Misuse of anti-extremism in January 2014

The following is our review of the primary and most representative events relating to misuse of Russia’s anti-extremist legislation inJanuary 2014.

Lawmaking

In January, the Russian authorities (recent events in Ukraine having made an obvious impression on them) actively maintained currently proposed measures to combat various kinds of radicalism and presented new ideas and resources.

The State Duma and Federation Council approved a draft law entitled “On amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (with regard to increasing liability for extremist action)”. The draft law toughens punishment for Articles 280 (calls for extremist activity), 282 (incitement of hatred and enmity), 282.1 (participation in an extremist association), and 282.2 (continuation of activities by organizations banned for extremism) of the Criminal Code. Fines and the terms of forced labor are raised on all articles, and on three of them the upper threshold of imprisonment is also raised (with Article 282 as the exception). At the present time crimes stipulated under part 1 of Article 280, part 2 of Article 282.1, and Article 282.2 concern minor offenses. The amendments, introduced by the proposed bill, increase the seriousness of these crimes to major offenses and mid-level offenses – with the corresponding consequences. The main flaw of the bill is raising the upper threshold for terms of imprisonment. Doing this as a “signal to society” of the importance of countering extremism or for convenience of investigation does not seem justified in our opinion.

Deputies Aleksey Zhuravlyov (of the United Russia faction, president of the Rodina party) and Sergey Zhigarev (of the LDPR faction) presented a draft law to the State Duma entitled “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation on verifying evidence of extremist activity”. The draft law proposes a whole range of changes, three of which are most significant. The first is a change in the definition of extremist activity: it is boiled down to a list of defined criminally punishable actions. The second is an amendment of the main wording of Article 282: “actions intended to incite hatred or enmity, or disparagement” would be substituted with “propaganda of exceptionalism, superiority or inferiority, and also actions, including statements substantiating or confirming the necessity of committing crimes”. The third proposes to criminalize current administrative violations – propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi or extremist attributes and symbols (Article 282.3 in the draft law) and the distribution of extremist materials (Article 282.4 in the draft law). Although the idea to reduce the concept of “extremism” to only criminally punishable actions is completely reasonable, on the whole we cannot approve of this draft law.

The government prepared and introduced a draft law called “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation concerning symbols of nonprofit organizations”. Among other things, it broadens somewhat the current definition of extremist symbols – instead of “officially registered symbols” of a banned extremist organization, it is extended to include “symbols, whose description is contained in constitutive documents” of such an organization. It will also require the creation of a registry of extremist symbols. These measures in regard to symbols are, in our opinion, as unpractical as the current ones, if only because organizations that have a real chance of being banned for extremist activity probably do not have constitutive documents, and therefore their symbols will not be included in the list.

At the beginning of the month, a draft government decree entitled “On amendments to the state program ‘Patriotic Education of the Russian Federation’s Citizens in 2011-2015’” was published. Part of the draft law stipulates student’s portfolio must include information about his or her supposed “extremist” views. In this regard it seems that the portfolio will be considered on par with the results of Unified State Exam for university admission. We fear that insomuch as the concept of “extremism” in Russian legislation remains vague, pedagogical supervision in this area, in and of itself necessary, will lead to the violation of human rights.

In the mean time, the State Duma has at times been forced to soften hasty and overly harsh anti-extremist measures. In late December 2013, the Duma approved federal law N 403-FZ “On Amendments to Federal Laws ‘On the national payment system’ and ‘On countering the legalization (laundering) of income from crime and the financing of terrorism’”. Among other things, a few modifications were added to the law about money laundering and financing terrorism. According to federal law N 134-FZ “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the RF regarding countering illegal financial operations”, from June 28, 2013 banks were obliged to block all accounts and operations of everyone included in the list of organizations and persons for whom there is evidence of participation in extremist activities or terrorism – the so-called RusFinMonitoring (Russian Financial Monitoring) list – and also people not included in this list, but are suspected to connected to terrorism. It is true that it is possible to appeal against being included in the RusFinMonitoring list. We should clarify that not only those convicted for related crimes but also defendants and suspects are included.

In the new federal law N 403-FZ, the rights of persons included in the RusFinMonitoring list are negotiated “in order to ensure the livelihood, and also the livelihood of those living with them and members of their family without independent sources of income” and to enable transactions to receiving and spending work pay (in size not greater than 10 thousand rubles a month for every member of the family), pensions, stipends, aid, etc., and also for payment of taxes, fines, and so forth. Citizens now also have the opportunity to appeal for the completion of transactions with sums exceeding 10 thousands rubles and RusFinMonitoring will make a decision to allow or forbid such transactions within five days.

Deputies also continue to search for new means for combating terrorism. In mid January a group of deputies, representing the four factions (Irina Yarovaya and Shamsail Saraliev of United Russia, Oleg Denisenko of the Communist Party, Andrei Lugovoy and Igor Lebedev of LDPR, and Leonid Levin of A Just Russia) presented a package of new draft laws to the State Duma, which according to the deputies are intended for the fight against terrorism. The package contains three draft laws. The first toughens the punishment for terrorist activity and related crimes. In particular, for committing terror acts and financing terrorism the maximum term of imprisonment is rising to life imprisonment, while the minimum will be 15 years. According to the draft law, under all anti-terrorist articles of the Criminal Code, including Article 205.2 (propaganda or public justification of terrorism) and Article 278 (violent seizure of power or violent retention of power, for which they unlawfully accuse the followers of the religious-political party Hizb ut-Tahrir) the punishment should not be less than the minimum stipulated by the corresponding article and it cannot mitigated.

