Unlawful anti-extremism in April 2018

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

Rulemaking

In April, a new version of the bill by deputies Sergei Boyarsky and Andrei Alshevsky (United Russia) on combating illegal information in social networks was submitted to the State Duma and adopted in the first reading. The bill introduces a new concept of "public network owner". Its insufficiently precise definition leaves room for interpretation: such networks can mean not only social networks, but also all network platforms on which users can leave comments and exchange messages in general - up to instant messengers, email services, online games, etc. The owners of "public networks" with an audience of more than one hundred thousand users in Russia will have to open a representative office in the country and receive user complaints about illegal content (including those aimed at promoting war and inciting hatred) and delete it within a day. In addition, "public networks" plan to oblige not to participate in the dissemination of unreliable socially significant information, any secrets protected by law, extremist materials, propaganda of violence and cruelty, pornography and even materials containing obscene language, as well as comply with the restrictions of the legislation on elections and referendums. Network owners will have to give Roskomnadzor access to incoming complaints. The agency will be able to identify illegal information and require the owner of the network to eliminate violations within 24 hours, as well as require the removal of illegal content at the request of authorized state bodies. If the owner of the network refuses to satisfy the requirements of these bodies, Roskomnadzor will have to initiate the blocking of the disputed information, and if the court establishes that the “public network” evaded blocking the content twice, it will itself be blocked. In addition, the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses, adopted in the first reading, provide for multimillion-dollar fines for non-compliance with the requirements of the proposed law. From our point of view, the Boyarsky and Alshevsky amendments imply a total expansion of the extrajudicial mechanism for blocking information on the Internet, impose on the owners of "public networks" the obligation to perform judicial functions and are actually aimed at carrying out state censorship by their own hands. We wrote more about the bill here .

Internet blocking

On April 13, the Tagansky District Court of Moscow satisfied the claim of Roskomnadzor to block the Telegram messenger and directly ordered the department to immediately exclude the technical conditions under which its work is possible. The restriction on access to Telegram was imposed until the owners of the service fulfill the requirement to transfer the FSB encryption keys for users' correspondence. The provision on the obligation of the messenger to provide the FSB with encryption keys was introduced into the legislation in 2016 as part of the Yarovaya package. Telegram claims that this requirement is unconstitutional, not based on the law, and is also technically unenforceable if end-to-end encryption is used in the messenger (when encryption keys are stored only with users and deleted after communication ends). In October 2017, the messenger was fined 800 thousand rubles for failure to comply with the requirements of the FSB, it was not possible to appeal against this decision, as well as the attempt of Telegram representatives through the court to cancel the order on the procedure for handing over the keys.

Until the end of the month, Roskomnadzor took active measures to block Telegram. Since the latter dynamically used leased IP addresses, it was not possible to block the messenger, while the availability of many other services, including Google, was significantly damaged, but Roskomnadzor did not stop trying.

Practice of the ECtHR

On April 17, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on a complaint filed by 24 former members of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) who participated in a protest in the presidential administration office in Moscow on December 14, 2004. The Court held that Articles 6 (right to a fair trial), 10 (right to freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of assembly) of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated in respect of the applicants. Russia must pay 12.5 thousand euros in compensation to each of the former members of the NBP. In total, 39 people were convicted in the case of the seizure of the office of the presidential administration (31 defendants received a suspended sentence, eight activists received a real one), they were found guilty of participating in mass riots (part 2 of article 212 of the Criminal Code). From our point of view, this verdict was unlawful: it is difficult to regard the events that took place within the same office as mass riots; in addition, the actions of the National Bolsheviks were not accompanied by the provisions of Art. 212 of the Criminal Code " violence, pogroms, arson, destruction of property, the use of firearms, explosives or explosive devices, as well as the provision of armed resistance to a representative of the authorities ".

Prosecution for incitement to hatred and opposition speech

At the beginning of the month, another case was initiated against Alexander Byvshev, a poet from Krom (Oryol region), under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Inciting national hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity). He is blamed for the publication on the Orlets website of the poems "Russian Spirit" and "The Mighty Heap", containing "derogatory statements in relation to a certain nation ." Byvshev published these poems in September 2017 in the comments to an article about a garbage heap in the courtyard of a house in Orel. The author is ironic about the aversion of Russians to maintain cleanliness and order, speaks unflatteringly about fellow citizens, but from our point of view, in both poems there is nothing that could serve as a pretext for criminal prosecution under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code.

On April 9, the court passed a verdict in another case of Byvshev - on the publication of the poem "For the Independence of Ukraine." The poet was sentenced under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code in the form of 330 hours of compulsory work with a three-year ban on teaching. From our point of view, the poem "For the Independence of Ukraine" did contain statements that could be interpreted as humiliating for Russians, but it was more political than xenophobic in nature. In addition, we believe that humiliation of dignity should be decriminalized as an act that does not pose a significant public danger.

It should be noted that in 2015 Byvshev was sentenced to 300 hours of compulsory labor for publishing the poem "To Ukrainian Patriots" (the sentence is being appealed to the ECtHR); In addition, a case was brought against him under Art. 294 of the Criminal Code (impeding the production of a preliminary investigation).

In Velikiye Luki, Pskov region, 21-year-old gamer Mikhail Larionov was sentenced to two years' imprisonment under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code. In January, Velikoluchanin posted on Twitch.com a recording of a World of Tanks game stream called "Disrespect for the Ukrainian people!", in which he " urged the public to act aggressively against the Russians ." We believe that Larionov's statements should be interpreted in the context of the game and the style of communication adopted among the players. The core audience of gaming streams recognizes even aggressive language as a joke, not inflammatory. It is unlikely that Larionov set out to arouse national hatred; more likely, he wanted to annoy his interlocutor. We believe that it would be reasonable and sufficient for law enforcement agencies to warn Larionov and ask him to remove the video from public access, since Internet users who do not belong to the gamer community could misinterpret the conversation of the players.

