Anton Podchasov filed a complaint with the ECHR

A Barnaul oppositionist complains of persecution for political reasons and violation of freedom of speech.

On March 10, 2016, it became known that Barnaul oppositionist Anton Podchasov, convicted in 2015 under Part 1 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activities) and under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (incitement to hatred, enmity or humiliation on the basis of nationality), filed a complaint against the verdict with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). He believes that he has become a victim of political persecution, and the court's decision violates freedom of expression (Articles 10 and 18 of the Human Rights Convention). Podchasov also claims in the complaint that the criminal punishment, combined with the prohibition to carry out his work as an IT specialist, is clearly disproportionate to the crime charged, and his inclusion in the Rosfinmonitoring list led to the fact that he cannot receive payments for his work, and thus the ban on the profession becomes virtually indefinite.

Podchasov in July 2015 was sentenced to one and a half years of suspended imprisonment with deprivation of the right to engage in activities related to working with telecommunications networks for the entire period of serving the sentence with a probationary period of one and a half years. In September 2015, the Altai Regional Court toughened the sentence, also depriving Podchasov of the right to work in election commissions for a year and a half.

The activist was convicted of republishing the text of the Russophobia Post, previously published by Altai oppositionist Andrei Teslenko, against whom a criminal case was also brought. This text, inspired by Ukrainian events, was written extremely sharply and had a distinctly anti-Russian (in the ethnic sense) orientation. The material contained many insults to Russians and a call for ethnic discrimination - a call to the Ukrainian authorities not to give Russian citizenship. A fragment of this text, distributed online, was later recognized as extremist in the Stavropol Territory.

However, we regarded the prosecution for the “Russophobia Post” as controversial for several reasons. The post did not have a very large audience (although this is typical for most sentences for Internet publications), in addition, it was a republication from another page. But, apparently, Podchasov was in full or partial agreement with this text, or at least did not express a different attitude in any way. The main reason for doubting the legality of the persecution was that it remains unclear to us whether calls for discrimination should be prosecuted if they were made on the territory of Russia, but were addressed to the authorities of another country and it is also proposed to discriminate against non-Russian citizens.

Sources

• Kornya A. A Parnassus activist complained to the ECHR about the ban on his profession // Vedomosti. 2016. March 10.