Unlawful anti-extremism in March 2013

We publish an overview of the main and most significant developments in the field of illegal enforcement of anti-extremist legislation in Russia in March 2013.

Rulemaking

In mid-March, it became known that the bill on insulting religious feelings, received an official negative review from the Government of the Russian Federation, was not recalled from Duma, but is considered in a planned manner. Consideration scheduled for April bill on first reading. It must be attached unchanged, then is, with a proposal to introduce Art. 243.1 of the Criminal Code (insulting religious beliefs and feelings of citizens and / or desecration of objects and objects of religious veneration (pilgrimage), places intended for religious rites and ceremonies). The main changes and changes are planned to be made by the second reading. Then perhaps Art. 243.1 will be excluded from the text of the draft, and Art. 148 CC (impeding the exercise of the right to freedom of conscience and religion), on the contrary, is expanded due to precisely "insulting feelings" and renamed (to "Violation of the right to freedom of conscience and religions"), while the punishment for it is tougher (up to three years imprisonment).

In the last days of the month to the State Duma by the Government a draft law was introduced "On Amendments to Article 9 Federal Law "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious associations"". The authors of the bill propose to supplement Chapter 9 of the current law ("Establishment of Religious Organizations") paragraph 3, in which refers to the prohibition to become a founder or a member of a religious organizations to foreigners or persons stateless , "in respect of which, in accordance with the established legislation In the Russian Federation, a decision was made on the undesirability of their stay (residence) in the Russian Federation " , persons whose activities are recognized by the court as extremist, or who fall under law on combating money laundering and financing terrorism. Since it is not uncommon for religious or religious-political activists are being wrongfully persecuted, we fear that religious organizations with which such activists are associated will face defeat in rights. After all, the law "On freedom of conscience" does not contain a definition of membership in a religious organization, which creates a lot of room for abuse.

At the end of March, it became known that the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications had prepared changes to the temporary order of conduct register of prohibited sites, effective from the end of October 2012. Responsibilities for maintaining the register, currently entrusted to Roskomnadzor, it is planned to transfer organization chosen by Roskomnadzor itself. Ministry also proposed to expand the registry with information about the owner of the banned site or a banned page (now such information cannot be obtained from the registry); Not it is quite clear, however, how to implement this technically, for example, in the case of blog or page on free hosting.

Criminal prosecution

In March 2013, two wrongful judgments were issued, with our point of view, a sentence under criminal articles.

In the early days month, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Arkhangelsk delivered a sentence under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting hatred or enmity, and equals humiliation of human dignity) to the president of the Association of Pomors Arkhangelsk region Ivan Moseev; he was found guilty and sentenced to a fine of 100 thousand rubles. Recall that Moseev was accused of leaving on the site news agency "Echo of the North" comment under the nickname "Pomors", insulting ethnic Russians. The statement that served reason for initiating a case, from our point of view, did not deserve attention law enforcement. In mid-March, Moseev's defense appealed sentence. Lawyers point out that it was based on an examination carried out with violations of the law, since the expert in the conclusion gave answers to matters within the exclusive jurisdiction of the court.

In the second half of March, the world court in Orenburg delivered a sentence under Part 1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization activities of an extremist organization) Alexander Shudobaev, recognizing him guilty of creating a cell of the banned religious organization Tablighi Jamaat" in the mosque "Suleimania" in Orenburg. Shudobaev was sentenced to a fine of 200 thousand rubles. Tablighi ban Jamaat" we consider unjustified, since its members do not preach violence and there is no evidence that they were involved in any illegal activity, therefore, is illegal, from our point of view, and this sentence.

At the beginning of the month in Petersburg in the framework of the investigation of the case under Part 1 of Art. 282.2 (organization activities of an extremist organization) 10 people were detained suspicion of involvement in the activities of a banned organization "Nurcular". They were searched, law enforcement agencies reported the seizure of prohibited religious literature. The next day nine out of ten detainees were released from custody, the tenth was illegally arrested until the end of April. Recall that the arrest suspected of committing crimes of minor gravity is possible only if the presence of exceptional circumstances; in this case, there were none. We We consider it unlawful to ban the Nurcular organization, in reality never functioned on the territory of Russia. From our point of view, believers who study the books of the Turkish theologian Nursi, which are banned in Russia without proper reason should not be persecuted.

On the same days, Nizhny Novgorod the district court granted the petition of the lawyers in the case of Antifa-RASH and stopped against the defendants legal proceedings for hours. 2 Article. 282.1 of the Criminal Code (participation in an extremist community), para. "b" part 2 of Art. 115 and p. "b" part 2 of Art. 116 (respectively, intentional infliction of light bodily harm and beatings motivated by hatred or enmity in relation to a social group) due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. So Thus, the three defendants are now charged only under Part 2 of Art. 213 (hooliganism, committed by an organized group of persons or associated with resistance government representative) charges of extremist acts were dropped from them.

