Translated material
Unlawful application of anti-extremist legislation in Russia in 2018
SUMMARY
STANDARD MAKING
ECtHR PRACTICE
MAIN AREAS OF PERSECUTION
Ideological opponents of the government : Persecution for calls for extremist activities : Persecution for calls for separatism : Persecution for inciting hatred towards civil servants and other anti-government statements : "Ukrainian Question" : Persecution for "rehabilitating Nazism" : Persecution for group anti-government initiatives
Costs of the fight for tolerance : Abuse of criminalization of incitement to hatred : Prosecution for extremist symbols : Fight against “offenders to the feelings of believers”
Religious groups : Hizb ut-Tahrir : Tablighi Jamaat : Followers of Said Nursi : Other Muslims : Jehovah's Witnesses
Sanctions against libraries
Internet and anti-extremism : Blocking practices : Other sanctions
Media and anti-extremism
Summary
This report is an analytical review anti-extremist legislation and its misuse for 2018 year. The SOVA Center issues similar reports annually, summing up monitoring work that our organization carries out on a permanent basis basis since the mid-2000s [1] .
Multidirectional legislative initiatives in 2018 introduced important changes in law enforcement and paved two possible paths developments in the coming years.
Under the pressure of public opinion was partially decriminalized Art. 282 of the Criminal Code on inciting hatred, which makes it possible close or review hundreds of criminal cases of recent years. Supreme Court of the Russian Federation made the most important recommendations on the application of the rules on “extremist statements”, the implementation of these recommendations can significantly improve law enforcement practice. The procedural codes were amended to streamline the procedure for the recognition of materials extremist or prohibited for distribution. New bills designed to soften the absolute ban on the display forbidden symbolism, leading to absurd cases of persecution of citizens in administrative order. If the authorities continue to consistently move forward along the path of reforming anti-extremist legislation and will proceed to the elimination of other - numerous - of its shortcomings, this will significantly loosen restrictions on basic civil liberties - speech, conscience and associations. This would be all the more appropriate since, last year, the European Court on Human Rights considered a number of complaints from Russian citizens about the use of anti-extremist legislation and norms close to it, revealing in decisions Russian courts violate fundamental rights guaranteed by the European convention. The decisions rendered by the Strasbourg Court could serve a guide for changing legislation and bad practices.
But with no less probability, the state can elect and another path - the path of further "crackdown" - the establishment of a more severe control over independent public opinion, which today manifests itself primarily on the Internet. And in order to assume such a scenario, we We also have good reasons: in 2018 and at the very beginning of 2019, the State Duma adopted in the first reading several bills aimed at severe regulation of activity on the Internet, and perhaps they are in one form or another will be approved. In addition, new regulations have been introduced to restrict the rights of "involved in extremist and terrorist activities".
If we talk about law enforcement statistics for 2018, then in the part concerning the prosecution under articles on “extremist statements”, it did not bring radical changes: mass closure of cases and revision sentences under Art. 282 will come in 2019. It can only be noted that the some of the wrongful persecution we identified this year was addressed against activists and less than in recent years, affected ordinary citizens, randomly caught in the field of view of law enforcement agencies. Increasingly in this year, the investigation and the court had to close cases of insulting the feelings of believers, which obviously do not fit into the legal field of a secular state.
As for the policy towards religious minorities, then we have to admit that the authorities are increasing pressure on religious organizations and currents of foreign origin, probably considering them functioning in Russia undesirable and without regard for the fact that Russian citizens have the constitutionally guaranteed right to choose their faith and practice her individually and collectively. Applied to followers illegally banned Islamic movements and associations - recognized as extremist groups of followers of Said Nursi and the Tablighi Jamaat movement, as well as recognized terrorist party Hizb ut-Tahrir - in 2018, it was not about expanding persecution, but a serious increase in penalties for continued activity. Witnesses Jehovah, whose Russian organizations were totally banned a year earlier, faced massive criminal prosecution. Exactly this persecution and gave a sharp increase in our statistics - in 2018 we noted three times more illegally prosecuted in criminal cases of an extremist orientation, than a year earlier.
Rulemaking
2018 was marked by important initiatives, some of which aims to liberalize legislation, while the other provides for new, and very significant restrictions.
