The Naberezhnye Chelny City Court liquidated the organization of Rafis Kashapov

The activities of the Naberezhnye Chelny branch of the "All-Tatar Public Center" are prohibited.

On May 11, 2017, the city court of Naberezhnye Chelny satisfied the claim of the Republican prosecutor's office on the liquidation of the Naberezhnye Chelny branch of the Tatarstan Regional All-Tatar Political Social Movement (REVTATPOD) - the All-Tatar Public Center (VTOC) (NTCHOTS) as extremist organization and prohibition of its activities.

Recall that the statement of claim of the prosecutor's office said that the activists of the organization "contribute to the radicalization of the population republics" and "actively call for to the independence of the Republic of Tatarstan from the Russian Federation " . As a justification the cases of criminal prosecution of the former leader of the NMO TOC Rafis are given Kashapov and activists of the organization, as well as attracting activists to administrative responsibility for carrying out non-coordinated with the authorities rallies.

The arguments of the prosecutor's office seemed doubtful to us: although we do not know all cases of persecution of activists of the Naberezhnye Chelny Tatar nationalist organization, the sentence handed down to its chairman Rafis Kashapov for calling for separatism, we consider it clearly unlawful (for more on this, see here ). Illegal, from our point of view, are also a number of provisions of the Russian law on rallies, unduly restricting the right to freedom of assembly.

During the consideration of the case in April, it turned out that the organization was liquidated in 2004, because it did not re-register in time and did not submit reports. IN 2004-2015, when Rafis Kashapov was the head of the NChO TOC, the organization existed unofficially. In 2016, after Kashapov was convicted, ten people led by the new leader Rifat Badertdinov decided to register the organization under a new name, but did not have time to do so. Nevertheless, it was Badertdinov who was chosen by the republican prosecutor's office as the defendant in the case of the liquidation of the NChO TOC. The court during the proceedings stated that the prosecutor's office appointed the defendant incorrectly, and Badertdinov received the status of the defendant's representative. However, this situation did not affect the decision to liquidate the organization.

Sources

• Case card No. 2a-3758/2017 ~ M-1976/2017 // Website of the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court of the Republic of Tatarstan. May 11, 2017
• Tatar public center recognized as an extremist organization // Interfax. May 11, 2017
• Regina Khisamova. The court recognized the Naberezhnye Chelny branch of the VTOC as an extremist organization // Idel.Reality. May 11, 2017