Russian authorities prohibit discussion of the march for the federalization of Siberia

From August 1, 2014 and over the following days, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, several dozen pages on the Internet were blocked, including pages from media sites, Russian and Ukrainian, and pages of social network users. The editors of 14 major media outlets received notifications from Roskomnadzor demanding that they remove relevant materials from their pages.

The Prosecutor General's Office saw in the materials about the march for the federalization of Siberia in Novosibirsk "calls for mass unrest, extremist activities, participation in mass events held in violation of the established order."

The first to be blocked was the article “Stop Feeding Moscow” by ex-Friend of Russia Mikhail Pulin on the “New Sense” website, which contained a theoretical justification for the relevance of this action. Access to the march's page on the VKontakte social network was also limited. Then the authorities resorted to large-scale blocking and sending out notifications, which were received, in particular, by Slon.ru (the site’s editors had to remove an interview on the topic of the march with artist Artem Loskutov), ​​Polit.ru, Regnum, New Region, Rosbalt. ru", "Nakanune.Ru", "National Accent", already blocked by Russian providers "Grani.ru" and others.

On August 3, 2014, it became known that the BBC Russian service also received a notification about the possible restriction of access to an interview with Artem Loskutov, which aired in the BBC Seva program on July 31. In this regard, BBC employees changed the text accompanying the interview. Background information about Artem Loskutov was added to it, as well as Loskutov’s reasoning about what this march is - “ a parody, a provocation or a real attempt at autonomization .” However, the post was not deleted.

As Kommersant reports, Roskomnadzor representative Vadim Ampelonsky described the essence of the claims to materials about the upcoming action as “the dissemination of information about preparations for unauthorized mass events under slogans that encroach on the territorial integrity of the country.”

The actions of the Prosecutor General's Office and Roskomnadzor seem to us to be unlawful. Firstly, at the time of publication of the materials, an application to hold a march had been submitted to the authorities of Novosibirsk, but a decision on it had not yet been made. Secondly, the media did not call for participation in the action, much less any mass unrest; many did not even mention the date of this event. Thirdly, the organizers of the action did not even allow themselves separatist calls; it was only about granting Siberia autonomous rights within the Russian Federation, therefore their actions do not fall under the newly introduced Art. 280.1 of the Criminal Code (public calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation). Let us also recall that we do not consider attempts to prohibit (in particular, through the introduction of Article 280.1) public discussion on the rights of individual territories, the right to self-determination and even separatist calls to be legitimate. Prohibitory measures can only be justified when it comes to calls for violent action with separatist goals.

Among the news publications blocked on different days for publishing publications about the Novosibirsk march are the Russian Piter.tv, Taiga.info, Sibgrad, 54 News, Open Ufa, Top55, Novospress, "Balashovsky Prospekt", "Listok", LiPort.ru, "Nakanune.ru", APN, Belarusian "Charter 97", Crimean "Crimean Bulletin", Ukrainian "New Region - Ukraine", "Vesti", svitua.org, " Economic news", "Politicanthrope", "Case", "Glavkom", "Main", "Observer", "NikVesti", "Censor.net", ELISE.COM.UA, "Vlasti.net", Finance.ua, "OstroV", "Sled.net.ua", "Rayonka", Israeli MIGnews. Most of the websites of Russian publications removed the relevant materials and were soon unblocked.

Sources

• Pavel Belavin, Roman Rozhkov. Slon.ru was taken under supervision // Kommersant. 2014. August 1.
• Slon.ru deleted an interview with Loskutov at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office // Forbes. 2014. August 1.
• Liss Artem. Editor's blog: Artem Loskutov and the “federalization of Siberia” // BBC Russian Service. 2014. August 3.