The most notable event of the year was the introduction of amendments by the President in Art. 282 of the Criminal Code. The problem of applying Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, which was increasingly heard in in recent years, as its application has expanded, has remained at the center public attention throughout 2018. In June, during the "Direct Line" with President the question of the need to reform the anti-extremist legislation and law enforcement practice was raised by Deputy Sergey Shargunov, the author of another initiative to change the article. On behalf of Putin the All-Russian Popular Front (ONF) took up the preparation of a draft of possible changes, and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (SC) issued new clarifications regarding the application anti-extremist standards.
In recommendations issued in September, the Supreme Court indicated that when applying anti-extremist articles, fundamental freedoms may be limited only in extreme cases, in accordance with the Constitution and international law. Most of the explanation dealt with cases under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code for publications on the Internet. Supreme Court explained how the context of a public statement should be assessed in order to make a decision about the motive of the actions of the accused in inciting hatred. In particular, he recommended take into account the form, content and volume of the statement, the presence of comments characterizing the attitude of the publisher to the material, the content of his account as a whole, data about his personality and activities.
When analyzing an utterance to determine whether it represents it is a danger to society or refers to minor acts, not deserving of prosecution, the Supreme Court suggested taking into account the size and the composition of the audience that read the post, and its attitude to the published. sun also pointed to the possibility of appealing against decisions to initiate cases in court with the support of to the above circumstances. All these explanations were made only in relation to Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, although, obviously, the same should apply to other articles about public statements.
The Supreme Court also raised the issue of the application of expertise when considering cases under Art. 280 (calls for extremist activity), 280 1 (calls violation of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation) and 282 of the Criminal Code. The Supreme Court once again once pointed out that the expert opinion on such cases does not have a predetermined strength and does not take precedence over other evidence, and the question of assessment certain public statements for the presence of elements of anti-extremist Articles belongs exclusively to the competence of the court.
The Prosecutor General's Office followed the example of the Supreme Court. At the end of September an order of the Prosecutor General on strengthening prosecutorial supervision was signed for the investigation of extremist crimes. Following the Supreme by the court, the prosecutor's office emphasized the need to investigate the issue of motive held accountable for public statements and the presence of their purpose inciting hatred. The department also demanded to prosecute not only distributors, but also creators of hateful content. The prosecutors were told that it was necessary not only to suppress cases of unjustified persecution, but also to understand the legality of the termination of criminal cases and report on this to The Prosecutor General's Office, as well as at the regional level, maintain detailed registers of crimes extremist orientation and messages about them. Special attention in the indication Attorney General was given the need to investigate violent crimes hate and cases of extremist communities and organizations.
The Prosecutor General's Office, as before, stressed the need use of academic expertise in the investigation of cases of extremist direction (although the position of the Supreme Court is that such expertise does not always have to be ordered). Raised in the document and the question of the quality of expertise on such matters. However, the Office recommended, when assessing the legality of procedural decisions to "carefully study conclusions of specialists and experts, paying special attention to compliance the conclusions set out in them to the content of the research part and reflected in decision on the appointment of an examination (research) on issues, completeness and comprehensiveness of the conclusions, the presence of contradictions in them, the qualifications of experts (specialists) and that they have the authority to evaluate the facts presented”, that is, not limited, as is often the case, to automatic copying conclusions of experts in whose competence "there is no reason to doubt".
A carelessly formulated draft reform of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, submitted to the State Duma by deputies Shargunov and Zhuravlev, received negative reviews and was not considered, but served as the basis for a package of bills, developed by the ONF on behalf of the president and submitted to parliament in October Putin. It was adopted in record time, already signed on December 27, 2018 and entered into force on January 7, 2019. An administrative mechanism was introduced prejudice to Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code: at the first violation, citizens are now punished in administrative order under the new Art. 20.3 1 Code of Administrative Offenses, exactly corresponding to the composition Part 1 Art. 282. Administrative responsibility is extended to legal faces. Criminal liability comes only in case of repeated violation of the law within a year after bringing to responsibility under an administrative article. the only the amendment that was introduced to the package of bills in the second reading concerned establishing a one-year statute of limitations for bringing to administrative responsibility under Art. 20.3 1 (as opposed to currently set for administrative offenses requiring judicial review, a period of three months). Offers Ombudsman and the Presidential Human Rights Council on exclusion from Art. 282 and 20.3 1 a sign of belonging to a social group, the exclusion of criminal prosecution for humiliation of dignity and the onset of criminal liability only in the case of the third, and not the second, violations for the year, were not taken into account.