Criminal prosecution

In January we learned about a number of prosecutions of Islamic religious and religious-political activists.

In Krasnoyarsk, Andrei Dedkov was detained in a case initiated under parts 1 and 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization of activities for an extremist organization and participating in such). He is being held under suspicion of recruiting citizens for participating in the banned religious association "Nurcular" and distributing banned books. Dedkov has been prosecuted before under this same article, but in 2012 the case against him and three other individuals was dropped due to expiration of the statute of limitations. "Nurcular" is a clearly an extremist phantom organization and no such association has ever existed in Russia. In Russia, Muslims who study the wrongfully banned books of Said Nursi are confronted with unjustified persecution from law enforcement agencies. It is worth noting as well that Krasnoyarsk’s Muslims actively and consistently contest the bans on the Turkish theologian’s books.

In Naberezhnye Chelny Fauziya Bairamova, a well-known activist for the Tatar national movement, was accused of inciting religious and interethnic hatred under part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code because of a statement made by her organization, the Milli Mejlis (national parliament) of the Tatar people. Bairamova is accused of distributing Milli Mejlis’s statement with a call to boycott the Universiade and protest the persecution of Muslims in Tatarstan. From our point of view, there are no inflammatory slogans against the representatives of other nationalities or religions in this text. The statement contains sharp criticism of authorities and the high priesthood of Tatarstan, as well as Russian special services, which Bairamova accuses of making an attempt on the life of mufti Ildus Faizov and the murder of his replacement Valiulla Yakupov so as to justify new prosecutions of Muslims. None of this constitutes Article 282, although it did cause dissatisfaction among law enforcement agencies. In 2010, Bairamova was sentenced under the same article to conditional imprisonment for Milli Medjlis’s statement on the recognition of Tatarstan’s sovereignty.

In January in Tatarstan indictments were reached on a case concerning a protest held last autumn against the ban (later reversed) on Elmir Kuliev’s translation of the Koran, and an automobile race with Hizb ut-Tahrir flags in 2012. Ildar Shaikhutdinov (who has been convicted three times for participating in the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir), Ilmir Imaev, Azat Khasanov and Lenar Galyamov were charged under Article 282 (incitement of hatred or enmity) and 282.2 of the Russian Criminal Code (organizing activities for an extremist organization and participating in it). From our point of view, there are no signs of inciting hatred in the actions of the accused.

A case regarding participation in Hizb ut-Tahrir was also transferred to one of Moscow’s courts. Four persons – Azizbek Inamov, Zakrillokhon Rakhmonkhodjaev, Saipullah Kurbanov and a certain Baboev – were accused of organizing activities for Hizb ut-Tahrir under part 1 of Article 282.2, but also of preparing for a violent seizure of power under part 1 of Article 30 and Article 278 in the Criminal Code. Several people passing through this same case had earlier been accused under part 2 of Article 282.2 and issued a fine. We consider it unlawful to prosecute the supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir for preparing to violently seize power, when these accusations are raised only on the grounds of their party activity.

In January, a Tobolsk city court dropped a court case under part 1 of Article 282 (incitement of hatred and enmity) and part 1 of Article 239 (creation of a religious association whose activity involves violence against citizens or otherwise may cause harm to their health) against the leader of Tobolsk’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, Ilnur Ashirmametov due to expiration of the statute of limitations. Ashirmametov had been accused of printing and distributing Jehovah’s Witnesses literature and leading preaching activities. We consider the prosecution of the Jehovah’s Witnesses for extremism unlawful and perceive it to be religious discrimination.

Administrative prosecution

In January we learned about two cases, in Perm and Muravlenko (located in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, YNAR), where courts unlawfully fined citizens under Article 20.29 of Russia’s Code on Administrative Offenses (production and distribution of extremist materials) for the distribution of groundlessly banned Muslim materials. In Muravlenko, the city mosque’s imam-khatib was fined.

Civil trials

In January, a Kurgan city court declared four more Jehovah’s Witnesses brochures extremist: “How to achieve happiness in life”, “What can people hope for?”, “How to develop a close relationship with God” and “What you need to know about God and His purpose”. The prosecutor general announced that according to linguistic examinations, “the texts of the publications in question contain propaganda advocating the superiority of the ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ faith and the falsehood of other faiths and churches”, and that the authors incited hatred “in relation to religious leaders and people who are not ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’”. We must reiterate that propaganda advocating the superiority of one religion over another cannot be considered an indication of extremism, as this contradicts both legislation and common sense.

In the meantime, the Tverskoy regional court canceled the central district court of Tver’s August 2013 court decision, which declared the official site of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (jw.org) extremist. We remind the reader that the reason behind the Tverskoy district court’s inquiry was that the website had posted text from previously banned Jehovah’s Witnesses brochures – “What does the Bible actually teach?”, “Draw near unto Jehovah”, “Come follow me”, and others.

Other state and society actions

In mid January we learned that the Federal Security Service (FSS) began daily monitoring of Russian blogs and social networks with the intention of detecting citizens disloyal to the authorities and to establish a database of opposition publications. The proliferation of internet monitoring systems belonging to different departments is a cause for concern: the great probability of bureaucratic competition for identifying the most cases will inevitably lead to unjustified prosecutions.

At the end of the month the news service “URA.ru” published a story on a young worker’s attempts to find a job in Yekaterinburg, who had never been tried on criminal charges, but had participated in local protest activities. In several instances he was denied work simply because his last name was on the “list” or “database of extremists”, and he could not pass “security checks”, among other excuses. This situation has continued for six months. Official law enforcement agencies deny the fact that there is a “database of extremists”.