Tatar human rights activist, who served time for Internet posts, left Russia

Tatar public figure and human rights activist Rafis Kashapov, who was sentenced to three years in prison for texts on the Internet, left Russia. He wrote about this on his Facebook page.

According to Kashapov, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is seeking to establish administrative supervision over him; a hearing on the activist’s case is scheduled to take place on February 7. Kashapov believes that the trial will be “a preliminary step on the path to another deprivation of liberty.”

Now the activist is in Kyiv.

On December 27, 2017, Rafis Kashapov was released from prison. In October, the court canceled the administrative supervision previously assigned to Kashapov after his release.

Kashapov, chairman of the branch of the All-Tatar Public Center in Naberezhnye Chelny, was arrested in December 2014 for publishing three texts and one demotivational message on the Internet criticizing the annexation of Crimea and Russian aggression in Eastern Ukraine. On September 15, 2015, a judge of the Naberezhnye Chelny City Court sentenced a social activist to three years in a general regime colony for inciting hatred or enmity (Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code) and public calls for separatism via the Internet (Article 280.1 of the Criminal Code).