The introduction of administrative prejudice for Art. 282 will allow many accused of inciting hatred escape excessive punishment and convictions. The decision of the Supreme Court and the expected amendments to the article are already at the end last year led to the review and closure of a number of cases. Started from January the process of reviewing previous sentences, as well as the removal of convictions from those who has not yet expired. Undoubtedly, sentences under Art. 282 will now less. But there are also some concerns to be noted.
First, the procedures for initiating cases on administrative offenses and evidence during their consideration is much simpler than in criminal proceedings, therefore, we can expect a significant increase in the number of persecutions for excitement hatred, most of which will be carried out within the framework of the Code of Administrative Offenses. Inhibitor the rapid growth of persecution under the new article, to some extent, may serve except perhaps the fact that the right to initiate administrative proceedings under Art. 20.3 1 The Code of Administrative Offenses is vested only with the prosecutor's office, not the police.
Secondly, one should not forget that the Criminal Code retains the former form of Art. 280 on incitement to extremist activity, and since the definition extremist activity includes incitement to hatred, law enforcement authorities, if they wish, can bring charges under this article. Recall that the established practice is to bring charges against two articles, if the incitement of hatred is accompanied by calls for violence. Not to lose vigilance, however, is worth not only belligerent xenophobes: let's not forget that the rubber wording of Art. 280 creates wide opportunities for criminal prosecution of activists. Nobody has canceled Art. 280 1 Criminal Code on calls to violate the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, Art. 354 1 Criminal Code on the rehabilitation of Nazism and ChCh. 1 t 2 tbsp. 148 of the Criminal Code offending the feelings of believers.
A large number of excesses associated with the use of anti-extremist norms, is caused by the shortcomings of their wording and the corresponding wording of the law "On Counteracting Extremist Activities". The reform affected only Art. 282, it did not include the proposed clarifications and corrections of dubious provisions of anti-extremist legislation. Positive impact on law enforcement can be provided by a decision of the Supreme Court, but only if law enforcement agencies and courts will follow it. Experience shows that previous recommendations of the Supreme Court on extremist cases are often not taken into account even by the sun itself. Obviously, the further fate of law enforcement in this sphere will depend on the political will of the authorities.
ONF, meanwhile, decided not to stop there and turned to the development of a project to reform Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses displaying prohibited symbols. In December, a group of State Duma deputies headed with the Chairman of the Committee on Culture Elena Yampolskaya presented to the lower house a package of bills to amend the article. The bills are meant to limit the effect of the article so that when it is applied, the context of the demonstration is taken into account symbols of banned organizations. Currently, Russian law allows any display of such symbolism to be penalized, leading to numerous cases of unjustified persecution. The authors of the project did not an indication that the display of symbols of prohibited organizations must fall under the scope of the article only if it has propaganda purposes, although this indication alone would be sufficient to avoid most abuses when applying this rule. It was only suggested that the article should be accompanied by a footnote according to which the provisions of the article are not apply to cases of the use of prohibited symbols "in works science, literature, art, media production, and for educational and educational purposes by educational organizations implementing educational programs, subject to the condemnation of Nazism and extremism, formation of a negative attitude towards the ideology of Nazism and extremism, and absence of signs of propaganda and (or) justification of any Nazi and extremist ideology.
Note that the wording of the note in the revision of the group Yampolskaya is much narrower than the previously proposed Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, as well as Senator Anton Belyakov, who in February 2018 submitted his amendment option. Belyakov proposed changing the disposition of the article so that "propaganda or public display for the purpose of propaganda" of Nazi symbols and symbols of extremist organizations. Note in variant Belyakova also allowed the use of such symbols “in works of science, literature, art, as well as in information, educational and educational purposes, provided there are no signs of propaganda and (or) justifying extremism.” Belyakov's project, in our opinion, much more successful than Yampolskaya's amendments.
