A court in St. Petersburg declared the content of the MDK VKontakte community prohibited

The Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg on Tuesday declared the content of the MDK community on the VKontakte social network prohibited in the Russian Federation. A Fontanka correspondent reports the decision from the courtroom. The prosecutor's office of the Central District of St. Petersburg sought a ban on MDK, citing violations of the law “On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations” and “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection.” An appeal to the prosecutor's office from a citizen concerned about the content of the public page was received in April 2015. At the request of the prosecutor’s office, the community’s publications were examined by experts from the Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, who found in the community information that had signs of “humiliation (insult) of various groups of people based on religious and national affiliation, public desecration of religious and liturgical literature, objects of religious veneration, signs and emblems of worldview symbols and paraphernalia.” The publications that outraged the citizen and the prosecutor's office were removed from the resource, but the supervisory agency did not withdraw its submission, citing obscene language and pornographic images on the MDK page, which can be seen by any VKontakte user, including minors.