Verkhovna Rada plans to reintroduce the article about criminal responsibility for defamation

On September 18 members of the Ukrainian Parliament voted in the first reading for the amendments to the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine and by doing so they increased the scope of responsibility for attacks on the honor and dignity of a human being. The bill suggested by a member of Party of Regions Vitalii Zhuravsky got 244 votes.

Apart from monetary penalties, the MPs suggest that the person accused of defamation should be punished by imprisonment. In particular, unsubstantiated allegations of felony or grave crime will be punished by an arrest for a term of six to eight months, or imprisonment up to three years with deprivation of the right to occupy certain positions or engage in certain activities for a term of one to three years. Spreading false information that led to a serious deterioration of health of the person targeted by it will be punished by imprisonment for the term of three to five years.

Interestingly, the bill by Zhuravsky partly copies the legislative changes approved by Russian Parliament on July 13. However, Russian lawmakers suggested the maximum penalty of a fine of five million rubles (a bit over 150,000 dollars) for defamation and refused to punish journalists by putting them into jail.

Zhuravsky registered his bill on July 18 this year and explained his decision by the need to stimulate journalists to “think before they say anything.”

“We all have to understand that it is not about censorship, but, in fact, it is an act of ‘killing’ professional journalism. If you throw journalists in prison for three years, they will come broken both psychologically and physically from there. I consider the adoption of this bill during the election campaign to be an act of intimidating mass media in order to make them more loyal. This is a clear form of censorship,” Yurii LUKANOV, head of the Kyiv Independent Media Trade Union, told The Day. “Of course, our mass media are far from being perfect and our journalists are not saints. Sometimes we come across false information in our mass media. It is obvious that we must fight with this but not by such radical means. Today, apart from this law, there are schemes for closing independent mass media. Mass media are being sued for incredibly large amounts of money. Court satisfies them and then the owners of the media, unable to pay the sums, are forced to close their own media projects. Unfortunately, there is a great number of such examples. Interestingly, the author of the bill Zuravsky must learn to answer personally for his lies. He published a poster with Andrii Shevchenko, who allegedly campaigned for him during the elections. Shevchenko was forced to deny this information. There is no doubt that this bill will increase pressure on mass media.”

According to Lukanov, journalists in Kyiv are preparing a joint appeal concerning this bill and are going to picket the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in order to prevent the adoption of the bill in the second reading.