Tbilisi. CSO and media organizations have released a joint statement "on initiated draft bill concerning public fomenting of violence".
In the nearest future the Parliament of Georgia intends to adopt at the first hearing the Law of Georgia "on Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Georgia", authored by the Ministry of Interior of Georgia, and initiated by the Government of Georgia. "One of the objectives of the draft Law is to criminalize fomenting of violence. Pursuant to proposed amendments, publicly fomenting of violence aimed at inciting confrontation among racial, religious, national, local, ethnic, social, political, language groups and/or groups of other signs shall become punishable. Imprisonment of up to two years is proposed as a sanction. Although following initiation the draft Law was amended - namely, reference to obvious, direct and substantial threat was included in the draft Law - it still contains serious risks in terms of freedom of expression and given a current context, the state's declared motivation in relation to criminalization of such action lacks credibility", the statement says.
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