Democrats Condemn Decree on Crime

A broad coalition of parties in the State Duma joined forces Thursday to condemn President Boris Yeltsin's recent decree on organized crime for encroaching on parliament's powers and on the constitution.Viktor Pokhmelkin, a deputy from the liberal Russia's Choice bloc, said the Duma's Legislative Committee, of which he is a member, and the Security Committee had agreed jointly to draft a resolution for debate Friday expressing alarm at the decree. He said the proposal had won support from all factions, except Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party. "We were in complete agreement that the decree violates the constitution and the criminal code," Pokhmelkin said in an interview. The Duma has been outraged by what it sees as an attempt by Yeltsin effectively to bypass its law-making powers."The president should not change or add articles to the code, changes in the law should be done by the legislature," Pokhmelkin said. He added that the "completely incorrect" decree also threatened a "serious infringement" of human rights.Vladimir Isakov, the head of the legislative committee and a hardline opponent of Yeltsin, speaking on NTV television, called the decree "a prelude to 1937," a reference to Stalin's purges of that year.Former Yeltsin adviser and centrist Duma deputy Sergei Stankevich said Wednesday that only parliament could formulate legislation precise enough to avoid the pitfalls and loopholes that could lead to an anti-crime program being abused.Many points in Tuesday's decree appear to contradict the new constitution. For example it gives the security organs the right to detain suspects without trial for 30 days, even though Article 22 of the new constitution sets the limit at 48 hours. The result of such anomalies is likely to be a head-on constitutional clash. But the main arbiter in such a dispute, the Constitutional Court, has not sat since last September and is still not functioning.The dispute also threatens to open an embarrassing rift between the Kremlin and Russia's Choice, the faction in the Duma that is most closely identified with Yeltsin. Pokhmelkin said his faction strongly supported the need for tough measures against crime, but with "great regret" disagreed with the means Yeltsin was proposing.He said the faction had tried without success to find out who had masterminded the decree. "The author cannot be found, as they say," he said.But Pokhmelkin pointed the finger at the law-enforcement agencies, who are under the president's direct control and will be responsible for putting the decree into action."It's profitable to these bodies, to the Interior Ministry, the Federal Counterintelligence Agency, the police," he said.The decree was issued amid calls from many leading figures such as Moscow's mayor Yury Luzhkov, for more resources to combat crime. Sergei Stepashin, who heads the successor body to the KGB, the Federal Counterintelligence Service, said Wednesday that the measures were needed to stop a growing "war without rules" between mafia clans. Stepashin, speaking to Itar-Tass, also conceded the measures might lead to "excesses." It is statements like these that have alarmed human rights groups.Alexei Smirnov of the Moscow Center for Human Rights said Thursday that the state needed to crack down on organized crime but Yeltsin's decree would only be counterproductive. Tuesday's decree "On urgent measures to defend the population from banditism and other manifestations of organized crime" followed a tough statement by Yeltsin last Friday when he declared the issue had become a priority and pledged to rid Russia of the "scourge" of organized crime.Law and order has become a major obsession for many Russians in the last two years. An opinion poll in April found that 23 percent of the population thought the mafia was the strongest power in the country. Yeltsin received only a 14 percent rating in the poll.Vladimir Zhirinovsky has used the crime issue to play for votes and during last autumn's election campaign said that "bandits" should be executed on the spot.As the debate rolls on the crime rate shows no signs of subsiding. The murder rate in Moscow went up 41 percent in the first five months of this year as compared to 1993, a Moscow police spokesman said Wednesday.