“There are fronts everywhere in Russia”

Over the past two years, the number of people convicted of extremist crimes in Russia has doubled, according to the data of the Russian Supreme Court. According to the judicial department at the Supreme Court, in the first half of 2016, 227 sentences were handed down under the "extremist" articles of the Criminal Code - art. 280 "Public calls for extremist activities" and Art. 282 "Inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity." At the beginning of November 2016, at the plenum of the Supreme Court, the figures for 2015 were announced - 588 convicted of extremist crimes.

In December 2016, at a meeting of the Human Rights Council, President Vladimir Putin called for refraining from excesses when initiating criminal cases under the article on extremism. "Social networks are increasingly being used for extremist activities, and the state has a natural legitimate desire to counter this," Interfax quoted the president as saying . "But, of course, everything cannot be summed up under this mute," Putin stressed, adding that this issue "needs to be carefully sorted out."

In November 2016, Russia's Supreme Court urged courts to take a closer look at cases involving so-called "extremist" social media posts. In particular, when deciding whether information is extremist, inciting hatred or enmity, judges are advised to take into account the context and form of this information, as well as the presence or absence of any comments on it.

The report of the information and analytical center SOVA, devoted to the practice of illegal anti-extremism for the period from January to August 2016, notes, in particular, that anti-extremist legislation "was actively used not only against radical opponents of the political regime, but also against citizens far from radicalism" . For example, among the cases of unlawful application of anti-extremist legislation, the authors of the report cite the case of housewife Ekaterina Vologzheninova , who, for several reposts on the VKontakte social network, was accused of inciting hatred and hostility towards government officials and "volunteers from Russia fighting on the side of the militias from the east of Ukraine." She was sentenced to 320 hours of compulsory labor with her laptop confiscated.

Another case that SOVA writes about is the case of Tyumen blogger Alexei Kungurov, who was accused of "justifying terrorism" for a LiveJournal post criticizing the Russian military operation in Syria. On December 20, 2016, Kungurov was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

Human rights activists and lawyers note that initially anti-extremist legislation was aimed at protecting against any form of discrimination, but gradually it has become increasingly used to crack down on political opponents and dissidents. In particular, for example, in 2003, Article 282 (“Inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity”) included such a concept as “social group”. Before that, according to the law, they could be held accountable for actions aimed at inciting hatred or enmity on the basis of gender, race, nationality, language, origin and attitude to religion.

, head of the SOVA information and analytical center, Alexander Verkhovsky a lawyer for the human rights organization AGORA, and Ramil Akhmetgaliev, discuss when anti-extremist legislation is necessary and why in Russia it can be used against anyone who has an opinion:

Alexander Verkhovsky: In the November ruling of the Supreme Court, it is written that when deciding on the direction of the person who posted the information, one should proceed from the totality of all circumstances and take into account "the context, form and content of the posted information, the presence and content of comments." This is very clumsily written from the point of view of ordinary language, in particular, there is no word "repost", it is not very clear who the person who posted the information is, but they apparently meant repost. I remember the discussion that took place in the working group, and there we talked about the fact that you need to take into account the context, you need to take into account how the one who made the repost expressed his attitude. This is better than nothing, and the Supreme Court, at least, shows that it is necessary to take into account different circumstances, and not just read a directly published piece of text, ignoring everything around us, as we still usually do. To what extent they will be able to accept this for execution is, of course, a question.

– Ramil, as a practicing lawyer involved in cases related to extremism, what do you think: to what extent can the courts really mitigate the practice?

Ramil Akhmetgaliev: I am a little more pessimistic. What needs to be taken into account in such cases - I, as a lawyer and as a practitioner who has received a higher legal education - I will say: these are all questions of the fourth year of the Faculty of Law. It is necessary to take into account intent, context, and so on - these are questions of proof, tactics and methods of investigation, proving certain circumstances in the trial. This applies not only to extremist cases, it applies to any case. For any formalism can not be judged, and in itself this or that text does not automatically become extremist. Many, many factors must be taken into account. For especially slow-witted lawyers, this position was clarified a long time ago by the European Court of Human Rights, which also says that many, many factors must be taken into account: who said, where he said, when he said, for whom he said, for what audience, and so on.

