A fiery speech in defense of Navalny was made for the first time from the podium of the State Duma
The State Duma yesterday, in the first reading, adopted a law that allows a person or organization that receives funding from abroad and is engaged in political activities to be called a “foreign agent.”
Before the vote, a heated discussion began in the parliament hall, during which associates of Vladimir Zhirinovsky even spoke out in defense of the work of Alexei Navalny, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Deputy Vasily Piskarev, who presented the bill, said that an organization, public association or citizen will be considered a foreign agent if he “receives funds or other property from a foreign source and at the same time is engaged in political activities.”
Not all State Duma deputies understood what exactly the requirements of the new law on the status of a foreign agent threaten.
“Suppose there is an individual, he is recognized as a foreign agent, and some other person wrote some kind of post on social networks about this person - positive or negative, but did not indicate that this person about whom he is talking is not a foreign agent, because that he didn't know this. Will this be the reason that a person will be held responsible for mentioning a foreign agent to an individual without his marking? Is this true or not? – Deputy Dmitry Ionin clarified.
“This is a little different. Not every mention of a foreign agent on the Internet requires mandatory marking that it is a foreign agent. If we are talking about a foreign agent, about his political activities, about those actions in connection with which he was recognized as a foreign agent, then there should be a mention of him also because the list of foreign agents is open, everyone has access to them. If information about a foreign agent - about his private life, hobbies, or any other information messages are in no way connected with political activities, then such messages are not subject to labeling,” Piskarev answered him.
Parliamentarian Oleg Nilov asked how the work of scientists or athletes who will receive awards abroad for their work will be assessed:
“Russian citizens can receive financial support from abroad, including in the form of bonuses. There are a huge number of them. There are literary, musical, artistic, and various creative awards. Including Nobel Prizes. In blessed memory, Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was just such a laureate... Will this fact be tied to them as foreign agents, if they ever received such awards, including sports awards. In our country, for example, in figure skating, any award is necessarily accompanied by a cash bonus,” recalled Nilov.
Piskarev clarified that the law does not take these categories into account: “What you just said and gave an example has nothing to do with this bill. It regulates issues of foreign financing of political activities in our country. And prizes and rewards for sporting achievements, as far as I know, Zhores Alferov received a prize that had nothing to do with political activity; he received it for specific work in the scientific field. Therefore, here they are absolutely not connected with each other.”
LDPR deputy Sergei Ivanov came out with unexpectedly sharp criticism of the bill. In his opinion, the norms proposed by the authorities will not work in favor of the state.
“Here, you have 192 organizations that you compulsorily force to be labeled as “foreign agents.” What of this? Now young people have stopped following these organizations; they don’t go to the sites they create, where they publish their investigations, and so on? What is the effect, colleagues? Yes, none!
Now the question is being asked: will the person who published something about a person, an individual who is recognized as a foreign agent, be held liable? Yes, it will be, it hasn’t happened yet, but read the first page of the bill - mentioning in the media about an individual, about organizations, and so on is prohibited. What is this, colleagues?
According to this bill, someone must come to the Ministry of Justice and say: “Comrades, I want to receive money, I plan to receive it, or I am receiving it from foreign countries in order to participate in political activities.” If he does not do this, and someone complains, then he is immediately included in this list with the corresponding consequences.
Turn it on for your health, but they will just take you and turn it on, because your neighbor will say that they transferred money to you.
Answer me one simple question - why are you attracting sovereignty here? Who told you that the investigation against swindlers and thieves, who regularly receive millions of views, is a fight for sovereignty? Are they, perhaps, Russia?
Should people know? Please, people must know. But I’ll give you a simple historical example, colleagues. If you think this will work, no, it won't. In Soviet times there was a saying: “Whoever wears the Adidas brand will sell his homeland tomorrow.” So what, did she work? Yes, any boy would hang himself for these jeans, raid the entire entrance, remove the batteries and sell them for scrap, so that he could later buy these unfortunate jeans for himself. Didn't work!
And then, trust in the authorities is already so low that you are only advertising for them. Once they see that he is performing the functions of a foreign agent, they will look at him. And no one wants to listen to the “nightingale droppings” or the “Zakharov’s” excerpts that she regularly publishes, which make her sick, for which the president and the minister of foreign affairs apologize. That's all.
And the most interesting thing is that this will not extend to the blogosphere. Because all these servers are located there. And until you pass a law on blocking because Solovyov is not allowed into Google or somewhere else on the social network, all this will be published, the people will know their heroes. And you will be ashamed that with such measures you tried to crush people who are fighting precisely for freedom and independence from swindlers and thieves,” Ivanov said.
Let us recall that supporters of the LDPR and Alexei Navalny, whose work Ivanov hinted at above, repeatedly participated in joint unauthorized actions in Khabarovsk in support of the arrested governor Furgal.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.