Unlawful anti-extremism in January 2018

We publish an overview of the main and most significant events in the field of misuse of anti-extremist legislation in Russia in January 2018.

Rulemaking

On January 11, 2018, deputies of the LDPR faction submitted to the State Duma another bill on the abolition of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting hatred or enmity). The argumentation of the authors basically repeats that used in previous similar initiatives of the Liberal Democratic Party. The bill received negative reviews from the government and the Supreme Court of Russia. It is difficult to perceive it otherwise as an election move by the Liberal Democratic Party.

On January 12, the State Duma adopted in the first reading a draft law on amending the federal laws "On Mass Media" and "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection." It provides for the possibility of recognizing individuals as mass media performing the functions of a "foreign agent", obliges media outlets - "foreign agents" to register subsidiaries in Russia with a status similar to that of NPOs - "foreign agents", introduces mandatory for all labeling of their materials, extrajudicial blocking for the absence of such marking on the Internet, as well as a separate mechanism for blocking media outlets - "foreign agents" who refuse to eliminate violations of the order of work. We wrote more about the proposed amendments here .

Practice of the ECtHR

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in January communicated a number of complaints against the decisions of Russian courts. In particular, complaints about sentences in several cases of an "extremist orientation" were communicated:

• Chairman of the Tatar Public Center Rafis Kashapov, sentenced to a real term of imprisonment for criticizing Russia's policy towards Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, to the application of Art. 280.1 of the Criminal Code (public calls for the implementation of actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation);

• roofer Vladimir Podrezov, convicted in 2015 under Part 2 of Art. 213 and part 2 of Art. 214 of the Criminal Code (hooliganism and vandalism committed by a group of people motivated by political hatred) for painting a star on a Moscow skyscraper in the colors of the Ukrainian flag;

• Mikhail Feldman and Oleg Savvin, who, together with Dmitry Fonarev, were convicted in 2015 for hooliganism committed by a group of persons by prior agreement based on political hatred and enmity and hatred against the social group "Veterans of the Great Patriotic War" (part 2 of Art . 213 of the Criminal Code), for hanging the flag of Germany on the garage of the Kaliningrad department of the FSB;

• Kuban activist Darya Polyudova, who was sentenced in December 2015 to two years in prison under CC. 1 and 2 Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activity) and part 2 of Art. 280.1 of the Criminal Code (public calls for separatism) for publications on VKontakte, namely a repost about the demands of ethnic Ukrainians of Kuban, a photo with a poster with the word "revolution" and a text calling for the overthrow of the regime.

The Russian authorities now have to answer questions from the Strasbourg Court in connection with the applicants' cases, in particular to clarify whether their right to liberty and security of person has been violated and whether the interference with their right to freedom of expression was justified, based on the law and necessary in a democratic society.

Prosecution for inciting ethnic hatred and opposition speech

In the middle of the month in Voskresensk, Moscow Region, a court sentenced activist Valentin Sokolov to one and a half years in prison under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (incitement of national hatred) for publications in social networks. During the consideration of the case, it was established that Sokolov published on the Odnoklassniki social network an image with text inciting hatred of Russians, and on Facebook videos with xenophobic comments calling, in particular, for violence against blacks. We consider this verdict partially unjustified. The materials of the case reflect that a picture with a pro-Ukrainian text found on Sokolov's page in Odnoklassniki, which contained a call for the murder of Russians, was preserved in the Miscellaneous folder without any explanation. The investigation and the court did not take into account the fact that in this social network all published images automatically fall into the "Miscellaneous" folder, Sokolov himself provided the repost with a critical comment.

In mid-January, the Investigative Committee reclassified the charge in the case of the St. Petersburg nationalist Dina Garina, who was charged under Part 1 of Art. 282 in inciting hatred on the grounds of origin, as well as against the social group " employees of the center "E" ". After the court returned the case to the prosecutor, and the prosecutor demanded that the investigation eliminate the violations, Garina's actions were qualified under Art. 319 of the Criminal Code (insulting a representative of the authorities), the statute of limitations for bringing to responsibility for which has expired. Garina's speech, in our opinion, contained insults and racist statements, attributing to the employees of the "E" centers of a different ethnic (non-Russian, mixed) origin, as well as " genetic hatred " for Russians. However, we doubted the validity of Garina's criminal prosecution under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code: law enforcement officers should not be considered a vulnerable social group in need of special protection from manifestations of hatred; the object of inciting national hatred in Garina's statements seemed to us vague, and her words did not contain calls for violence.

At the end of the month, an activist from the Moscow region, Vyacheslav Gorbaty, was sent under house arrest, who was accused of participating in an extremist organization (part 2 of article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and financing it (part 1 of article 282.3 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, a 58-year-old resident of Chernogolovka, being the leader of the Moscow region cell of the IGPR "ZOV", which continued the activities of the banned "Army of the Will of the People" (AVN), collected 143 thousand rubles for the activities of the organization. The Army of the Will of the People, a Stalinist-nationalist organization that has repeatedly been seen in xenophobic propaganda, was declared extremist in 2010. We believe that this decision was unlawful, since it was based only on the prohibition of the leaflet "You have chosen - you will be the judge!", which seems to us unreasonable. Accordingly, we consider both the verdict passed in 2017 on the leaders of the ZOV IGPR and the persecution of its members to be unlawful.

