Amnesty International decried an Italian government order Saturday, claiming its elevated sanctions against activists, prisoners and migrants constitute a potential grant of arbitrary law enforcement power.
The new measures, called “draconian” by the organization, create new offenses for prisoners and migrants at detention centers for not cooperating with or passively resisting police orders. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, parts of the measure may contradict fundamental pillars of criminal justice.
The decree law contains, according to the Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations, several instances of vaguely worded provisions that expand the concept of terrorism beyond current international definitions. Human rights experts believe this may cause the bill to stand on uneasy legal footing and violate well known standards in international human rights law.
The new provisions would also limit “passive resistance” in penitentiary institutions, considering them outside the scope of “peaceful” action and further hindering freedom of expression guarantees for prisoners.
The decree law — a temporary administrative order signed by the Italian government that bypasses Parliament — was passed on April 12. If the legislature does not sign off on the measure within 60 days, then it would not take permanent effect. The final vote takes place on June 10.
UN experts have criticized the procedure under which the bill bypassed parliamentarian scrutiny and was abruptly enacted by the Government. Representatives of the Italian Parliament’s conservative majority party refuted this criticism, claiming that Parliament was sufficiently consulted throughout the stages of the process.
Parliamentarian debate on the topic has further advanced the perception of the Italian governments’ tendency to toward strong-arm policy at the expense of freedom of assembly and expression.
