Misuse of Anti-Extremism in August 2014

The following is our review of the primary and most representative events in the misuse of Russia’s anti-extremist legislation in August 2014.

Lawmaking

In late July, Dmitry Medvedev signed a government decree intended as the next step in strengthening state control over the Internet. It pertains to business companies that act as “organizers of information sharing.” The Government demands that social networks, forums and other communication platforms used in Russia install hardware and software which allows the security services to receive information about user activity automatically. Internet sites would be required to operate the hardware and software that gives the FSB an opportunity to carry out surveillance of the targeted users in real time by submitting a request to the administration of a given site. In addition, Internet resources must now retain the information generated on their page by their users for six months and share it with the FSB upon request. The sites are banned from disclosing “organizational and technical methodology of operational and investigative activities.” It is not known at this time, who is supposed to bear the cost of installing the relevant equipment and software. It is possible that, facing the prospect of paying up to several million dollars for the installation of expensive equipment, some websites might agree to store their data on the FSB servers. It is still unclear how foreign site owners, such as Google, Facebook or Twitter, are planning to respond to these governmental demands.

Criminal Prosecution

In August, we found out about a criminal case under the Criminal Code Article 282 Part 1 (“incitement to hatred and enmity”) against Anatoly Kuznetsov, the chief editor of the Anapa-Pro website; the case was under investigation in Anapa since late June 2013. The prosecution was related to a link to a certain YouTube video, which appeared on the site in December 2012. The video features writer Eduard Bagirov making xenophobic anti-Russian statements and citing his own manifesto, which had been recognized as extremist and included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. Anatoly Kuznetsov claims that his reference to the video was motivated not by his intention to stir up hatred but by his desire to attract his readers’ attention to the issue and discuss the problem of nationalism. Indeed, Anapa-Pro published the video with the heading “Extremism from Bagirov, a “Putin’s trusted person?”, it was also accompanied by a quite neutral interactive survey on “Interethnic peace in the country”. Anapa-Pro pages contain articles on political and social issues republished from major online publications, while its original materials - some of them containing criticism - mostly relate to social problems of the city and the region, including interethnic relations. These materials pertain primarily to the Cossacks, and, overall, they look balanced. Thus, we view the criminal case against Anatoly Kuznetsov as inappropriate, since the publisher had no intent to incite hatred.

In late July, it was announced that a new criminal case had been opened against Andrei Romanov, an activist in the Union of Magnitogorsk Initiative Groups [Soiuz initsiativnykh grupp Magnitogorska]. According to information posted on the page of the Left Front [Levyi front] organization, Romanov was charged under Article 282. The defendant stated the following: “I am facing criminal charges for extremism. Supposedly, I posted an article about protests on my social network page, which stated that a Maidan was the only way to overcome Putin.” Please recall that Andrei Romanov is a known labor union activist and a participant of the protests against the actions of the steel factory management. Romanov was also prosecuted under Article 282 on suspicion of inciting hatred against law enforcement officers in 2011, but the case never came to court. Recently, Romanov participated in protests against Russia's engagement in Ukraine.

In mid-August, Anton Podchasov, who was running for the State Assembly of the Altai Republic from the RPR-Parnassus, was charged in the case brought under the Criminal Code Article 282 Part 1 and Article 280 Part 1 (public incitement to extremist activity). Podchasov was accused of sharing “A Russophobic Post,” the text that had previously been reposted by another Altai opposition member Andrei Teslenko. We would like to remind that this text is extremely jarring and contains numerous insults against ethnic Russians and appeals to the Ukrainian authorities against granting them citizenship. Nevertheless, we believe that prosecution for re-posting the text is controversial; in particular, it is not clear whether calls for discrimination should be prosecuted if they are made in Russia, but are addressed to the authorities of another country and call for discrimination of people, who are also not Russian citizens. In addition, contrary to the report by the Investigative Committee, the text contained no incitements to violence.

