Misuse of Anti-Extremism in November 2012

The following is Sova’s review of the primary and most representative events in the misuse of Russia’s anti-extremist legislation for November 2012.

Lawmaking

In mid-November, legislation was enacted that would provide for revisions to the articles of the Criminal Code dealing with espionage and treason. In addition, Article 283.1, illegally obtaining information constituting a state secret, was introduced. We remind readers that the bill initially received a mixed reaction, and was adopted following some changes.

In the second half of the month, the State Duma adopted in the second reading the draft law “On Amendments to Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code,” propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols. The bill introduces a penalty for the public display of the attributes or symbols of groups designated as extremist, and increases the related fines already on the books. Sova opposes the bill. It is our position that bids to strengthen or expand these articles should only follow changes to their wording so that the public display of such symbols without the intent of propaganda would not be penalized.

Criminal Prosecution

This month the authorities stepped up their persecution of radical Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami. A case filed in October in Moscow charges nine alleged members of the group under Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code, the organization of an extremist organization. Police allege that five of the accused are Hizb ut-Tahrir’s Moscow and national leaders. Earlier this month, large-scale raids related to the case saw about 40 people arrested, 30 of whom were later released. Meanwhile, in Nizhny Novgorod, a criminal case was initiated against three alleged members under Article 282.2. The Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod defendants also face charges under Article 222 of the Criminal Code, the illegal purchase, transfer or possession of weapons, ammunition and explosives. Searches of suspected members of Hizb ut-Tahrir were held in Bashkortostan, in the Volga district, leading to ten arrests. It has not been reported what charges the detainees face. We remind readers that the ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir is an inappropriate use of the Russian law, which classifies the group as terrorist despite its reputation as non-violent. In this connection the weapons charges are, simply put, confusing.

In mid-November, the Moscow City Court began hearing the case of the murder of Yuri Budanov. Yusup Temerkhanov, the suspected culprit, is charged under Item “l,” Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code, murder motivated by hatred and hostility towards a social group, and Part 1 of Article 222, illegal weapons. The indictment designated “soldiers of the Russian army” as a social group in the case. It is Sova’s position that soldiers should not be included among the truly vulnerable social groups Russia’s anti-extremist laws were written to protect. In any case, we call for the exclusion of the “social group” clause from anti-extremist articles in full, as the vagueness of the term leads to regular abuse by law enforcement and prosecutors.

At the end of November we became aware of a Moscow criminal case under Article 280 of the Criminal Code, public calls to extremist activity, founded on the May 6, 2012 March of Millions. The case was filed against undisclosed defendants. The March of Millions, as far as we know, saw no calls for extremist activity in terms of the relevant laws. The march’s participants displayed and shouted political slogans that in any case were not radical.

In St. Petersburg, the already year-plus-long examination in a case against Other Russia party activists dragged on. The defendants are charged under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code, participation in a banned organization. Earlier in the month, Petersburg’s Vyborg District Court ended, due to an expired statute of limitations, the prosecution of one of the defendants. Thus, seven defendants remain in what formerly came to be known as the Case of the Twelve. The prosecutor demands a fine of 250,000 rubles (just over $8,000) for three of the defendants, and one of 180,000 rubles (about $5,850) for the other four. For context, the average annual salary in Russia is just over $10,000. We remind readers of two points regarding this case: Sova considers the ban on the National Bolshevik Party – on which some charges in the case are founded – to be illegal. Secondly, the use of Article 282.2 to pursue activists from the Other Russia party, which is not the subject of a ban, is an illegal use of the law.

Administrative prosecution

This month we became aware of six cases of illegal fines issued in connection to Article 20.29 of the Administrative Code, the production and distribution of extremist materials. Those targeted include a Tyumen Jehovah’s Witness. A Novokuznetsk librarian and a Smolensk library director also faced fines under the law. We remind readers that Russia’s law on librarianship requires that librarians give readers books held in their collections. Meanwhile, bookstore owners in Moscow and Samara were fined for distributing extremist literature. Properly and improperly banned books were confiscated from the Moscow store, while in Samara, the owner was fined after books included in a list of 68 Islamic texts wrongfully banned by an Orenburg court were found in his stock.

Materials banned for extremism

Towards the end of the month, Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court found a video of Pussy Riot’s “punk prayer” at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, as well as three other videos of the group, to be extremist. The court agreed with so-called experts who saw in the videos “incitement to hatred or hostility, a clandestine call to rebellion, disobedience to authority, the seizure of public squares, and a call to actively communicate with law enforcement officers in order to bring them to their side.” We note flagrant violations in the course of the examination, and remind readers that the experts were asked to weigh in on legal matters falling strictly within the competences of the prosecutors and the court.

At the end of the month it was reported that prosecutors in Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod region, filed a lawsuit seeking a ban on the book The International Tribunal for Chechnya, which they saw as extremist. The text is a crucial research paper into systemic violations of international humanitarian laws and fundamental human rights by both sides of the conflict in Chechnya. It also suggests prosecution, in particular of representatives of the Russian leadership and more specifically its senior executive. A significant part of the authors’ sources were materials from the European Court of Human Rights. An attempt to ban a text so central to the mission of human rights workers in Russia and beyond would conceivably cause an international scandal.

Among other materials wrongfully banned in November, we know of a leaflet and an article against law enforcement, a website apparently created by banned group Tabligi Dzhamaat, two Ingush opposition websites, and an issue of Cossack Russia, a newspaper.

The November report on updates to the Federal List of Extremist Materials showed that in July, the Lenin District Court of Orenburg, whose decision to ban 68 Islamic texts as extremist is currently being reviewed by a court of appeals, banned 32 more texts that were apparently seized during a raid connected to a case against local neo-Nazis. To our view, four of the bans are unlawful. They affect the Veles Book, a notorious collection of fraudulent pre-Christian Eastern Slavic stories, prayers and legends from the eighth and ninth centuries; two articles by American Holocaust denier Mark Weber; an article by Sergei Belikov entitled Skinhead Culture, an abridged version of a law enforcement text on identifying skinheads; and a book by American author Bill Buford, entitled English Disease, a journalistic investigation of fan violence in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.