Misuse of Anti-Extremism in September 2014

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

Lawmaking

In early September, it was reported that the Ministry of Communications has drafted a bill amending the Code of Administrative Offences. The legislation proposes to add the fifth part to the Administrative Code Article 13.15 (“abusing freedom of mass information”), introducing fines to legal entities for the “production and publication of mass media containing public incitement to terrorist activity or materials publicly justifying terrorism, and/or other extremist materials, and/or materials promoting pornography, violence or cruelty.” Suggested fines range from 400 thousand to 1 million rubles. This change of the Administrative Code will introduce liability for legal entities (which are currently not liable, unlike individuals and public employees, who are subject to an action under Part 2 of the Criminal Code Article 205.2 and under Part 2 of the Criminal Code Article 280). It has also been stipulated that the new article would not apply to offenses under the Administrative Code Article 20.29 (i.e. distribution of extremist materials included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials).

In and of itself, the idea of replacing criminal prosecution with administrative sanctions appears quite reasonable. However, the proposed amendment creates opportunities for arbitrary actions against the media. It is much easier to prosecute on administrative charges than on criminal ones, especially in cases of “incitement to extremism” or “pornography, violence and cruelty,” so a media outlet could be ruined by fines.

In mid-September 2014, it became known that the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation refused to consider an appeal against the law “On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information.” The appeal was filed by director of the Association of Internet publishers Vladimir Kharitonov after his website digital-books.ru, was blocked due to having the same IP-address as the website that promoted illegal drugs. Kharitonov claims that the practice of blocking IP addresses de facto denies the right to distribute the non-prohibited information and constitute a punishment for the site owners. However, the Constitutional Court has stated in its definition that the rights of owners of websites, which happened to be blocked along with the resources that contain prohibited information, are violated not by the fact of inclusion of the network address in the register, but by “improper actions (or inaction) of their hosting service provider.” Thus, the Constitutional Court refused to recognize an error in law and shifted responsibility for the blocking onto hosting providers.

Criminal Prosecution

The Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok found a local resident guilty under Part 1 of the Criminal Code Article 282 (inciting hatred or enmity) and gave him a suspended sentence of 1 year and 8 months for sharing on VKontakte social network “extremist materials,” including the “Queen of Islam,” video that was found by expertise to contain “contraposition on religious grounds.” We do not know what other materials the Vladivostok resident published on his VKontakte page. However, the “Queen of Islam” video is simply a sermon on the duties of Muslim women to wear the hijab, and appealing to Muslims not to forbid their wives to wear Muslim dress. Apparently, condemnation of Western women, who prefer more revealing clothing, was qualified as “contraposition.” In our opinion, the verdict is at least partially inappropriate.

The trial in the case against Konstantin Zharinov, an activist of the Civil Movement of the Southern Urals (Grazhdanskoe dvizhenie Yuzhnogo Urala) under Part 1 of the Criminal Code Article 280 (public calls for extremist activity) began In Chelyabinsk. The case was initiated after Zharinov shared on his VKontakte page an appeal by the Right Sector (Pravy sector) group to “Russians and other enslaved peoples,” which called for acts of disobedience, creation of guerrilla groups, and so on. According to Zharinov, he quickly removed the post and views sharing this material as his mistake, but believes that the FSB interest in him has been caused by his political science specialization in the history of terrorism, on which he authored several books. Indeed, Zharinov did not support the appeal, and his statements, including his VKontakte posts, contain no aggressive rhetoric, so a request to remove the shared link (in case it was still on his page) would have been a sufficient law enforcement response. Criminal prosecution of this case constitutes a disproportionate measure.

Criminal cases were opened in Krasnodar against Daria Polyudova, Pyotr Lyubchenkov, Vyacheslav Martynov, Andrey Chernyshev and Sergey Titarenko under the Criminal Code Article 280.1 (public calls for action to violate the territorial integrity of Russia) for attempting to hold a march for the federalization of Kuban. Daria Polyudova, a Rot Front activist, had filed with the city administration a request to hold the march, scheduled for August 17, 2014. On August 15, apparently in an effort to prevent the event from taking place, the Krasnodar law enforcement detained Polyudova, and she was sentenced to 14 days of administrative arrest on charges of disorderly conduct. The VKontakte page for the march was blocked. In two weeks, when Polyudova was scheduled for release, she was charged with extremism and arrested; she is currently in Pre-trial Detention Center No. 5 of the Krasnodar Region Federal Security Service. She is also charged under Part 2 of the Criminal Code Article 280 (public appeals for extremist activity committed on the Internet). Psychologist Pyotr Lyubchenkov was an organizer of the failed march along with Polyudova. Anarchist Vyacheslav Martynov showed up for the event on August 17, the scheduled day of the march, and was sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. Martynov and Lyubchenkov escaped arrest by moving to Ukraine. On September 26, all three were added to the Rosfinmonitoring list. Activist of Solidarity (Solidarnost) Sergei Titarenko was arrested on September 26; it was known that he had previously participated in rallies in support of Ukraine. The prosecutor's office report on Titarenko’s arrest, dated September 30, informed that Andrei Chernyshev was also a suspect under the same article, with no further details. In our opinion, the criminal prosecution against organizers and participants of federalization marches is inappropriate. Organizers of federalization marches in Russia are calling for granting autonomous rights within the Russian Federation’s certain territories, not for their separation from the country, so their actions do not fall within the scope of the Criminal Code Article 280.1.

