganda law, effectively banning public discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity and prohibiting any depiction of so-called “non-traditional relationships” for people under 18. Even images of same-sex couples holding hands can only be shown under the new restrictions or if they are marked as restricted content. Bookstores have already begun covering books that may violate the new law or removing them from their shelves.

A 2023 Supreme Court ruling designated the “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organization,” opening the door to arbitrary prosecution and imprisonment of LGBT people and anyone who defends their rights or expresses solidarity with them.

The new law expands the definition of treason to include people who do not have access to state secrets, and expands the definition of espionage to include passing information to “hostile elements,” including foreign and international organizations. The authors of the treason law openly admit that it is designed to target civil society groups. Other laws criminalize cooperation with international institutions “to which Russia is not a party,” such as the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and “confidential cooperation” with foreign actors that is aimed at Russian national security. The new provisions also prohibit involvement with unregistered foreign organizations and expand the ban on involvement with organizations designated by the authorities as “undesirable.”

According to Russian court data, authorities brought 101 cases of treason, espionage and secret cooperation to Russian courts in 2023, five times more than in 2022. The number of criminal prosecutions for participation in “undesirable” organizations has been increasing.

A 2020 constitutional amendment codified the concept of “historical truth” into law, which Russia pledged to “protect.” In 2021, parliament passed laws banning comparisons between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and criminalizing insults to World War II veterans.

The broader context involves authorities imposing an official historical narrative that glorifies Soviet-era achievements while downplaying, justifying, or in some cases questioning the facts of Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror and other Soviet-era atrocities, Human Rights Watch said.

Laws passed in 2021 imposed tighter oversight on education, further limiting Russians’ access to information; eliminating alternatives to the historical, social, and political narratives promoted by the government; and controlling interactions with foreigners.

Human Rights Watch said the Russian government should end its long-standing repression and instead create an environment in which civil society can flourish. The Russian government should repeal draconian legal provisions and follow recommendations from the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations to bring legislation and practice into line with Russia’s international human rights obligations.

“The Kremlin keeps turning back the clock and revisiting past tyrannies,” Denber said. “Russian laws should expand respect for rights, not destroy them.”