Konstantin Zharinov, an activist of the Civil Movement of the Southern Urals [Grazhdanskoe dvizheniie Yuzhnogo Urala] from Chelyabinsk, was charged under Article 280 Part 1 in late August. As you may recall, the case was initiated after Zharinov shared on his VKontakte page an appeal to “Russians and other enslaved peoples,” by the Right Sector [Pravyi sector], which called for acts of disobedience, creation of guerrilla groups, and so on. According to Zharinov, he quickly removed the post and views it as his mistake, but believes that the FSB interest in him has to do with political science specialization in the history of terrorism, on which he authored several books. Indeed, Zharinov did not support the appeal, and his statements, including his VKontakte posts, contain no aggressive rhetoric, so a request to remove the shared link (in case it was still on his page) would have been a sufficient law enforcement response. Criminal prosecution of this case constitutes a disproportionate measure.

In the second half of August, a criminal case under the Criminal Code Article 213 part 2 (hooliganism committed by a group of people motivated by political or ideological hatred or enmity) and Article 214 Part 2 (vandalism committed by a group of people motivated by political or ideological hatred or enmity) was opened in connection with the action on Kotelnicheskaia Embankment in Moscow. On August 20, unknown perpetrators raised the Ukrainian flag on the spire of a Moscow high-rise and painted the star on the spire the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Four base jumpers - Alex Shirokozhuhov, Eugeny Korotkov, Alexander Pogrebov and Anna Lepeshkina – were initially detained on suspicion of their involvement in this action; they denied any involvement. All of them faced criminal charges and were placed under house arrest until mid-October. Then, Ukrainian roofer Grigory (a.k.a. Mustang Wanted) issued a statement, in which he took responsibility for coloring the star and raising the flag. After that, St. Petersburg roofer Vladimir Podrezov was arrested as the Ukrainian roofer’s potential associate and left in jail, also until October. We have serious doubts about the appropriateness of qualifying this case as hooliganism, that is, as “a gross violation of public order, expressing clear disrespect for society.” Disturbance of public order in this case can hardly be characterized as gross. Coloring a star on the steeple is not fundamentally different from the acts of “action artists,” who paint monuments in various colors. Apparently, a segment of our society perceives a star on the building’s spire as sacred; then, coloring a star becomes a sign of disrespect. The size of this segment, however, is not known. In any case, attacks on symbols traditionally constitute part of public debate. Desecration of symbols as such can not be considered a crime, as it has been repeatedly pointed out by the ECHR and as it has been noted by the Supreme Court in relation to Article 282. It is clearly premature to interpret the motives of the perpetrators as political hatred, at least, as it applies to those currently under arrest. Based on the totality of these circumstances, we believe that this action should be viewed as an administrative offense (petty hooliganism, the Administrative Code Article 20.1), rather than as a criminal one.

In the second half of August 2014, the Vakhitovsky District Court of Kazan started reviewing the case against four Muslims accused of participating in a picket against discrimination of Muslims and in a car rally under Hizb ut-Tahrir flags. Azat Hasanov, Ildar Shaykhutdinov, Lenar Galimov and Ilmir Imaev were charged under the Criminal Code Article 282 Part 2 (inciting hatred or enmity and affront to human dignity, committed by an organized group). In addition, three of them were charged under the Criminal Code Article 282.2 Part 2 (participation in an extremist organization), one – under Article 282.2 Part 1 (organizing the activity of an extremist organization), and one more under Article 306 Part 1 (false denunciation). From our perspective, Article 282 was used inappropriately, since a picket protesting discrimination against Muslims provides no grounds for charges of inciting hatred.

Administrative Prosecution

In August, five people faced prosecution under the Administrative Code Article 20.29 on charges of distributing materials that, in our opinion, had been inappropriately banned as extremist. The defendants include three Muslims found to possess banned items of religious literature (a bookseller from the Chelyabinsk Region, the imam of the Tukhsaroy village mosque from Chechnya, and a madrassa director from Dzhankoy), as well as a doctor, fined for distributing a banned Jehovah's Witnesses brochure among the hospital staff in the Krasnodar Region. In addition, the case under the Administrative Code Article 20.29 was opened in Kazan against Mikhail Shcheglov, the chairman of the Society of Russian Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, for sharing via VKontakte the video “Let’s Remind Crooks and Thieves about Their 2002 Manifesto” made by the supporters of Alexei Navalny and recognized as extremist. The verdict against two other Kazan civic activists for distributing this video was issued in July and upheld in August by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Banning Materials as Extremist and Blocking Online Materials

It was reported in early August that the Kurgan Regional Court upheld the decision of the Kurgan City Court recognizing four Jehovah's Witnesses brochures as extremist. The brochures - How to Achieve Happiness in Life, What Can People Hope For?, How to Develop a Close Relationship with God and What You Need to Know about God and his Meaning - were banned by the Kurgan city Court in January 2014.