It seems that the note proposed by the Yampolskaya group is far from being will always help protect citizens from unreasonable persecution. Because they have to every time to prove that the image they published refers to “works science, literature, art”, because in other cases, publication is allowed only media and educational organizations. And the requirement that the publisher must condemned this or that ideology, is far from always appropriate and looks strange if we are talking about a neutral reproduction of the image without a discussion of ideology or practices of a banned organization.
A certain positive effect can be expected from changes in the procedure for banning materials as a result of the SC amendments to procedural codes, which were approved by the president in November, but will come into force in autumn 2019. Among other innovations are proceedings on claims for the recognition of materials as extremist and for the recognition prohibited information. According to the law, cases on the recognition of materials extremist are transferred from the sphere of civil justice to the sphere administrative. When considering the claim of the prosecutor's office for the recognition of materials extremist court involves in the process persons whose rights and legitimate interests may affect the judgment; in addition, “in the case of identifying the person whose actions gave rise to filing an administrative claim”, the court brings him to participation in the case as a defendant and imposes on him the legal costs. If such a person has not been identified, the Ombudsman of the Russian Federation will be involved in the consideration of the case “to give an opinion” or subject of the federation. In addition, the court will be able to take “preliminary protection measures in the form of restriction of access to extremist materials”, and in the case of satisfaction of the claim, the decision to ban them will be subject to immediate execution. Cases on the recognition of information as prohibited will be considered similarly. way. The essential difference in the procedure is that to participate in they are necessarily involved in Roskomnadzor. Thus created conditions for ending the practice of banning materials without adversarial process, which can reduce the amount of materials that are banned without proper grounds. However, this will not make the Federal List of Materials, approaching the 5,000 mark, an acceptable and efficient mechanism fight against the spread of radical ideology.
Other legislative innovations and initiatives in 2018 years relating to regulation had an exclusively prohibitive character.
At the end of June, the president signed a law establishing liability search engines for issuing links to blocked sites and avoiding connection to the information system with information about the locks. B Code of Administrative offenses, Article 13.40 was introduced, which allows you to fine citizens, operating search engines, for 5 thousand rubles, officials - by 50 thousand rubles, legal entities - from 500 to 700 thousand rubles. At the moment writing the report, Yandex had already connected to the Roskomnadzor system, while how Google refused to do so and considers agency blocking decisions individually.
In addition, the article of the Code of Administrative Offenses on failure to provide information to Roskomnadzor supplemented with a new part punishing hosting providers who do not submit or untimely submitting data to Roskomnadzor that allow identifying their client-owners anonymizer sites or VPN services. Individuals were fined in the amount of 30 to 50 thousand rubles, for legal entities - from 50 to 300 thousand rubles.
The fate of the highly controversial bills described below is yet to be determined. is clear, but they can be quickly approved in case the authorities suddenly deem it appropriate to introduce such rules.
In April, a new compared to the version of 2017, an even more severe version of the bill of deputies Sergei Boyarsky and Andrey Alshevsky ("United Russia") on the fight against illegal information on social networks. The bill operates with a new concept - "the owner of a public networks". Its insufficiently precise definition leaves room for interpretation: under such networks can mean not only social networks, but also all platforms on which users can leave comments and exchange messages in general - up to to instant messengers, email services, online games, etc. Owners "public networks" with an audience of more than one hundred thousand users in Russia should will open a representative office in the country and receive user complaints about illegal content (including those aimed at war propaganda and inciting hatred) and delete him during the day. In addition, it is planned to oblige “public networks” not to participate in the dissemination of any legally protected secrets, extremist materials, propaganda violence and cruelty, pornography, unreliable socially significant information (although this concept is not explained in any way) and even materials containing obscene abuse, 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 demand from the owner of the network eliminate violations within 24 hours, as well as demand the removal of illegal content at the request of authorized state bodies. In case of failure of the network owner meet the requirements of these authorities Roskomnadzor will block controversial information (which, however, is impossible in most cases), and if the court establishes that the "public network" evaded content blocking twice will be blocked she herself. In addition, the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses adopted in the first reading provide for multi-million penalties for non-compliance with the proposed law. From our point of view, amendments Boyarsky and Alshevsky suggest a total expansion of the extrajudicial mechanism blocking information on the Internet, impose on the owners of "public networks" the obligation perform judicial functions and are actually aimed at the implementation of the state censorship by their hands.
