With the aid from Western donors, a group of members of parliaments is trying to push the law on peaceful protest. The right for peaceful assembly is written in the Ukrainian Constitution. However, we now face an attempt to narrow that right through issuance of the corresponding law. With this respect, I would like to remind the recent history.
The Ukrainian revolution started after ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s police violated the freedom of public assembly. The brutal crackdown of students on Nov. 30, 2013 was the clearest sign to all the society that it is time to start the rebellion. The meeting that followed that act of violence on Dec. 1 showed the enormous quantity of participants – at least 500 000. That was the most numerous peaceful assembly in Ukrainian history. No other shock was so effective and uniting for the Ukrainians.
I remind this because it is vitally necessary to understand the importance of this basic human right for Ukrainian history.What we face now is attempts to narrow that revolutionary right in a legal way.
I have no doubt that the initiators (most of them have no significant experience nor in organizing meeting nor fighting for that right in courts) want to make the world better. But they do not realize that their draft law is a great threat to democracy in Ukraine. In fact, for years it has been one of the real democratic freedoms in Ukraine, not compared to freedom of speech or whatever else. Constitution gave a wide definition of right for public assembly, and that breadth was extremely favorable for all sort of civil activists.
Now, the proposed law wants to narrow this liberty.
First, the draft law gives the police right to decide if the assembly is peaceful or not. It means that several provocateurs can give the police the reason to disperse all demonstrations.
Second, it sets a 48-hour deadline for notification for the meeting. Now it is sufficient to notify local authorities one day before.
Second, it de-facto gives the police a right to prevent spontaneous demonstrations. At present time, even existing court decisions usually do not deny the right for public assembly without notification – in other words, now the absence of notification is not the reason for preventing the assembly. With the new law, it will be the one.
Third, the new law offers to set special order for public assemblies by local authorities, for example, city councils. Local power is usually very negative towards peaceful gatherings, therefore, giving them the power to set the norms of constitutional level is definitely a high risk for assemblies. The human rights activists spent a lot of efforts fighting such an illegal “orders” on local level issued by local authorities. Now their job will be destroyed by the new law-making initiative.
Finally, the essence of Constitution protecting the basic right for freedom of peaceful assembly will be destroyed as well. During the time of political turmoil, there’s always a threat for authorities to limit this freedom. With current legislation, it is possible to change Constition of Ukraine only if 2/3 of the parliament vote for it, and the process is rather complicated. If it is regulated by the ordinary law, only ½ of parliament is enough.
To summarize,law #3587 is a typical example how pointless “reforms for reforms” work now in Ukraine. The real situation is not known by lawmakers, they only present beautiful slides to donors, trying to demonstrate “progress” in “changing the country,” not felling what the country really needs.
