In Primorye, a newspaper was warned for reprinting an appeal from Ingush oppositionists

On October 3, 2008, the prosecutor's office of the Frunzensky district of the city of Vladivostok issued a warning about the inadmissibility of extremist activity to the newspaper "Arsenyevskiye vesti" for publishing the material "One people - one constitution."

Under this title, the newspaper published an appeal by the Ingush opposition about the murder of Magomed Evloev, the owner of the website Ingushetia.ru.

The text of the warning says that the appeal "forms a negative image of Russia, whose policy towards Ingushetia (and the people of the North Caucasus in general) is regarded as the policy of an aggressor state, i.e. statements in this appeal are capable of forming the addressee (reader, listener) negative attitudes towards the representatives of the Russian nation, the federal government and its local representatives who sympathize with the course " , as well as that " forms a negative attitude of people of other nationalities towards the people of the Russian nation, entails an increase in social tension and excites national strife " . No concrete example is given to support the above statements.

We did not find in the text of the article a single sign of inciting national or social hatred. The negative statements in the text refer only to the authorities - both Russian and Ingush, and not to ethnic groups (and the formation of a negative attitude towards the authorities is not extremism in itself). It also cannot be considered a social group "sympathetic to the course" of the federal government.

The only thing that could be seen as extremism in the text of the appeal is the repeated accusations of the authorities (both federal and local) of the genocide of the Ingush and of terror on the territory of the republic. Thus, the authorities are accused of extremism, which, if it is possible to prove the slanderous nature of these accusations, is itself extremism.

Nevertheless, even the last example is debatable, since this accusation of extremism by the authorities is a point of view supported by some facts (deportation of the Ingush in Soviet times, the Ossetian-Ingush conflict in the early 90s, kidnappings and murders of people at the present time), and not a false accusation. The question of how accurately these facts are stated and correctly interpreted, but the clarification of this issue can clearly remain beyond the scope of law enforcement.

In addition, the editors prefaced the text of the appeal with a message that when deciding on the publication, they "were guided by only one principle - every citizen of Russia has a constitutional right to freedom of speech, not limited by any of his political, national or religious beliefs" .

The editor of the newspaper, Irina Grebneva, said that she did not intend to challenge the warning in court. In her opinion, the prosecutor's office's warning is a continuation of pressure on the newspaper by the regional authorities and Governor Darkin personally.

Sources

• :AB;! Cover your extremist forms // Arseniev news. 2008. November 5.
• One people, one constitution // Arseniev news. 2008. September 3rd.
• Sergei Darkin was called a fake newspaper // Club of regions. 2008. November 7th.