In early August, the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications submitted for public discussion a draft amendment to the federal law “On Information”; at the time of publication report, it was being coordinated and has not yet been proposed for consideration in the Duma. TO the types of information listed in the law that are subject to blocking at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office extrajudicially, the department proposed to add one that contains justification and justification carrying out extremist and (or) terrorist activities”. Suggested changes, in our opinion, can lead to a further increase in abuse in the area of freedom of speech. If the notion of "justifying terrorism" is defined in the relevant article 205 2 UK as a public statement of recognition ideologies and practices of terrorism are correct, in need of support and imitation, then the definition of the concept "substantiation and justification of extremist activity" in Russian legislation is absent, which opens the way for its arbitrary interpretation. Concerns about ambiguous wording used in draft the working group "Communication and Information Technologies" of the Expert Council also expressed at the government.
However, the fears of experts and even entire departments do not mean that the bill will not be introduced to Parliament.
In December, United Russia deputy Dmitry Vyatkin and senators Alexander Klishas and Lyudmila Bokova, head of the Federation Council committee on constitutional law, submitted to the State Duma at once two packages of bills providing for punishment for citizens for disseminating reprehensible information on the Internet. Sanctions, aimed at punishing online statements were proposed for consideration by the Duma first.
The first of the proposed projects is designed to stop the spread on the Internet of information intended for an unlimited circle of persons, “expressing indecent form, clear disrespect" to society, the state, official state symbols, the Constitution and bodies exercising state power in the Russian Federation, “if these actions do not contain a criminal offense”. Bill drafters proposed to supplement Art. 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (petty hooliganism) part of the third, punishing for such an offense an administrative fine in the amount of one thousand to five thousand rubles or administrative arrest for up to fifteen days. Except In addition, it is planned to introduce a procedure for extrajudicial blocking of such information. The draft contains vague language (what is meant by the expression of disrespect indecent form, unclear), suggests redundant norms duplicating existing ones articles of the Criminal Code regarding socially dangerous statements, and creates a danger of excessive interference of the authorities in the right of Russian citizens to freedom of expression in Internet, where communication has its own stylistic features, which are regulated rules set by the administration of social networks.
The second package of bills provides for the introduction of sanctions for the dissemination in the media and the Internet of "knowingly unreliable socially significant information disseminated under the guise of reliable messages that poses a threat life and (or) health of citizens, mass violation of public order and (or) public safety, cessation of functioning of life support facilities, transport or social infrastructure, the onset of other serious consequences." The authors of the initiative plan to supplement Art. 13.15 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (abuse freedom of the media) part 9, providing for such a violation punishment in the form of an administrative fine in the amount of three to five thousand rubles for citizens, from 30 to 50 thousand rubles for officials and from 400 thousand to one million rubles with confiscation of the subject of an administrative offense for legal persons. Use in the legal field of the wording "knowingly unreliable" in relation to to publicly significant information is problematic. Indeed, in cases of relevant offenses, it will be practically impossible to establish the existence of intent, i.e. prove the fact that the perpetrator certainly knew that the information he disseminated was untrue and its distribution will lead to the listed and even some not listed "serious" consequences. If the courts do not pay due attention to establishing presence of intent, this will inevitably lead to violations of the right of citizens to freedom of obtaining and dissemination of information, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Except Moreover, according to existing legislation, regardless of whether it distributed person false or true information, if at the same time he publicly called citizens to illegal activity or if the information was prohibited, its publication fall under the relevant articles (criminal art. 280 on incitement to extremism, Art. 205 2 on incitement to terrorism, Art. 212 on riots, administrative Art. 20.29 on the distribution of extremist materials and others), that is, the proposed the norm is excessive.
Despite criticism from the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Communications, Ministry of Justice and Roskomnadzor, in the end, the bills received the necessary positive feedback from both the government and parliamentary committees. January 2019 both packages were approved by the lower house in the first reading. It is possible that we can expect significant amendments to the text of the bills to the second reading. However, adjusting certain wordings of Klishas bills will not the introduction of the norms proposed by him is expedient.
It is worth noting the next tough measures that were introduced in 2018 for different categories of accused and convicted anti-terrorist and anti-extremist articles.
