Prosecutor General of Russia on countering extremism

On January 12, 2009, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, in particular, announced the statistics of the anti-extremist activity of the prosecutor's office.

He stated that in just 9 months of 2008, almost 29,000 acts of prosecutorial response were issued "in connection with violations of the law on interethnic relations and countering extremism ," while in the whole of 2007 - just over 12,000.

In addition, according to Yu. Chaika, "prosecutors sent more than 4.6 thousand applications to the courts of general jurisdiction for liquidation, prohibition of the activities of extremist associations and recognition of information materials as extremist" .

We have no reason to doubt the statistics given by the Prosecutor General of Russia. However, firstly, 4.6 thousand lawsuits for the recognition of materials and organizations seem fantastic to us, and secondly, a huge number of "acts of the prosecutor's response" looks like an artificial inflation of statistics. For more details, see G. Kozhevnikova's commentary to the Regnum agency.

Sources

• Sharov Andrey. Prosecutor's warning: Yury Chaika takes special control over the payment of salaries, social benefits and compensations // Russian newspaper. 2009. January 12.
• Prosecutor General on countering extremism. Commentary by SOVA Center // IA REGNUM. 2009. January 17.