The members of the Pussy Riot punk band, Greenpeace activists and protesters jailed after the May 2012 Bolotnaya demonstration will be freed in an amnesty dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution, Russian media report. © AFP Photo / Pierre AndrieuHonorary President of non-profit organisation ATTAC, Susan George (Center L), holds a sign bearing the portrait of a jailed Greenpeace activist alongside other protesters taking part in a demonstration calling for the release of a group of Greenpeace activists imprisoned in Russia, on October 31, 2013, in Paris.
A total of 25,000 people will be freed under the amnesty initiated by President Putin, Interfax cited Vladimir Vasilyev, deputy speaker of parliament, as saying.
"Around 1,300 people will be released from prison, and 17,500 people will be relieved of non-custodial sentences. In addition, criminal proceedings against nearly 6,000 can be terminated," Vasilyev said.
Several Russian media including
Izvestia and
Vedomosti newspapers have obtained a copy of the draft amnesty, which was submitted to the parliament by President Vladimir Putin on Monday.
According to the papers, the participants in such high-profile cases as the Pussy Riot Cathedral protest, Greenpeace's
Arctic Sunrise boarding of an oil rig and the Bolotnaya Square riots will all be granted amnesty.
The upcoming amnesty won't apply to those who committed crimes that posed a serious danger to society, Vladimir Vasilyev said, adding that the amnesty will give preference to convicts in vulnerable social categories and people who have served the country.
It will favor all minors, mothers with small children, pregnant women, women over 55 and men over 60, the disabled, Chernobyl cleanup workers and military veterans, he said.
According to
Vedomosti newspaper, the draft amnesty covers three articles of the criminal code "as an exception," which means that those, who were convicted under them, will be freed or relived from punishment regardless of age, sex and social status.
© RIA Novosti / Aleksandr UtkinThe members of the Pussy Riot punk band Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova during the announcement of the verdict on their case at Moscow's Khamovniki Court
The first such article Number 213 is "hooliganism", which means that two Pussy Riot members - Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova - as well as the Greenpeace's activists, awaiting trial in Russia, will get a pardon.
Three members of the Pussy Riot punk band were each sentenced to two years in prison after staging a protest in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in February 2012, although one member of the band was later released on appeal.
The 30 Greenpeace activists are currently on bail and awaiting trial after an attempt to board Russia's Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Barents Sea this September.
The second exception stands for article 212 (parts 2 and 3) - "participation in riots and attempts to incite rioting." This will see nine participants of the Bolotnaya trial, who are not accused of using force against the police officers, avoid prosecution. The so-called Bolotnaya prisoners are people who were detained following riots on Bolotnaya Square in central Moscow in May 2012.
The third exception deals with those who were convicted for violating traffic regulation with severe consequences to people's health. Meanwhile, those, who committed economic crimes, won't be pardoned as there has already been an amnesty for this category of prisoners earlier this year, with 1,431 people released,
Izvestia said.
This means that former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, will remain behind bars.
The amnesty will be adopted before the end of the year and implemented within the next six months, a high-ranked source in the parliament told
Izvestia.
© AFP / Denis SinyakovArctic Sunrise Greenpeace's Arctic protest ship
Russia celebrates the 20th anniversary of the country's Constitution on December 12.
The head of the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, expressed his satisfaction with the draft amnesty bill, expressing hope that it won't suffer heavy revisions by the Duma deputies.
"I'm sure that there'll be some MPs, who'll try to widen the amnesty bill and those, who'll push for it to be narrowed. In the end, I hope that it'll remain as it was when submitted by the President," he told RIA Novosti news agency.
But one of the heads of Memorial human rights center, Oleg Orlov, has called the draft amnesty bill a disappointment.
"Even in its current form, I welcome the document. At least, some people will be released," he told Interfax news agency. "But that part of Russian society, which advocated an amnesty, understand it in a broader sense, and of course we are disappointed."
President Putin tasked human rights activists with putting together a draft bill for an amnesty dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the country's modern Constitution in late September. In mid-October, the draft bill, which proposed to pardon around 100,000 prisoners, was approved by the Presidential Council for Human Rights.
Piece of propaganda? How come RT publishes this story while the Reuters story is very different? _[Link] And why this change of the narrative? Who benefits? In the article Putin portrayed so 'caring' promising to free women, invalids, Chernobyl clean-up workers, those who served their country... A savior, eh? How many Chernobyl prison workers are in prisons in Russia? Any news on that? Or is it a hint that this move may be connected to what really happened in Ukraine during Chernobyl plant accident, when Ukraine was a part of the old Soviet Union, what was happening there ever since (Orange revolution, rise of extreme nationalism and anti-Russian hysteria directed to ordinary Russians, and the long list of Ukranian top politicians/criminals/gas robber barons), and what is happening right now stirring up the social unrest with the Ukraine's EU membership? Trying to sway the population of the sovereign country one way or the other. Is the EU leadership better than Putin? No. Is Putin better than the EU leadership? No. Almost every country, every big international institutions in the world are ponerized, invaded by pscyhopaths. And as the saying goes, the scum rises to the top. Old time tactics of psychopathic rulers to divide the population by pitting one group against the other using, ideology, religion, nationality, sex, socio-economic status... The big chess game: who gets what. Do these rulers care about people? No. It's a game for them. It's shocking how many people still think that at this time and age that this political figure or that one can bring change for the better. With every election or vote, every new colorful revolution, hoping against all evidence of what these so-called 'leaders' do is the opposite of what they say, that the next one will be better.
Is Russia a democracy? No, not by a long shot. More and more repressions and draconian laws are put in place, as in the US (so called 'capitalist' and democratic country) and China (so-called 'communist' country), prisons in Russia are privatized to make money for the faithful servants of the political 'elite', the owners of corporations that retain these labor camps. Dissidents, journalists, activists who oppose the brutal rule of the pathocrats are thrown in prisons, killed or put in psychiatric institutions. Can Putin or Obama make decisions by themselves? No. The organizations/corporations/the states, the 'pond' ("ะฑะพะปะพัะพ"), the shadow force are behind all these moves, tricks and distortions, and the top politicians, presidents, prime ministers the top are it's servants.
What happens in Russia's prisons (as in the US and China) considering that the numbers of prisoners in Russia is 600,000-800,000 (third, after the US and China) _[Link] is rape, sadism and humiliation, slave labor, denial of the basic needs, constant threats on someone's life/coersion, appalling sanitary conditions etc. Disease and abuse are rampant _[Link] That's the 'treatment' women, men and adolescents are subjected to - 'cruel and unusual' punishment. It's not so unusual anymore. Why? Because the prison system is not about the 'rehabilitation', it's about inflicting maximum pain on human beings, devised by psychopaths to get satisfaction for their insatiable greed (as many prisons are privatized, i.e. prisoners are slaves that work for free), for the rapists and sadists to get satisfaction from human suffering.
And newly created Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) (in place of RIANovosti), along with bought from Potanin Profmedia _[Link] "could solidify Putin's grip on information by further limiting sources of news for Russians whose TV screens are dominated by state-controlled channels." I'll say! And this move of creating a duplicate or the ghost of RT "an English-language TV channel called RT which was initially known as Russia Today" is very curious. High strangeness... "Through the deal, the ex-Soviet gas ministry - now Russia's largest firm by revenue - will add TV and radio stations, cinemas and film production and distribution assets to a sprawling portfolio built up around commercial channel NTV."