So, in June, the plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia adopted Decree "On some issues related to the application of confiscation property in criminal proceedings. In a draft decision, the Supreme Court among other things, he indicated that in criminal cases on crimes of terrorist and of an extremist orientation, “any property belonging to the accused, which is a tool, is subject to confiscation, equipment or other means of committing a crime” (in particular, cell phones, computers, etc.). However, the Supreme Court noted that if money, valuables or other property was intended for "financing of terrorism, extremist activity, organized group, illegal armed group, criminal community (criminal organization)”, then in accordance with paragraph "in" part 1 of Art. 104 1 CC they are subject to confiscation "regardless of their ownership." Accordingly, seizure of property in order to secure possible confiscation may be imposed not only on the suspects, the accused or financially persons responsible for their actions, but any persons, if "there are reasonable grounds to believe" that it was used as instrument of crime. In the reasoning part of the relevant decision, the court must justify the choice of certain restrictions on property rights, "necessary and sufficient" for ensuring the safety of property.
In October, Putin signed a law allowing entry to Russia to foreigners who are on the list of extremists and terrorists of Rosfinmonitoring, as well as those whose bank accounts were frozen by the Interdepartmental Commission for Combating financing of terrorism or the court. It should be noted, however, that the list of extremists, foreigners were regularly banned from entering the country and before these amendments - "in order to ensure the defense capability or security of the state."
In December, a package of laws on tightening conditions was approved serving sentences for those convicted under a number of articles of the Criminal Code (primarily terrorist orientation), as well as for those who have a destructive effect on cellmates. The list of conditions under which courts can decide on serving part of the term of punishment in prison, and for a number of articles - to appoint the beginning of serving a sentence in prison and prohibit early transfer of positively characterized convicts in the colony. In addition, the Federal Penitentiary Service was able to arbitrarily determine the place of serving the sentence of convicted for any crimes, if they are seen in the "negative impact" on cellmates and propaganda of terrorist ideologies, and arbitrarily transfer them to other correctional institutions. These provisions do not apply to ordinary members of extremist communities and organizations convicted according to part 2 of Art. 282 1 and part 2 of Art. 282 2 UK.
Practice of the ECtHR
In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights continued consideration of complaints of Russian citizens about the use of anti-extremist legislation and regulations related to it.
The ECtHR recognized that Russia violated the article of the European human rights conventions on the right to freedom of expression in consideration of a number of cases. Part of the findings of the ECtHR in these cases repeated those that were made in connection with the Russian cases in 2017, but the court also brought new considerations to which we wish to draw attention [2] .
In April, the court heard a complaint filed by 24 former members of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) participating in a protest in the reception Presidential Administration in Moscow on December 14, 2004. The court acknowledged that in the applicants were violated Article 6 (the right to a fair trial proceedings), 10 (right to freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom assembly) of the European Convention. Total in the case of the seizure of the administration office President, 39 people were convicted (31 defendants received a suspended sentence, eight activists - real), they were found guilty of participating in mass riots (part 2 of article 212 of the Criminal Code). We considered this verdict to be unlawful: it is difficult to regard as riots events that took place within one cabinet; 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, use of firearms, explosives or explosive devices, as well as the provision of armed resistance to a government official.
In May, the ECtHR ruled on the complaint of a publicist, publisher bulletin "Radical Politics" by Boris Stomakhin, who was convicted in 2006 Art. 280 and 282 of the Criminal Code (calls for extremist activity and inciting hate) for publications in which Russian courts found statements, directed against Russians, Orthodox Christians, members of the Russian army and law enforcement officers. The ECtHR has identified among the incriminated Stomakhin's statements are those in which they romanticize and idealize actions of Chechen separatists and demonized the Russian military and law enforcement officials, as well as calls for violent uprising and armed resistance and approval of terrorist attacks as forms of struggle. In addition, the bulletin presented in a negative light ethnic and religious groups (Russians and Orthodox), for example, those and others were accused indiscriminately of serious crimes - such statements The European Court considered them to be contrary to the principles of tolerance and non-discrimination. With regard to these groups of statements, the ECtHR considered the intervention of the state in the right Stomakhin on expressing an opinion "necessary in a democratic society". Other the same statements by Stomakhin, calling for the collection of information about crimes Russian authorities in Chechnya, according to the ECtHR, were only criticized, albeit in particular harsh form, the actions of the Russian government, and here interference in the law Stomakhin to express an opinion was unjustified. Overall, the ECtHR held that Stomakhin's sentence can be considered delivered in accordance with the procedure established by law and pursued a legitimate aim: he was pursued in order to protect the rights of others, as well as "in the interests of the national security, territorial integrity or public order, in order to prevention of riots or crimes”, which corresponds to paragraph 2 of Art. 10 of the European Convention. However, according to the court, imprisonment for five years from ban on journalism solely for speaking out was disproportionately tough measure. The ECHR emphasized that at the time of publication of the texts, Stomakhin did not was a well-known and influential figure, he only distributed small circulation edition, which significantly reduced the potential impact of his statements.