In April, we became aware of the only example of unlawful prosecution for the public display of Nazi symbols (Part 1, Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). On February 19, the Proletarsky District Court of the Tver Region arrested a man convicted under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code of a local resident Dmitry Grizan, who posted two images with a swastika on the VKontakte social network. The first was a "flag that can offend everyone at once" (combining the rainbow flag of the LGBT movement, the Confederate flag, the Nazi swastika, stars of David and pentagrams), and the second used the meme "We can repeat. 1941-1945" (most likely , in a satirical context). Both of these pictures are not aimed at promoting Nazi ideology.

Let us also note a positive example of the consideration of such cases: on April 3, the Pskov District Court of the Pskov Region, due to the absence of corpus delicti, terminated the proceedings in the case of Andrei Yegorov, an activist of the local headquarters of Navalny, who published on his page on VKontakte a historical photograph from the time of the Great Patriotic War, which depicts a priest of the Pskov Orthodox mission, against the background of a standard with a swastika, shaking hands with a German officer.

At the end of the month, the editorial office of the Pskovskaya Guberniya newspaper received a warning from the Roskomnadzor department for the Pskov region. The department found in one of the texts about the "strike of voters" " signs of extremism ," namely, a public knowingly false accusation of a person holding a public office of extremist acts. Probably, we are talking about the phrase " Vladimir Putin has usurped power " or " Putin will reassert himself in office ." The interpretation of these statements as Putin's accusations of forcibly changing the foundations of Russia's constitutional order should be recognized as expansive. In addition, we doubt the very provision of the law "On Counteracting Extremist Activity", referring to extremism accusations of this kind.

Persecution of religious organizations and believers

In April, criminal cases were opened in four regions of Russia under Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization of activities of an extremist organization and participation in such) in connection with the activities of communities of Jehovah's Witnesses. Two followers of Jehovah's Witnesses - Anatoly Vilitkevich from Ufa and Valentin Osadchuk from Vladivostok - were placed under arrest, 33-year-old Igor Morozov from Shuya, Ivanovo Region, was ordered not to leave, and two local residents were detained in Polyarny, Murmansk Region. These are the first arrests based on a 2017 court decision to ban the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia and all 395 local organizations associated with it. We believe that this decision, like the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in general, has no legal basis and is a clear manifestation of religious discrimination.

On April 3, the Sovetsky District Court of Kazan sent Tagir Salimov and Marat Nazmiev, supporters of the banned association Tablighi Jamaat, under arrest, who are charged with CC. 1 and 2 Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code.

On April 5, the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow received the case of six Tablighi Jamaat supporters: Ali Azhiev, Zhyldyzbek Ismailov, Kunan Turdimatov, Maksat Berdikulov, Ali Zulushev and Y. Murakhmedov. All of them were charged under Part 2 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code.

We believe that the Tablighi Jamaat religious movement was banned in Russia without proper reason: it is engaged in the propaganda of fundamentalist Islam, but has not been seen in any calls for violence, and therefore the persecution of its supporters, from our point of view, is unjustified. On April 2, 2018, the Moscow District Military Court re-examined the case of Altynbek uulu Abdymanap and Hotamjon Karimov, supporters of the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir, and sentenced them to 10 and 11 years in prison in a strict regime colony under Part 2 of Art. 205.5 of the Criminal Code (organization of the activities of a terrorist organization and participation in it), thus effectively repeating the sentence overturned by the Supreme Court.

On April 24, 2018 in Kazan, as part of a criminal case initiated under ch. 1 and 2 Art. 205.5 of the Criminal Code, 14 Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters were detained. All of them were sent under arrest.

We believe that accusing members of Hizb ut-Tahrir of promoting terrorism only on the basis of party activities (holding meetings, reading literature, etc.) and persecuting them under anti-terrorist articles is unlawful.

In April, we also became aware of one case of administrative prosecution for distributing illegally banned Muslim literature. On April 10, the Neverkinsky District Court of the Penza Region fined 1,000 rubles under Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (storage of extremist materials for the purpose of mass distribution) of 44-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan Ruslan Dzhumaev, who tried to make photocopies of the Muslim Fortress. This book is a collection of prayers for every day, which does not contain any aggressive calls.

Persecution for anti-religious speech

In early April, it became known that the investigation of the case initiated under Part 1 of Art. 148 of the Criminal Code (public actions expressing clear disrespect for society and committed in order to offend the religious feelings of believers) against Irkutsk anarchist Dmitry Litvin due to the fact that he posted a photo of his middle finger against the backdrop of a church on a social network. From our point of view, there are no grounds for the persecution of Lytvyn: the photograph he published may be unpleasant for believers, but his actions did not pose any public danger. We opposed the amendments, according to which Art. 148 of the Criminal Code, “insulting the feelings of believers” was introduced, because they are convinced that this vague concept has no clear legal meaning, and absurd legal proceedings around religious matters undermine the authority of justice.

In Krasnodar, the investigating authorities stopped the proceedings on the case of Maxim Drozdov, who was accused of humiliating the dignity of atheists (Part 1, Article 282 of the Criminal Code). The case was initiated in connection with the publication of the satirical poem "The Heretic". The investigator established that it was not aimed at inciting hatred, since " it was Drozdov's self-expression ", had an ironic character and did not contain calls " to any specific actions ".