In September, Ukrainian citizen Pavel Ushevets (a.k.a. Grisha Mustang, Mustang Wanted), a roofer, who claims responsibility for posting a Ukrainian flag and painting a star the colors of Ukrainian flag on the spire of a high-rise building on the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in Moscow on August 20, 2014, was added to the international wanted list. He was charged in absentia under Part 2 of the Criminal Code Article 213 (hooliganism committed by a group of people motivated by political and ideological hatred or enmity) and Part 2 of Article 214 (vandalism committed by a group of persons motivated by political and ideological hatred or enmity). The Tagansky District Court in Moscow decided to arrest Ushevets in absentia. Other suspect in this case include Vladimir Podrezov, a roofer from St. Petersburg placed under arrest until October, and Kirill Ishutin, previously a witness for the prosecution, taken into custody for possession of drugs, which were found during a search. Eleven forensic examinations, conducted as part of the investigation, failed to confirm any involvement of four base-jumpers detained on August 20. However, all four of them remain under house arrest until the second half of October. As mentioned previously, we believe that this action should be viewed as an administrative offense (disorderly conduct) rather than as a criminal one. More details are available here.

Administrative Prosecution

Eight people were charged in September under the Administrative Code Article 20.29 for distributing or storing with intent to distribute the materials, which were inappropriately classified as extremist. This group includes the chairman of “Islam,” a religious Muslim organization from Arsenyev in the Primorsky Region; an imam from the village of Ust-Manchazh in the Sverdlovsk Region; the head of the parish of Novaya Smail village in the Kirov Region, the Mufti of Ramazan mosque in Yekaterinburg, an imam and an entrepreneur from the Chechen Republic; the administrator of www.chikolaisiam.ru website from North Ossetia, and a woman from Perm, whose case we shall describe in more detail.

In September, we encountered a conviction for a social network tag for the first time. Perm resident Yevgeniya Vychigina was sentenced to a fine of one thousand rubles under Article 20.29 for being tagged in prohibited video The last interview of Primorye Guerillas. Someone among Vychigina’s VKontakte “friends,” tagged her (and about 30 other people) in the video, shared on this social network that was included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. The young woman confirmed the tag, as she claims, without watching the video. According to her, she was told by the staff of the police Center to Combat Extremism that the video had been viewed by a few dozen people. We see Vychigina’s conviction as inappropriate. It is absolutely unclear what specifically constitutes dissemination of extremist materials in this case – she neither created a prohibited movie, nor linked to it on her social network page; she didn’t even acknowledge the video in any way. Tagging photos and videos of friends in order to draw their attention to the material is a common social network practice, and dozens of people are frequently tagged in this manner, so it is not surprising that Vychigina automatically confirmed the tag and never watched the video. Yevgeniya Vychigina asserts her innocence and is going to appeal the verdict in the regional court.

The Magistrate Court of the Votkinsky Regional Judicial District in Udmurtia sentenced the Director of Uralskie Zori Resort to a fine of 20,000 rubles under Part 2 of the Administrative Code Article 6.17 (failure of the person, organizing access to information disseminated by via informational-telecommunication networks in places accessible to children, to implement administrative and organizational measures, technical means, software and hardware in order to protect children from information harmful to their health and (or) development). Other employees were also found guilty and faced disciplinary proceedings. The case was based on the fact that the resort offered Wi-Fi internet access, but had no content filtering installed, and failed to ask users to confirm their age. As we mentioned before, we are opposed to prosecution that targets the administration of cafes, internet cafes, hotels and other similar establishments for their lack of content filtering, since these places are intended not only for children (their parents being responsible for their supervision), but also to adult users, whose rights should not be curtailed.

The Prosecutor’s Office of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk initiated administrative proceedings under Part 2 of Article 20.3 against the owner of the bookstore, which was selling a historical study Soldaty Vermakhta. The administrative prosecution was based on the fact that the store was selling the book, andthe Prosecutor's Office found Nazi symbols on the book’s cover. The book in question, Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWS, was published in Russian by Eksmo publishing house in 2013. The cover of the book, indeed, contains a small contour image of the Wehrmacht eagle; placement of this image is completely justified by the book’s content. In addition, the swastika in the eagle’s talons is partially covered by the large printed names of the authors. The document-based research volume debunks the myth of the Wehrmacht’s non-involvement in the Nazi crimes committed during the Second World War; thus, it is obviously not intended to promote Nazism. We consider this case to be inappropriate, since in our view, demonstration of Nazi symbols in the absence of propaganda purposes should not be subject to prosecution.