Misuse of Anti-Extremism in March 2013

The following is our review of the primary and most representative events in the misuse of Russia’s anti-extremist legislation in March 2013. Lawmaking

In mid-March it was announced that a bill on the insult of religious feelings, after having received negative official feedback from the Russian government, was not revoked from the Duma and is to be considered according to plan in a first reading in April. It should be accepted as is - that is, with the proposal for Criminal Code Article 243.1 (insulting the religious beliefs and sensibilities of citizens and/or the desecration of objects and targets of religious worship (pilgrimage) and places designated for performing religious rites and ceremonies). Basic edits and changes are planned for the second reading. At that point it’s possible that Article 243.1 will be excluded from the draft, though Article 148 (obstruction of the right to freedom of conscience and religion) could be expanded to “insulting sensibilities,” and renamed to “violation of the right to freedom of conscience and religion.” In this case the punishment of this crime would be increased to three years in prison.

At the end of March, the bill “On Amendments to Article 9 of the Federal Law ‘On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Association’” was introduced to the State Duma. The bill’s authors propose the addition of a third paragraph to the section on “The Creation of Religious Organizations.” The addition would prohibit an alien or stateless person (“about which the legislation of the Russian Federation has been clearly decided regarding the undesirability of stay (residence) in the Russian Federation”), persons whose works are deemed extremist in Russia, or those subject to the law on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, from being a founding member of a religious organization. As religious and non-religious political activists are sometimes wrongfully persecuted, it is our fear that religious organizations with such activists in their ranks could be targeted by such a law. After all, the law “On Freedom of Conscience” leaves the definition of membership in a religious organization open to interpretation, and thereby to abuse.

Towards the end of March we became aware that the Ministry of Communications was preparing changes to the current order of the registry of banned sites, which was made effective in October 2012. Maintaining the register would now fall under the responsibility of Rozkomnadzor, the media oversight agency, which is in turn planning to overturn the registry to a firm chosen by itself. Moreover the ministry also proposed the expansion of the roster of information on targeted websites to include facts about owners of given banned sites (such information is not currently detailed on the registry). It is not clear how such a change would be implemented, from a technical standpoint, in regards to blogs or freely-hosted sites.

Criminal prosecution

We registered two inappropriate verdicts for criminal charges in March 2013.

At the beginning of the month the October District Court of Arkhangelsk sentenced Ivan Moseev, the president of the Arkhangelsk Pomors’ association, under Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code: incitement to hatred or hostility, and the humiliation of human dignity. (The Pomors are a group of settlers living on the White Sea.) Moseev was convicted and fined 100,000 rubles (about $3,200). Moseev was accused of leaving an anti-Russian comment on the website of the information agency Echo of the North. The comment that caused the case, in our view, did not warrant law enforcement attention. Moseev’s defense appealed the verdict in mid-March, pointing out that it was based on an examination that broke the law, as experts gave opinions on matters solely within the jurisdiction of the court.

In the second half of March an Orenburg magistrate’s court convicted Aleksandr Shudobaev under Part 1 of Article 282.2, the organization of an extremist organization. Shudobaev was found guilty of creating a cell of the banned religious organization Tablighi Jamaat in Orenburg’s Suleimaniah Mosque. He was sentenced to a fine of some 200,000 rubles. It is Sova’s position that the ban on Tablighi Jamaat is unreasonable, as its participants are markedly nonviolent and there is no evidence that they are involved in illegal activities. As such, we view the verdict in the case against Shudobaev as wrongful.

A St. Petersburg court saw a case under Part 1 of Article 282.2, the organization of an extremist organization, against 10 individuals suspected of involvement in the banned religious organization Nurcular. The defendants were searched, with police reporting the seizure of banned religious literature. Nine of the ten detainees were released from custody following the search, while the tenth is being illegally held until the end of April. We remind readers that the arrest of suspects of such a crime is possible only in exceptional circumstances, and in this case there were none. It is Sova’s position that the banned group Nurcular has actually never operated on Russian soil. We maintain that followers of Turkish theologian Said Nursi, who is prohibited for no good reason in Russia, should not be targeted for prosecution.

