NOVOSIBIRSK, August 15. /TASS/. The law on extremism must be adjusted to apply the notion of extremism only to real threats of violence, and not social media jokes, Chairman of Russia’s Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights Mikhail Fedotov told a visiting session of the council in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk on Wednesday.
"The Council is working on proposals to adjust the laws. The notion of extremism must be specified, it must be associated with violence or a real threat of violence. Jokes on the Internet are not extremism, of course. Everything must be done to review the law so that it hit the target, the extremists," Fedotov said.
He said "by expending the notion of extremism the way it is applied, we can end up in labelling half of the country as extremists, which makes no sense".
Fedotov said the law on countering extremist activity is the first to be corrected, as it contains the main mistake.
Earlier, Mail.ru Group requested the State Duma lower house of parliament to initiate a bill on amnesty for those convicted for activity in the social media, including for likes, reposts or for posting images, if these actions entailed no socially dangerous consequences.
According to the chairman of the Duma committee for information policy, information technologies and communications, Leonid Levin, in autumn the government may submit to the lower house a bill ruling out the possibility of deeming as extremist incidents in which fragments from historical and literary works are cited.