In general, the anti-extremist law in its spirit was originally an anti-discrimination law, but today this line between anti-discrimination and anti-terrorist is blurred, that is, we have an extremist, a terrorist - it seems that everyone is well-known, but not every citizen can explain who they are and how they differ And not every judge in principle can. When they tried to shove officials into social groups as a particularly weakly protected or especially protected group, this practice was to some extent broken, including by active actions on specific cases, thanks to some extent to the plenum of the Supreme Court, when it adopted a compromise option. As far as I remember, in 2011 there were very heated debates in the plenum on this issue: whether it is necessary to explicitly state in the resolution that officials cannot be considered a social group. But this practice has begun to gain momentum again, so far there have been no changes in this direction. For example, a well-known case: in Krasnoyarsk, they are trying to recognize nuclear scientists as a social group. As for separatism, the article is new, but practice has already been developed on it. And I would say that it does not comply with the Constitution, because any talk about separatism, including critical statements that certain territories are annexed, or that it is necessary to separate, or possibly separate, automatically becomes a criminal offense. If you turn to The Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism , in which our people actively participated, separatism there is understood only as a violent change in territorial integrity, calls for it. The second element (this is again from law school): any appeals must be real and executable. Because, look, the case of Moroshkin in Chelyabinsk - a man was declared insane, and his actions were recognized as socially dangerous. Moroshkin wrote something there, the examination recognized him as insane. Well, who will follow him? Well, you can not judge a person for this! Or Kashapov , who in Tatarstan questions the legality of certain decisions. He discusses, he did not lead the crowd, and the crowd will not follow him. Why should he be tried for this, punished and sent to prison? This is wrong, this is not in accordance with the Constitution. In this case, the line between the need to protect the public interest and the protection of the right to freedom of speech is violated here.

- Now there is a feeling that extremism, separatism, terrorism - everything is lumped together, and, as you said, it is not very easy to deal with this. Now, speaking more globally, what is dangerous, for example, extremism? Why should he be prosecuted? What should it be? Where is the line of really necessary legislative regulation?

Alexander Verkhovsky: This word - extremism - is very broad. The Shanghai Convention, which Ramil mentioned, contains a definition of extremism, terrorism, separatism associated with the use of violence, but it also says that this does not prevent states from defining it in their legislations somehow more broadly. Here the states define it more broadly. It is clear that if people, say, are preparing a terrorist attack, a murder for some political reasons, or something like that, this is a criminal activity. And it would be criminal activity anywhere. You can call it the word "extremism", you can not call it, but still we are talking about criminal activity. Questions arise when it comes to statements, public statements, which in the broadest sense of the word are inflammatory. Not when they specifically incite, it is just a form of complicity in a crime, but when, addressing the general public, they call for something: for a coup, for a pogrom, for a revolution. What and how should the state stop here? There is a huge worldwide discussion on this matter, but more or less authoritative world lawyers agree that prosecution for such statements should only occur in some special circumstances, when many factors coincide and show an increased public danger of this statement. In our country, this criterion - increased public danger - is clearly not observed. In places it is not observed directly in the law.

With the article about calls for separatism, the aforementioned plenum of the Supreme Court even aggravated the situation. It says that if the accused called for some illegal actions with the aim of separating some territory, then he should be tried for calls for those illegal actions that he described. In practice, it turns out that even if he did not call for any illegal actions, but simply spoke in the spirit that it is necessary to separate some region from the Russian Federation, then this is a crime in itself. Not only is there no talk of violence, in general, of any illegal appeals - but this is already a rather serious crime. This, of course, should not be in the law. Where exactly the line should pass is very debatable. My position: the line should be drawn where it comes to calls for violence and really realistic calls. There are many famous cases, like the case of Anton Nosik : a man called for carpet bombing, killing women and children en masse. This is bad from a moral point of view, but from the point of view of legality, whom did he call? If the readers of their blog, they not only cannot bomb Syria, they don't see the Syrians alive anywhere. And if he called on the governments of some countries, whether it be our country or the United States, then they definitely do not listen to Anton Nosik. Therefore, the public danger of his statements, in general, is equal to zero. This is what is completely ignored. Therefore, in our country last year, more than 500 sentences were handed down for public statements of an extremist nature, and this is an incredible figure. In Western countries, they are calculated in pieces per year, and even then not every one. This is a rare case, you have to try very hard to get into the relevant articles, which are also there. Our account went into the hundreds. Despite the fact that most of these statements are completely unacceptable from an ethical point of view, these people said nasty things, but these are nasty things that should be assessed somehow differently, and not according to the Criminal Code.

