Misuse of Anti-Extremism Legislation in August 2011

This month, anti-extremism legislation was misused primarily in recognition of materials (mostly texts) as extremist. We also note a new bill introduced by the government to the Duma; it clarifies and extends some of the state’s methods of countering extremism.

Criminal Prosecution

Two notable criminal convictions were made in August.

The first concerned five men accused of maintaining the activities of an organization banned for extremism (treated under Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). The Moskovsky District Court of Kazan sentenced the defendants for their membership in the Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, handing out prison terms ranging from one to two and a half years.

It is Sova’s position that the second sentence – dealing with Part 1 of Article 282 (incitement to hatred) and Part 1 of Article 280 (public appeals for extremist activity) of the Criminal Code, and pronounced by the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Court ­– was partially illegal. The defendant was sentenced to a fine of 150,000 RUB (approximately $5,150 USD at the time of writing) for graffiti containing Nazi symbols and, among other things, calls to kill government officials. The court considered ‘government officials’ as a social group, a use of this particular law against which Sova has long advocated.

Additionally, there were two cases initiated under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (maintaining the activity of an extremist organization). One was against Chelyabinsk followers of Said Nursi, while the other, in Taganrog, was against Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Administrative Prosecution

There was only one ruling this month whose legitimacy we hold suspect: an antique dealer in Omsk was fined for having a military award and hat featuring Nazi paraphernalia in the display window of his shop. He was convicted under Part 1 of Article 20.03 of the Administrative Code (public display of Nazi symbols). However, although this was a public display, given his line of work, we question whether his intent was to promote the Nazi party program.

Recognition of Extremist Materials

The August update of the Federal List of Extremist Materials brought a controversial late May decision by the Zasviyazhsky District Court of Ulyanovsk to our attention. The update shows items 954 and 955 of the list to be "www.livainternet.ru" and "www.TATARLAR," respectively. These are the misspelled URLs of two widely popular sites in Russia: the blogging service Liveinternet.ru and the Tatar portal at tatarlar.ru.

We can conclude that the prohibition could be a result of forum users on either site posting nationalist content. However, the ban of an entire website due to a few individual users is illegal, especially as both websites provide various services to hundreds of thousands of users. According to Internet users in Ulyanovsk, people entering the Liveinternet URL were brought to the website of the General Prosecutor’s Office.

Finally, the Lenin District Court in Tomsk began its consideration of a Prosecutor’s Office claim aiming to deem the "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" as extremist; the text is important not only to Hindus and Hare Krishna believers but is internationally considered to be one of the most important pieces in the history of philosophy and literature. This claim arises as part of a string of similar bans on religious books and organizations for treating their own beliefs as truth, which Russian often courts interpret as a statement of the inferiority of non-believers.

Rulemaking

On August 4, the country’s leadership submitted to the Duma a bill meant to extend and refine some counter-extremism measures as they relate to the funding of extremist activity and its manifestations online.

Specifically, the proposal would form Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code (financing extremist activity). Sova does not see a practical use for the introduction (or passage) of this article, as the funding of criminal activities is already treated as complicity in a crime under Russian law. We concede, however, the possibility that the new article could be useful in combating the financing of especially dangerous groups.

Besides, the bill equates Internet use to the use of the media in Articles 280 and 282. That is, calls for extremist activity made over the Internet will automatically qualify under Part 2 of Article 280 (which implies prison punishment for up to 5 years). Concerning Article 282, any Internet activity will be considered public. This part of the bill we consider to be unambiguously bad.

We contend that not all material posted on the Internet is public, especially as content can be kept under limited access to a select number of users possessing a password – this type of online publication is essentially the same as sending a private email to multiple recipients. Beyond that, a degree of publicity is crucial to any crime of so-called propaganda. The proposed bill encourages serious pursuit of statements made online (especially via Article 280), when the public danger would be negligible at best due to the size of the audience. At the same time, there is nothing preventing criminal investigations into allegedly illegal remarks on the Internet under already existing law, and such incidents have already been treated in court (both legitimately and illegitimately) on numerous occasions.

Other incidents of unlawful anti-extremism

Roskomnadzor issued two warnings, which we believe to be at least partially unlawful, to the "Don Times" newspaper. The articles that resulted in warnings (Sova was unable to find all of them on the Internet) contained hate speech and the question of a need to create a "Cossack republic," but lacked calls for a violent overthrow of the state or any other formal element of extremism.

Lastly, Arkhangelsk trade unionist Dmitry Dubonos – a Ukrainian national living in Russia – lost an appeal to the Federal Migration service, which had invalidated his residence permit. Authorities claim Dubonos is a national security threat, alleging that he made calls for violent changes to the "constitutional order" of the country. However, Dubonos’ crime has not been officially reported ­– even to him. He attributes the decision to his trade union activities, including working with employees of organizations that use migrant labor in the Arkhangelsk Region.