April 2011. Monthly results

In April 2011, we registered cases of unlawful application of anti-extremist legislation in all major areas: criminal and administrative prosecution, recognition of publications as extremist materials, issuance of warnings to the media.

Criminal prosecution

In April, at least seven criminal cases were wrongfully initiated against Muslim groups (Hizb ut-Tahrir and followers of Said Nursi), Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, political and social activists.

In another case - against public activists from Ulan-Ude Nadezhda Nizovkina and Tatyana Stetsura - on April 14, the Sovetsky District Court began a retrial on charges under Part 1 of Article 282 (incitement of social hatred) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Let us separately note the extremely positive outcome of the criminal case against Alexander Kalistratov, the head of the religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses in Gorno-Altaisk, under Part 1. Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (incitement of hatred). On April 14, the Gorno-Altai City Court acquitted him due to the absence of a crime. In our opinion, this became possible thanks to wide publicity and public attention - both in Russia and abroad. The decision has not yet entered into force and has been appealed by the prosecutor's office.

Administrative prosecution

In April, we became aware of three cases of unlawful prosecution on administrative charges. Let us note the case of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Zhitye-Bytye” Valery Javadov: on March 1 in Belgorod he was found guilty under Part 1 of 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (propaganda and public display of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols) for publishing images of German postage stamps with Hitler and the Nazi swastika, confiscated at customs. Images of these smuggled stamps from the time of the Third Reich, in fact, illustrated the news of the confiscation.

Media warnings about the inadmissibility of extremist activities

At the end of March, Roskomnadzor announced that it had issued a warning to the newspaper Lyubimy Gorod, published in the city of Shatura (Moscow Region), in connection with the publication of Galina Kramich, “Satisfied with the Reichstag Wreckage” in No. 18 of December 17, 2010. The occasion was one of Hitler's famous quotes from Mein Kampf, given in an article where he discusses the success of using big lies to influence the masses (the article talks about the methods of political struggle used by the United Russia party). We are against the qualification of quoting prohibited texts as extremism, since this makes neither scientific nor relevant political discussion impossible. Let us recall that this is also the position of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

Another not entirely legitimate warning was issued on April 15 by the Office of Roskomnadzor in the Republic of Tatarstan to the editorial office of the newspaper Vostochny Market for an advertisement that mentioned providing Muslims with discounts on certain goods and services, which was regarded as religious discrimination. According to the Criminal Code, the wording of which is repeated in the law “On Combating Extremist Activities,” discrimination is a violation of the equality of rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of a person and a citizen, depending on his membership in a number of groups. Failure to provide a discount cannot be considered such, since there is no such right, freedom or legitimate interest as a discount. This example illustrates the need to adopt comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation in Russia, since existing formulations are extremely difficult to use in practice.

Recognition of materials as extremist

First of all, let us pay attention to two court refusals to satisfy the unlawful claims of the prosecutor's office.

On April 12, the Novy Urengoy City Court of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug rejected the Ural Transport Prosecutor's Office's claim to recognize the extremist book "L. Ron Hubbard. Pages of Life." In our opinion, there are no signs of extremism in the writings of Ron Hubbard himself, so the refusal to ban his biography is only natural.

On April 20, the Lyublinsky District Court of Moscow rejected a claim to recognize a T-shirt with the inscription “Orthodoxy or Death” as extremist material. The court refused the ban, guided by the same arguments that we previously gave when talking about the decision of the Cheryomushkinsky Moscow court, which banned the same T-shirt. This is the slogan of Athonite monks who choose between Orthodoxy and spiritual death for themselves, not for others. Apparently, the Cheryomushkin and Lublin prosecutor's offices and courts were not aware of each other's actions. The situation led to the fact that one district court did not actually recognize the decision of the other.

On March 28, the Shchelkovo City Court began considering the claim of the prosecutor of Shchelkovo (Moscow region) to recognize a number of works by Ron Hubbard as extremist materials. In April, an examination was appointed, and the experts would be Marina Belyakova and Evgeniy Volkov from the University of Nizhny Novgorod, who had previously acted as experts in a similar process in Surgut, when other books on Scientology were banned. Let us recall that this ban was ingloriously lifted, but the materials banned by the Surgut court are still illegally included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials.

Also in April, the old trial was resumed in the Pervomaisky District Court of Krasnodar on the claim of the prosecutor's office of the Krasnodar region to recognize three issues of the Watchtower magazine and the book Draw Close to Jehovah as extremist. Two of these four materials have already been recognized as extremist by the Rostov Regional Court on September 11, 2009. The same decision did not recognize the publication of one of the Watchtower magazines as extremist, the ban of which is demanded by the prosecutor's office in Krasnodar.