Uanet protests defamation law

On September 25, protest action against amendments to the criminal code, which translate slander from the category of administrative offenses into criminal ones, began in Uanete. The amendments were adopted in the first reading on September 18. In accordance with them, large monetary fines and prison terms of up to five years are imposed for libel. Slander in Ukraine ceased to be a criminal offense in 2001.

The draft law has already provoked sharp criticism from journalists and human rights organizations, who consider it to be the beginning of “crackdown” on the Internet. The largest informational resourses of the Ukrainian segment of the network take part in the action - Ukrainskaya Pravda, Korrespondent.net, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine, the website Today.ua, TVi, LB.ua, Football.ua, iSport.ua, LigaBiznesInform, Telekritika, Newsru.ua, Delo.ua, InvestGazeta, KyivPost, Den, Agency Ukrainian News and Interfax-Ukraine and others. In the Facebook group “Say ni to the law about the hinges. There’s a lot of skin. ”(Say no to the law of slander. This applies to everyone), more than three and a half thousand people have already been registered.

On October 28, parliamentary elections will be held in Ukraine, as a result of which, according to many opinion polls, the current government may well lose a majority in the Verkhovna Rada. Over the past few years, Ukraine has dropped from 108 to 130 places in the press freedom rating compiled by Freedom House, moving from the category of free countries to partially free ones. The Internet is still relatively uncontrollable - in the rating of Internet freedom, Ukraine still belongs to free countries, significantly ahead of neighboring Russia and Belarus. If amendments to the criminal code are adopted, many independent online media outlets, bloggers, and ordinary Internet users may be prosecuted.
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UPD: The protest brought the first results. On the evening of September 25, the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, Vitaly Zhuravsky, on whose initiative the bill was registered, declared that he intended to withdraw it . Nevertheless, he insists that such a law is necessary and intends to continue its discussion after the elections.