MOSCOW, December 11. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not ruled out that amendments could be made to the law on rallies and marches.
"As to possible amendments to the law on rallies and marches, why not? We must think it over and take a well-considered decision," the president told a session of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights on Tuesday.
This was Putin’s reply to a suggestion by the head of the Council, Mikhail Fedotov. The president drew attention of the audience to tactics employed by the late human rights champion Lyudmila Alekseeva, who "could find compromises".
"Therefore, these compromises can be found even in the law in force if there is a bid to look for them," the president said. However, he believes "it is entirely possible to look into a possibility of making certain amendments to the law".
Fedotov believes it is necessary to get back to discussion on updating the law on rallies and building a culture of freedom of assembly "without Cossack nagayka whips and provocations".
He drew attention to the situation with human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, who was sentenced to arrest for violation of the law on rallies. "His many-day long arrest takes us back to the issue of updating the law on rallies and demonstrations and building a culture of freedom of assembly - without the mocking refusals to coordinate, without unidentified nagaika whips, but also without provocations from the organizers," Fedotov said.
He reiterated that the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alekseeva, who died on Saturday at the age of 91, was detained on December 2009 in Moscow’s central Triumfalnaya Square at a rally in support of Article 31 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings and demonstrations, marches and pickets).
The case of Lev Ponomaryov
On December 5, Moscow’s Tverskoy Court found human rights activist Lev Ponomarov guilty of a new violation of arrangements for staging a rally, ruling on his arrest for 25 days for appeals to participate in a non-coordinated rally at the FSB building on Lubyanka Square. On December 7, the Moscow City Court mitigated the arrest to 16 days. On December 10, the Trevskoy Court dismissed a request from Ponomaryov to allow him to attend the funerals of Lyudmila Alekseeva.
Alekseeva, a member of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights and the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, died aged 91 in Moscow on Saturday.
Alekseeva joined the human rights movement in 1966. In 1977, she was forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The dissident settled in the United States and authored some research into the history of dissident movement in the Soviet Union. Alekseeva returned to Russia in 1993 and three years later headed the oldest human rights organization - the Moscow Helsinki Group. In 2002, she joined the Russian Presidential Commission for Human Rights, which was transformed into the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in 2004.