In the middle of the month the presidium The Moscow City Court refused to satisfy the supervisory appeal against the verdict of the Khamovnichesky District Court and cassation ruling of the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Moscow City Court in against the participants of the rally of the punk band Pussy Riot in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The Presidium of the Moscow City Court considered that holding the action in a public place, that is, in the temple and the fact that a video with her recording was distributed on the network testifies to the focus of the action on a gross violation of public order and deliberate inciting hatred. Note that the Moscow City Court did not listen to the opinion Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation Vladimir Lukin, who petitioned for the abolition of the sentence of members of Pussy Riot. From the point of view of the Ombudsman, the members of the punk band violated only "internal rules of conduct in the temple building", which cannot be regarded as rude public order disturbance. Lukin also emphasized that the prosecution did not succeeded in proving that the defendants had motives of religious hatred.

In mid-March, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) considered the complaints of Yusup Kasymakhunov and Marat Saibatalov, convicted in Russia on charges of belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir and terrorism. The complaint stated, that the decision to condemn them as members of Hizb ut-Tahrir was taken before the secret decision of the Supreme court of the Russian Federation to ban this organization as a terrorist one. The ECtHR agreed with the arguments of the convicts and pointed to the violation by the Russian courts of Art. 7 European convention on the protection of human rights, which states that " no one be found guilty of any criminal offense which in accordance with the domestic or international law in force at the time of its commission law was not a criminal offence ." At the same time, the ECtHR acknowledged that not all state persecution of Hizb members ut-Tahrir" is wrong. Anti-Semitic and violence-justifying statements members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, in particular, calls for the violent destruction Israel and the expulsion and murder of its citizens, as well as repeated statements justifying suicide attacks that have killed civilians residents, mean, according to Art. 17 of the Convention that the activities of the members of this organization not protected by the Convention, including Art. 9,10 and 11 of the Convention - on freedom of conscience, freedom speech and freedom of assembly.

Administrative persecution

In different regions countries continue to fine under Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for the distribution of prohibited of the 68 Islamic religious writings banned a year ago in Orenburg. In March, administrative cases were initiated for the sale of books from Orenburg list against the owners and sellers of a bookstore in Astrakhan and a clothing store in Perm.

Other state actions

In March, mass prosecutorial inspections of NGOs. Although, according to the Ministry of justice, the purpose of inspections is to comply with the requirements of the Federal Law "On amendments to legislative acts in terms of regulating the activities of NGOs, performing the functions of a foreign agent", checking in a number of cases explained their actions by the need to check NPOs for the implementation extremist activity. In this case, the scope of the test, as a rule, significantly exceeded the declared one: we could talk about compliance with the rules fire safety, and about the availability of vaccinations among employees, and about program software installed on computers, and even about measures to combat rats. Not it is quite clear on what grounds a mass unscheduled inspection is carried out, since, in accordance with the law, an unscheduled inspection can be carried out only on the basis of a statement about violations committed by one or another NPO. Besides, it is not clear what relation the conduct of such diverse checks has to fight against extremism.

At the end of March, Internet users-clients Rostelecom in the Bryansk, Voronezh, Oryol and Ryazan regions were temporarily deprived of access to social networks "VKontakte" and "Odnoklassniki", as well as YouTube video hosting and blog platform livejournal.com. When trying to access the respective sites, clients Rostelecom found out the announcement that the resource is blocked in connection with its ban and inclusion in the Federal List of Extremist materials or with its inclusion in the unified register of prohibited sites. How it turned out that the sites were indeed included in the registry due to individual posted on their pages materials banned for extremism; at the same day they were excluded from the register, but Rostelecom has already managed to introduce blocking. As a reminder, we consider the practice of blocking access to sites entirely due to individual materials. We marked this case as the first new online information control law touched upon the dissemination of extremist materials.

In March, it became known about the warnings issued by Roskomnadzor since the beginning of the year to the editors of several informational sites for the publication of the Pussy Riot video "Punk Prayer". Warnings received the sites "Piter.TV", "Polit.ru", "Arguments and Facts", Neva24.ru, "KM.ru", "New Region" and "Regions.ru". We believe that all these publications were wrongfully punished because there were no grounds for banning the video itself: in there are no signs of inciting hatred towards Orthodoxy and the Orthodox. And criticism Patriarch Kirill for supporting the government as inciting religious hatred cannot be considered.