The Verkhovna Rada has registered 13 bills which are a threat to civil society
The Verkhovna Rada is considering 13 bills which are a threat to civil society, violate the Constitution and Ukraine’s international human rights commitments, and aim to disproportionately restrict the freedom of association and peaceful gatherings.
This was reported by Tetiana Pechonchyk, the head of ZMINA Human Rights Centre, at a press conference in Kyiv where a report on the persecution of activists in 2021 was presented.
Four of these bills were registered in 2021 (##5496, 6325, 6326, 6327), and nine were submitted in 2020 (##3059, 3193-1, 3291, 3326, 3564, 3572, 3916, 3936, 4521).
In particular, these bills ban civil activists from holding protest rallies near courts, introduce “polygraph tests” for civil activists who wish to work in government bodies or companies affiliated with the state, introduce the status of “foreign agents” and require excessive and unjustified financial reporting from non-governmental organizations with international funding, remove the term “gender” from legislation and ban the “propaganda of transgenderism and homosexualism,” complicate the procedures for engaging international volunteers, etc.
These bills were submitted by MPs from the political factions of the Servant of the People, Opposition Platform—For Life, Fatherland, For the Future, non-factional MPs, and by the Cabinet of Ministers.
“Even if just one of these bills is adopted, it will be a serious blow to the situation with human rights and the freedom of association and peaceful gatherings in Ukraine. ZMINA will monitor the situation around these bills in 2022,” summarized Tetiana Pechonchyk.
At the same time, the human rights defendant noted that individual MPs who introduced the bills that are “toxic” to civil society were included on the sanction lists of the United States. They are Andriy Derkach (non-factional), Oleksandr Dubinsky (Servant of the People) and Oleh Voloshyn (OPFL). In addition, Oleksandr Dubinsky was also expelled from the parliamentary faction of the Servant of the People party.
Tetiana Pechonchyk“The US State Department considers them to be Russian agents, and this shows in their bills, some sections of which were copied from Russian laws, where civil society is being strangled,” said Tetiana Pechonchyk. “We call on other authors of similar legislative initiatives not to risk and not to disgrace themselves and to recall these bills.”
See a detailed analysis of these bills and their risks in the report The Situation of Human Rights Defenders and Civil Activists in Ukraine in 2021.
Note: The Increasing the Role and Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Ukraine project is implemented by ZMINA Human Rights Centre in partnership with the Netherlands Helsinki Committee and with financial support by the European Union. The project focuses on the legal and operational protection and support for human rights defenders and anti-corruption activists in Ukraine, on supporting the positive role of human rights defenders in society and establishing connections between them, on increasing the number of effective investigations into attacks on human rights defenders and activists, etc. The project is implemented from 2019 until 2022.
