Talking about children’s morality has become a very popular topic in the Russian State Duma. Russian officials suppose the time has come to think how to protect children from undermining influence of “bad values”. The civil servants have prepared 11 draft bills amending the existent laws and additional five, which are absolutely new for the Russian legislation. Several regulations have been brought forward for consideration on June 2, 2008.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, the draft bill On Moral and Patriotic Upbringing and Guarantee of Children’s Rights in the Sphere of Information divides all information products into four groups, each depending on the age of children. E.g. any expressions of violence in books or on TV should be conveyed deprecatingly to small children under six, while “justified name-calling” is permitted only in programs aimed at children of over 16 years old.
Bad Taste Bear
Another draft bill is to ban production and import of toys capable of causing antisocial behavior or combining incongruous mixture of features, e.g. soft toys having a shape of microbes or skeleton-shaped lollipops. Some newspapers reported that British Bad Taste Bear may become the first toy to be banned in Russia, which has already aroused consumers’ interest to “bad bears” in big cities like Moscow.
The authors of new amendments believe promotion of healthy lifestyle and traditional values should replace such foreign customs and holidays as Halloween and St Valentine’s Day gradually gaining favor among Russian schoolchildren. The under-eighteens also will have to resign before the inevitable ban of body piercing and tattoos. Besides, the members of various youth subcultures also get in wrong with the Russian officials, who think Emo kids and Goths’ depressive attitude to everything and suicidal tendencies and sometimes sexual deviations are dangerous for the younger generation.
Under-ages will have to forget about hanging out late - the civil servants plan to introduce the curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in case of curfew violation the parents of the child are expected to take up responsibility and face the judgment.
In addition, Russian mobile operators will be bound to filter kids’ text messages for containing “bad words”.
Some of the new initiatives are certainly disputable, especially as it is not clear how the officials plan to observe the legal compliance. However, the new concept may change our life for good and make it better, supporting the right people are in charge.
Sources:
www.lenta.ru
www.internovosti.ru
Olga Pletneva