Ramil Akhmetgaliev: Let's take the latest events related to Crimea. Discussing, praising, appreciating all decisions related to accession is not a criminal offense. But any discussions where this decision is called into question are already criminally punishable. On certain topics, only positive things can be said, and negative, critical things are not allowed. As for the terminology, I'm not ready to say exactly, but, as far as I know, in a number of European states the term "extremism" is not used at all. And in general, I am a supporter of returning to the original idea, when the provisions of the Constitution and the anti-extremist law were just being developed, in the early 2000s. That is, an anti-extremist law should be an anti-discrimination law in its essence, in spirit. It should be aimed at protecting human rights and freedoms from any disputed discrimination. Terrorism today, if I am not mistaken, is legally a kind of extremism. This is a separate sector in general, it is even different in terms of object – we are talking about the normal functioning of various state bodies, state structures, officials, public figures, public institutions. To date, all these plenums of the Supreme Court, in my opinion, are only an attempt to somehow rectify the situation. No one, of course, can raise the question realistically and really achieve a change in legislation, but if we talk theoretically about solving the problem, then we need to return to our original positions. There is anti-discrimination legislation with its own range of protected relations, and there is anti-terrorist legislation, both within the state and outside it. And in principle, common international standards on both anti-discrimination and anti-terrorist standards have been developed and are in place. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.

– If you look at the cases related to extremism that are now there: this is blogger Sokolovsky from Yekaterinburg, who is tried for extremism for videos and catching Pokemon, these are claims against the Library of Ukrainian Literature and all these cases are about reposts. As far as I understand, there is an opinion that now, in fact, under the extremist articles (280th, 282nd) ​​it is possible to attract any person, there would be a desire. To what extent, in your opinion, does the current legislation provide such an opportunity? How convenient is it to keep all people in such a suspended state? And to what extent is it being used now to punish, say, political opponents?

Alexander Verkhovsky: Of course, it is used. The question is simply that these opponents may, for example, often dislike us too. According to our observations, the vast majority of people who pass under these articles "For public statements of an extremist nature" are either people of some kind of racist views, or they are supporters of armed jihad who preach it. There are, of course, different ones, including the mentioned Kashapov or Sokolovsky. There are relatively few such cases, but this does not decorate our life either. That's what scares everyone around. Legislation was initially formed not very clear for what. It does not seem to me that it had such a purely positive anti-discrimination message from the very beginning, but I would like to. And I completely agree with Ramil: it would be better to transfer him to these tracks in some way. But the Russian Federation has repeatedly made recommendations at various international forums, in UN committees, for example, to finally adopt comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, but for some reason the Russian Federation does not want to. Instead, it has this complex anti-extremist. Yes, it's not good. In addition, we already have quite exotic things in the legislation.

The story about libraries is not only a story about the Library of Ukrainian Literature, it is a story about hundreds of libraries that have problems with the prosecutor's office because they store or may store books from this notorious list of extremist materials. There is no such list in any normal country, because this is an absurd mechanism. In principle, it cannot be beneficial, but it does a lot of harm. I'm not even sure that he benefits the political regime. But it is undoubtedly very useful for district prosecutors to increase accountability for how they fight extremism. How much this suppresses people's willingness to speak out publicly is difficult to assess. But it seems to me, according to some observations, that yes, it is overwhelming that people of various views and different degrees of determination feel some pressure. Law enforcement is such that it is completely impossible to understand who they will come to next. Chaos is created. If the task of the state, ideally, when countering some radical groups, is to draw some line, a red line that we tolerate up to here, but then we don’t, that’s all, we don’t tolerate it, then this red line does not exist. No one understands her: neither the most radicals, nor law-abiding citizens, it is impossible to see her.

Ramil Akhmetgaliev: The effect and result, including for the authorities themselves, is doubtful. It can be seen that the law is applied selectively, when it is necessary and when it is not necessary. A very large block of cases, which are initiated mostly for accountability and the need to maintain certain indicators. There are cases that are cases of some act of intimidation, selective application. We have one of the latest cases - in Ulyanovsk, Danila Alferyev , very interesting. At one of the public events, he quoted one statement about "we are only waiting for an order, a front command" and so on. And there was the name and patronymic of Zyuganov, what he expects from him. In fact, initially this statement word for word, down to the comma, was said by representatives of another organization, and Vladimir Vladimirovich was mentioned there. And in the actions and statements of the one who first said this, there is no extremism, but in the actions of this - there is extremism towards the social group "officials". The same investigator sits, the same person makes a decision on the same phrase, said in similar circumstances, both here and there at the rally, but here there is a composition, but not there. There is nothing good for the authorities in such a policy on the application of this legislation. By and large, within the framework of this legislation, and in general in Russia today, there are some fronts everywhere: here is a front, there is a front, here are enemies, here are external enemies, here are internal enemies. They try to artificially divide society into friends and foes, enemies and non-enemies, push each other. An attempt to provoke a civil war, a revolution within society. Who benefits from this? The government itself, if it does not want a revolution? Yes, of course, there is a result today that this affects some, it affects quite strongly, they are forced to refuse some public statements, to think over this or that word ten times, maybe not to say somewhere.

Natalya Dzhanpoladova

Sources

• Natalya Dzhanpoladova. "There are fronts everywhere in Russia" // Radio Liberty. 2017. January 8.