The attempts of the authorities to appeal to anti-extremist legislation in disputes about the status of the national languages ​​of the subjects of the federation deserve special attention. In mid-January, the prosecutor's office of Bashkortostan issued a warning against extremist activity to the Congress of the Bashkir People (KBN) for slogans heard at a rally in defense of the Bashkir language. The CBN sees the actions of the prosecutor's office as pressure in light of the upcoming elections.

At the end of the month, the All-Tatar Public Center (VTOC) failed to challenge in one of the district courts of Kazan a warning about the inadmissibility of extremist activity, issued in October by the prosecutor's office of Tatarstan. The department's claims against the organization, in our opinion, had nothing to do with the fight against extremism, since they concerned exclusively the position of the VTOC on the status of the Tatar language and its use in office work

An activist of the Union of Tatar Youth "Azatlyk" Batyrkhan Agzamov, who participated in rallies in Kazan in support of the compulsory teaching of Tatar in the republic, said that an administrative case was opened against him under Part 1 of Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (public demonstration of Nazi symbols) for publishing a collage with a Donbass militia, who is awarded a patch with a Kolovrat. The case materials contain an examination confirming the similarity of the Kolovrat with a swastika, and mention is made of an image included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials, of which the Kolovrat is an integral part. Meanwhile, Agzamov did not promote Nazism: the published picture, on the contrary, denounced the militias in nationalist views. In addition, if a certain image is prohibited, this does not mean at all that all its elements are prohibited individually.

In two other cases of unlawful, in our opinion, application of Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, which we learned about in January, the volunteers of the headquarters of Alexei Navalny became the objects of attention of law enforcement agencies. In Petrozavodsk, the Commission on Juvenile Affairs, on procedural grounds, refused to consider such a case against seventeen-year-old Daniil Smetansky, who in 2013 posted a picture of Putin and Hitler with a swastika on his sleeve on the VKontakte social network. A court in Arkhangelsk fined 59-year-old Mikhail Listov 1,000 rubles under the same article. He was blamed for two publications on the social network VKontakte made in 2016: a 1945 photograph of Soviet soldiers throwing Nazi banners on Red Square during the Victory Parade, and a frame from a dance show that caused a scandal on the Rossiya 1 TV channel, one of the participants of which acted in a Nazi uniform. In both cases, the authors of the publications did not promote Nazi ideology.

The Federal List of Extremist Materials has been supplemented with material whose ban we consider to be clearly unlawful. Under number 4342, the text of the song "Kill the astronauts" by the group "The Ensemble of Christ the Savior and Mother Earth Cheese" was added to the list. It was recognized as extremist on October 16, 2017 by the Blagoveshchensk City Court of the Amur Region. The court did not take into account that this song, like most others in the Ensemble's repertoire, is obviously humorous in nature: the authors ridicule the obscurantism inherent in Orthodox radicals and the perception of science through the prism of primitive religiosity. From our point of view, this work does not pose any danger to society: it is difficult to imagine that the calls contained in the text to kill astronauts because they "climb the sky" or the proposal to ban scientific progress can be taken seriously even by the most radical audience.

Persecution of religious organizations and believers

The persecution of supporters of the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is recognized as terrorist in Russia, continued. At the end of December and in January, the Volga District Military Court delivered sentences in the cases of four of the five defendants in the case of the “Kazan cell” of the party: Marat Dindarov and Ibragim Shavkatov were sentenced to seven and six years in a penal colony, respectively, for participating in the activities of a terrorist organization (part 2 of the Criminal Code). 2 article 205.5 of the Criminal Code), Kazanian Ramil Gataullin received seven years in prison under the same article, and Amir Khakimullin was convicted of organizing the activities of a terrorist organization (part 1 of article 205.5 of the Criminal Code; according to some sources, also for participation in it) and sentenced to 17 years in a strict regime colony and imprisonment for a year. We consider it unlawful to accuse the followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir of terrorist crimes only on the basis of party activities (holding meetings, reading literature, etc.).

Persecution for anti-religious speech

In the middle of the month, the world court in Sochi closed the criminal case against Viktor Nochevnov, previously convicted under Part 1 of Art. 148 of the Criminal Code (insulting the feelings of believers) due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for bringing to justice. Nochevnov was sentenced in August 2017 to a fine of 50 thousand rubles, but in October the district court overturned the sentence and sent the case back for a new trial. Sochinets was accused of publishing a series of caricature images of Christ on the social network. We opposed the criminal prosecution of Nochevnov. From our point of view, the definition of "insulting the feelings of believers" that has no legal meaning should be removed from the Criminal Code.

At the end of the month, we became aware that back in September 2017, for 30 thousand rubles under Part 2 of Art. 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (desecration of objects of religious veneration), Novgorodian musician Daniil Sukachev was fined, and in November the corresponding decision of the justice of the peace was confirmed by the district court. Sukachev posted on the social network "VKontakte" a video clip for the song of the Polish black metal band "Batushka" ("Father"), in which footage of Orthodox worship was used, processed in a video editor with the imposition of various effects (tongues of flame, smoke, etc.) . We consider the persecution of the Novgorodian unlawful: he did not create the video, but only posted it on a page on the social network, but when creating the video, there was no desecration of religious objects as such.