Penalty increases for Crimes Committed on Grounds of Religious, Ethnical, Racial, Sexual and Other Discriminative Motives

Salome Achba

According to the amendments to be made to the Criminal Code, committing crimes on the grounds of religious, ethnical, racial, sexual and other discriminative motives is considered to be an aggravating circumstance. Amendments have already been submitted to Parliament.

According to the authors, the draft law was elaborated according to the recommendation of European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI). According to this recommendation, European Commission called on Georgian government to make legislative changes which would establish racial motive to be aggravating circumstance for all types of crimes.

In the initial version of the draft law sexual orientation and gender was not included in the aggravating circumstances which gave rise to protest of organizations protecting LGBT rights. They were requesting to add sexual orientation and gender to the list of aggravating circumstances. Parliament considered the initiative of human rights defenders and on March 14th gender and sexual orientation were added to the list of aggravating circumstances.

These amendments incited different kinds of reactions in Parliament. According to the member of opposition minority of Parliament Jondi Baghaturia, these amendments are connected to issue of restoration of mosques in Batumi and Akhaltsikhe.

“My team and I think it is absolutely inadmissible to discriminate one on religious, ethnical or other grounds. Thanks God, this is not a characteristic of Georgian nation not including rare exceptions. As for making law stricter in regards with crimes committed on ethnical and religious grounds the context of it raises a little suspicion. I have a reasonable fear that it is related to Georgian government’s strong desire to build Azizie moque in Georgia. In certain ways, it can be a threat towards the people who are against the building such mosque,” – Jondi Baghaturia states with Human Rights Center.

Lawyer of Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) Giorgi Gotsiridze positively assesses the amendments: “Such legislation exists in many developed democratic states. Besides, these amendments were made according to the recommendations of European organizations. We welcome the fact that Georgian Parliament maximally widened the list of discriminative grounds after GYLA and other organizations made recommendations. We think this is correct approach. Crime committed on the grounds of hate for certain characteristics should be punished stricter than ordinary crimes.”

According to Giorgi Gotsiridze, amendments to be made to Criminal Code will be mechanism for preventions of such crimes.

Sourche:religiebi.info