“Well-known circumstances do not allow us to do this [to ratify the protocol – Ed.],” said Gryzlov. “The issue has to do with terrorist activity in Russia.”

Russia has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1996, when it joined the Council of Europe under the condition that it would work to prohibit capital punishment. Since then, however, the practice was never banned outright. Gryzlov stressed that despite this, the majority of other obligations that Russia agreed to upon joining the Council had been fulfilled. “For sure, we haven’t ratified the sixth protocol; however, the problem is being resolved differently, but it is being resolved” by continuing the moratorium, he said.

The Russian Constitutional Court ruled last November to extend a moratorium on capital punishment, which had been set to expire in January 2010. The move overruled the court’s original decision in 1999 to allow the introduction of the death penalty if every region of Russia had provisions allowing for jury trials, which Chechnya, the last region without them, was planning to introduce at the beginning of this year.

A January poll by the research center VTsIOM estimated that 44 percent of Russians support a full introduction of the death penalty, with 18 percent in opposition. The majority of those in favor consist of members of the Communist party and elderly Russians, while most of those opposed are members of the opposition parties Yabloko, Right Cause, and Patriots of Russia, as well as young adults. Support for the death penalty in relation to terrorism, however, is relatively higher. In 2005, when VTsIOM estimated public support for capital punishment to stand at 84 percent, 96 percent of respondents were in favor of using the death penalty as punishment for acts of terrorism.

The coalition leaders also plan to appeal to Russia’s Constitutional Court.

Moscow authorities claimed that the rally would not be allowed due to “winter festivities” that were already scheduled to take place on Triumfalnaya Square, where the Other Russia has traditionally held its Rallies of Dissent.

This month marked the seventh time that the rallies were denied sanction by the Moscow authorities. Coalition leaders began holding the rallies in 2009 on the 31st of every month with that date , in defense of the 31st article of the Russian constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly. Each has been banned under a variety of pretexts, but organizers have held the protests nevertheless.

“Most likely, it’s not the Moscow government that’s deciding our fate every time,” rally organizers said in Thursday’s statement. “Apparently, it’s the federal authorities that are making the decision, and this is a political decision that contradicts the constitution.” Among the organizers was 82-year old Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a former Soviet dissident and prominent rights activist who was among 60 people detained at the last rally on December 31, 2009. Each of the other protests has ended in a similar manner.

“You have turned Russia into a police state,” the statement continues, addressing the Russian authorities. “The citizens of Russia have been robbed of politics, robbed of elections at all levels: from governors to the deputies of local assemblies. We are trying to win back a small square.”

Beginning this month, regional Other Russia leaders will begin to hold the Rallies of Dissent in St. Petersburg, Astrakhan, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk and Murmansk in addition to Moscow.

Organizers in St. Petersburg have already turned to the courts to defend their right to hold the January 31 rally. Officially, city authorities have banned the demonstration on the basis that it would block traffic around the central Gostiny Dvor shopping complex. Organizer Andrei Dmitriev maintains that the charge is contradictory, and says that while he hopes the courts will allow the protest, it will be held regardless of the judicial outcome.

Chairman of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin stated that the decision corresponds to international norms agreed to by Russia that ban or recommend banning the use of capital punishment.

Zorkin also noted that it was only by entering into recognizances to abolish the death penalty that Russia was accepted into the Council of Europe in 1996.

The Constitutional Court ruled in 1999 that the death penalty may only be introduced in Russia when jury trials were implemented throughout the country. With Thursday’s ruling, the one remaining region without jury trials, Chechnya, will introduce them by January 2010. Zorkin stated, however, that “this will not allow the possibility for use of the death penalty,” effectively banning the practice.

Public reaction to the decision has been mixed.

Soviet dissident and prominent human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva praised the court’s decision in a statement to Reuters. “I hope the death penalty does not return in Russia, even though the majority of the population and the majority of lawmakers support it,” she said. “In a country with such a cruel history and where human life meant so little for so long, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the majority of people support the death penalty”.

According to Mikhail Krotov, presidential envoy to the Constitutional Court, Russia has yet to completely ban the death penalty because of strong public support for the practice. “The society needs more time to ban the death penalty, but the government structures support a ban on capital punishment,” he said.

While the death penalty has not been used in Russia since 1996, various polls estimate support among Russians for capital punishment to be between 50 and 80 percent. Support for the practice thrives despite denouncements from prominent politicians and other public figures. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called the death penalty “pointless and counterproductive,” and has stressed the importance for Russia to be accepted in the international community despite public opinion.

Human rights activist Evgeny Ikhlov said the court’s decision did not go far enough and decried it as politically motivated. By deliberating on the use of the death penalty and not on the legal issue of its very existence, he says that the court “wiggled out of the situation” to avoid the political consequences of Russia’s exclusion from the Council of Europe, while failing to ban the practice outright. “The Constitutional Court does not have a right to make political statements, only legal ones,” Ikhlov said.

After the new changes come into effect, a plebiscite cannot be used to resolve questions “directly concerned with the exclusive competence of the State Duma, the Federation Council and other bodies of state authority.” This effectively prevents the use of referendum to resolve issues such as the budget, treaties, or taxation.

A national referendum may currently be started by calling together an “initiative group,” which must have subgroups containing at least 100 people from at half of Russia’s regions. This group must then formulate the questions to be posed, and gather two million signatures. Four have been held since the new Russian Constitution was drafted in 1993.

The new legislation passed with a 363-8 vote, and will now head to the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house. Despite widespread objections, and a walk-out of all 57 members of the Communist Party (KPRF), it will almost certainly pass, and then be signed into law.

The rules on national referendums were first amended at the start of October 2007, after requests from the Constitutional Court. The law was subsequently changed to allow citizens to directly vote on the financial obligations of the government. Lawmakers used the chance, however, to forbid referendums on other questions.

The Secretariat of the Constitutional Court then filed another response to the State Duma, and called into question the new wording of the law. The court pointed out that referendums must not solely be “questions in conflict with the exclusive domain of the Federal Assembly or other federal authorities.”

Vadim Solovyev, a deputy from the KPRF, was troubled that the word “prerogative,” or exclusive right, was changed to “competence,” a much broader term. He explained that member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party had created a system where “prohibiting a referendum would always be possible.” The deputy added that a legal challenge on the constitutionality of the new law would take at least 3-4 years to even reach the Constitutional Court.

In 2005, the KPRF attempted to initiate a referendum, but was turned back when Russia’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC) determined that 15 of their 17 questions were unlawful. The questions, in part, dealt with federal spending on health-care, education, as well as minimal pensions. The KPRF then took the matter to the Constitutional Court, which determined on March 21st 2007 that questions on the financial responsibilities of the government could in fact be solved by a referendum.

Some critics of the current legislation believe the law is an outrage—the latest sign that Russia’s government has no respect for its citizens, and that it wants no input from the electorate. They cite other steps taken by the legislature, such as removing direct elections of deputies to the Parliament, raising percentage thresholds for political parties, abolishing a minimum voter turnout, and removing “against all” as a ballot option.

The Associated Press quotes Alexander Kulikov, a KPRF deputy:

“Passing this bill will mean that we’re asking people to shut up.”

UPDATE:

On April 16, 2008, the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house, passed the referendum bill.

On April 25th, 2008, President Vladimir Putin signed it into law.