In mid-August 2014, the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court turned down the prosecutorial request to recognize 18 publications (17 works of Turkish theologian Said Nursi and Islam in Modern Turkey byMary Weld) as extremist. These books were seized during a search at the “home women's madrasa” of Nakia Sharifullina, who was then accused of continuing the activities of a banned Nurcular organization (which, in our opinion, has never existed in Russia) and convicted under Part 1 of the Criminal Code Article 282.2 (planning the activity of an extremist organization). The magistrate court that sentenced Sharifullina also ruled to destroy the books confiscated during the search. In the course of the appeal, the City Court excised the clause on destroying the books from the magistrate court decision due to the ongoing legal case to recognize them as extremist. Nevertheless, the seized books were burned. Thus, it became impossible to conduct a comprehensive psycho-theological and linguistic expertise ordered by the court.

In late August, it was reported that the Sverdlovsk District Court of the Belgorod Region recognized the pamphlet “Testament of Jesus Christ” as extremist. The Court ruled that the text contained statements, which incited to enmity against representatives of other religions and encouraged such actions. We were able to review the text. This small work, written using pre-reform spelling (albeit with errors), appears to have been authored by a mentally ill person, and basically asserts the veracity of a version of Christianity revealed to the anonymous author and the falsity of all other denominations. We believe that the court's decision was inappropriate, since claiming superiority of one’s own religion over the other ones cannot be considered a sign of extremism, and we were unable to find any incitements to violence in the text.

On August 1, 2014 and over the several ensuing days, several dozen Internet pages were blocked upon request from the Prosecutor General for reporting on march for the federalization of Siberia planned in Novosibirsk. Blocked materials included pages from Russian and Ukrainian media sites and user pages on blog and social network sites. Editors of several major media outlets received Roskomnadzor notifications seeking to remove related materials from their pages. The first article to be blocked, “Stop feeding Moscow,” penned by former member of Other Russia [Drugaya Rossiya] Michael Pulin, was published on Novy Smysl website and contained theoretical justifications for this action. Access to the VKontakte page dedicated to the march was restricted as well. A broader wave of restrictions followed. Roskomnadzor representative Vadim Ampelonsky summarized the claims against the materials pertaining to the planned action as follows: “disseminating information about preparations for unauthorized mass events under the slogans, encroaching on the territorial integrity of the country.” We view these actions by the Prosecutor General and Roskomnadzor as inappropriate. First, at the time of publication, the request for permission had been submitted to the Novosibirsk authorities, but the decision on it has not yet been adopted. Next, the media reports did not encourage participation in the action, let alone rioting; many outlets never even mentioned the date of the event. Finally, event organizers refrained from any separatist appeals; they merely called for providing autonomy to Siberia within the framework of the Russian Federation, so their actions do not fall under the newly introduced Criminal Code Article 280.1 (public calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation). We also do not view as appropriate the attempts to criminalize public discussion on the rights of individual territories and right to self-determination or even separatist appeals. Restrictive measures can only be justified in cases of incitement to violence with separatist intentions.

Notably, in August, the Khamovnicheskiy District Court in Moscow upheld the order of the Prosecutor General blocking the website kasparov.ru, while the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow upheld similar restrictions on Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal (both sites were blocked in March 2014). In our opinion, blocking access to both these sites – the decision, which authorities initially explained by claiming that the resources had been covering actions, which had no permits - was inappropriate.

We would also like to note that the Unified Registry of Banned Websites added at least four sites in August; the sites were blocked by the courts for posting Islamic religious materials, improperly recognized as extremist.