Translated material
Rafis Kashapov was sentenced
On April 24, it became known that in the Republic of Tatarstan a verdict was passed in the case against the chairman of the Tatar Public Center, Rafis Kashapov. Kashapov was found guilty under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (incitement of hatred or enmity) and sentenced to one and a half years in prison on probation.
Recall that we are talking about an article called "No Christianization!" Kashapov published in his blog after the appearance of information about the forced baptism of children in one of the maternity hospitals. In our opinion, the article does not contain signs of extremism.
Later it became known that the articles "A Special Way of Russia", "Secret Testament of Peter I", "In Russia the Era of New State Terror", "64th Anniversary of the Deportation of the Karachai and Balkar Peoples", "Appeal to the General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary of the Organization of Islamic Conferences. According to Kashapov, he is not the author of all these texts, they were only published on the blog of the Tatar Public Center.
In our opinion, there are no signs of inciting hatred in the texts, either on national or religious grounds, their main pathos is directed at the Russian state of different times, which, according to the authors, pursued a policy of forced Russification and Christianization.
A disputable case should be considered the appeal of the editors of the separatist website "Ichkeria.info" entitled "64th anniversary of the deportation of the Karachai and Balkar peoples", which was reproduced in the TOC blog. This appeal itself includes a call to fight for the separation of the Caucasus from Russia, and, in the context of such a source as Ichkeria.info, this call was read, of course, as a call for armed struggle. And the TOC expressed solidarity with the armed Chechen separatists (as it expressed it before). One could consider the question of whether such a republication does not contain the content of Article 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activity), but incitement of hatred on ethnic grounds, that is, the content of Article 282, cannot be seen in this text. Thus, the publication of this appeal by the Chechen separatists was a dubious act from the point of view of law, but the inclusion of this episode in the verdict under Article 282 did not make it more legitimate.
Sources
- In the Republic of Tatarstan, a verdict was passed in a criminal case on extremism // Website of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation. 2009. April 24.
- The national rights of the Tatars are decided in court. Interview with Rafis Kashapov. // Website of the Moscow Tatar Free Assembly. 2009. March 3, 2009.