During the same period a Nizhny Novgorod district court granted a request from lawyers in the case against Antifa-RASH (Red and Anarchist Skinheads) to terminate the charges under Part 2 of Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code (participation in an extremist community), paragraph “b” of Part 2 of Article 115 (intentional infliction of light injury) and paragraph “b” of Part 2 of Article 116 (battery motivated by hatred or hostility towards a social group) due to a lapse of time. As such the three defendants now face charges under only Part 2 of Article 213, hooliganism committed by an organized group or associated with resistance to authorities. Extremist charges have been dropped.

In mid-March the presidium of the Moscow City Court dismissed an appeal of a judgment by the Khamovniki District Court, as well as an appeal against the Moscow City Court in the criminal case against members of punk-protest group Pussy Riot, who were prosecuted over a demonstration at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. The Court found that the decision to hold the demonstration in a public place – the church – and the spreading of a video of the action over social networks indicate that the protest was aimed at creating a gross disruption of public order, as well as the deliberate incitement to hatred. We note that the Moscow City Court did not consider the opinion of Ombudsman for Human Rights Vladimir Lukin, who had petitioned for an annulment of the charges against Pussy Riot. According to Lukin, the members of the band who participated in the action only violated “the internal rules of conduct in the church building” – actions which cannot be regarded as a gross violation of the public order. Lukin also emphasized that the prosecution had failed to prove the religious hatred motive.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) considered a complaint by Yusup Kasymakhunov and Marat Saibatalov, who were convicted in Russia on charges of terrorism and participation in the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The complaint notes that the ruling was made prior to the closed-door Supreme Court decision that banned Hizb ut-Tahrir as an extremist organization. The ECHR agreed with the arguments, condemning the Russian courts’ violation of Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that “no one shall be held guilty of any criminal offense, which during the time of the offense, was not considered in domestic or international law as a criminal offense.” At the same time, the ECHR found that not every part of the state’s prosecution of Hizb ut-Tahrir was wrongful. Group members’ anti-Semitic statements and others justifying violence – for example calling for the violent destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of its citizens - and repeated statements praising suicide attacks that kill civilians mean that, according to Article 17 of the Convention, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s members’ activities are actually not protected by it – including sections on freedom of conscience, speech and assembly.

Administrative prosecution

Various regional courts continue to issue fines under Article 20.29 of the Administrative Code for the distribution of books included in a list of 68 Islamic texts banned by an Orenburg court last year. In March, administrative proceedings were begun for the trade of books from the list against the owners and shop assistants of a bookstore in Astrakhan and a clothing store in Perm.

Other government action

Prosecutors’ offices across the country initiated mass investigations of NGOs in March. According to the official Ministry of Justice account, the checks were to make sure NGOs were complying with the Federal Law “On Amendments to the Legislation Concerning the Regulation of the Activities of NGOs Acting as a Foreign Agent.” However, many inspectors said they came to search for signs of extremist activity. They also showed up to NGO operations with plans that seriously exceeded that stated purpose: they could, for example, check for compliance with fire safety regulations, staff immunization statuses, computer software and anti-rodent measures. It is not clear on what grounds these mass random checks were held, as according to the law, they may be carried out only following a complaint over a given NGO's purported violation. Additionally, it remains unclear how such extensive searches contribute to the fight against extremism.

In late March, Rostelecom Internet customers in the Bryansk, Orel, Ryazan and Voronezh regions were temporarily denied access to the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, as well as to YouTube and LiveJournal. When visiting these sites, Rostelecom customers were shown a message stating that the content they were trying to access was banned by inclusion in the Federal List of Extremist Materials or the register of banned websites. As it turned out the sites were included in the register due to some banned materials posted on them. However, the sites were included and removed on the same day - and Rostelecom, not knowing, enacted the block anyway. It is Sova’s position that such a block of an entire site due to the presence of individually banned materials is an abusive practice. This case marked the first time that the new law on the control of online information affected the distribution of extremist materials.

In March it was made public that at the beginning of the year Roskomnadzor had issued warnings to several websites that republished video of the Pussy Riot “punk prayer.” Sites that were targeted include Piter.tv, Polit.ru, Argumenty i Fakty, Neva24.ru, KM.ru, Novy Region and Regions.ru. Sova maintains that every one of these outlets was wrongly punished, as the ban on the video is without legal basis: it contains no signs of hatred towards the Russian Orthodoxy or its adherents. Criticism of Patriarch Kirill for his support of the Kremlin can hardly be seen as incitement to religious hatred.