Misuse of Anti-Extremism Legislation in April 2011

In April 2011, we registered the misuse of anti-extremism legislation in all our major areas of coverage: criminal and administrative proceedings, publications deemed extremist, and warnings issued to media sources.

Criminal prosecution

At least seven criminal cases ­– against Muslim groups (Hizb ut-Tahrir and followers of Said Nursi), Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologists, and political and social activists – were improperly filed in April.

We draw special attention to the end of a criminal case against Alexander Kalistratov, the local head of the Jehovah's Witnesses in the Gorno-Altaisk region. On April 14 he was acquitted of charges under Part 1 of Article 282 (incitement to hatred) due to a lack of evidence of a crime. In our opinion, widespread domestic and international public attention to the case made this decision possible. The ruling has not yet taken force, however, and has been appealed by the prosecution.

Administrative prosecution

We became aware of three cases of wrongful prosecution on administrative charges in April. In one case, the editor of a newspaper was convicted under Part 1 of Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences (propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi attributes or symbols) after publishing images of German postage stamps with Hitler and the swastika that had been confiscated by customs. Images of the smuggled Third Reich paraphernalia, however, simply illustrated a news report of the confiscation.

Warnings to media

In late March, Roskomnadzor (the state’s media monitoring agency) issued a warning to the newspaper Liubimyi Gorod, published in the Moscow Region, for the December 2010 publication of an article entitled “Ruins of the Reichstag Satisfied.” The article cited a passage from Mein Kampf in which Hitler expounds upon the Big Lie in manipulating the masses; the article itself discusses the methods of the ruling United Russia Party. It is SOVA’s position that the selective citation of banned texts should not constitute extremism in and of itself, and we remind our readers that this is also the position of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

The Roskomnadzor Office of the Republic of Tatarstan issued a warning on April 15 against the Eastern Market newspaper for running advertisements offering discounts on certain products to Muslims; it was seen as religious discrimination. It is our position that failure to provide discounts should not be regarded as “a violation of equal rights, freedoms and the legitimate interests of man and citizen according to his membership” in a group, as defined in the law “On Countering Extremist Activities.” No such rights, freedoms or legitimate interests are manifest in the form of a discount. This example illustrates the need to adopt more singular anti-discrimination legislation in Russia, as the existing language makes implementation of the current laws extremely difficult.

Extremist materials

On April 12, the Novourengoisky City Court of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug rejected a claim by the Ural Transport Prosecutor's Office for recognition of the book “L. Ron Hubbard: Pages of Life” as extremist. As L. Ron Hubbard was not an extremist, the decision comes as no surprise.

On April 20, the Lublin District Court in Moscow rejected a claim for recognition of T-shirts with the inscription “Orthodoxy or Death” as extremist. The ruling was decided in part by rejecting arguments similar to those successfully used in a decision by the Cheremushkinsky Court in Moscow, which banned the same T-shirts. Apparently, the Cheremushkinsky and Lublin prosecutors and courts were unaware of each other. “Orthodoxy or Death” is the slogan of the Athos monks, who choose between Orthodoxy and spiritual death for themselves, and not others.

On March 28, the Shchelkovsky City Court began reviewing a claim by the Schyolkovo (Moscow Region) prosecutor to recognize a number of L. Ron Hubbard's works as extremist. Experts Marina Belyakova and Eugene Volkov from Nizhny Novgorod University, who had previously served in a similar Scientology book-banning trial in Surgut, were nominated to testify in April. The Surgut ban was overruled, but the entries remain on the Federal List of Extremist Materials.

Also in April, the Pervomaisky District Court of Krasnodar resumed an old process aiming to deem three issues of the "Watchtower" magazine and the book "Draw Close to Jehovah" as extremist; two of these four texts were already deemed extremist by the Rostov Regional Court in September 2009. The same Rostov ruling has also cleared the third of these 4 publications, one of the "Watchtower" issues.