In July, the Strasbourg court addressed the complaint of the group members Pussy Riot to criminal prosecution under Part 2 of Art. 213 of the Criminal Code (group hooliganism motivated by religious hatred) for speaking in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Court pointed out that the applicants had violated the provisions of several articles of the European Convention. Violation of Art. 10, according to the ECtHR, was expressed in that the Russian courts failed to provide the public with relevant and sufficient grounds justifying criminal punishment and imprisonment of members of Pussy Riot, and the sanctions imposed on them were not proportionate to the declared legal purpose and urgent social need. The same reasoning was expressed by the court in regarding the ban on Pussy Riot videos deemed extremist. Accordingly, the ECtHR considered that there was no interference with the rights of the members of the group necessary in a democratic society. Court refuses Russia to transfer Pussy Riot case to appeal instance - the Grand Chamber.
On August 28, the ECtHR ruled in two cases at once, concerning the application of Russian anti-extremist legislation.
The ECtHR upheld the complaint of blogger Savva Terentyev about the sentence handed down against him under Part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, awarded to Terentiev compensation for legal costs, but denied him compensation for non-pecuniary damage. Terentiev, musician and blogger, was sentenced in 2008 by the Syktyvkar city court to one year's suspended sentence for leaving blog of a local journalist, a comment in which he criticized in harsh terms police and called for the installation of stoves in city squares to burn "infidel cops". The court considered that Terentiev's statement contained a call to violence against the social group "policemen". The ECtHR drew attention that Terentiev's comment was made in the course of a discussion about the role of the police in suppression of political opposition during the election campaign. So Thus, during the pre-election period, an issue was raised that represents a public interest, and in such cases the restriction of freedom of expression is subject to particular narrow interpretation. From the point of view of the ECtHR, despite the fact that the statement blogger was provocative and rude, it did not contain a call for a real violence, but a metaphor that expressed his desire to see the police cleansed of corrupt and abusive employees. Strasbourg Court pointed out that law enforcement agencies can hardly be considered unprotected a minority, a group that is the victim of persecution or discrimination. Accordingly, tolerance for offensive language is recommended, unless they are highly likely to provoke illegal actions against employees and put them at risk physical violence. In the practice of the ECtHR, such cases appeared only in cases concerning armed conflicts, the fight against terrorism and prison riots. IN in the case of Terentyev, who was not a popular blogger, the Russian courts did not explained how his words threatened public safety.
On the same day, the European Court granted two lawsuits against Russia challenging the recognition of fifteen books of Turkish language as extremist theologian Said Nursi from the Risale-i Nur collection. Court referring to religious scholars from different countries noted that Said Nursi is a well-known moderate Muslim theologian who advocated open and tolerant relations between representatives different religions and against violence in any form. The Russian side did not bring there is no evidence that the distribution of Nursi's books led to any religious tension or other negative consequences, let alone especially the violence. Some disparaging words used by Nursi in against followers of other faiths, did not go beyond permissible criticism of other religions. The author's desire to turn the reader into his own religion was not accompanied by the proposal of illegal methods to achieve this goals.
The Court specifically noted that cultural, historical, religious and other local features that establish broad opportunities for regulating interreligious relations in national laws, do not, however, give an individual country the right to prohibit its citizens access to a worldwide authoritative religious literature. The ECtHR once again pointed out that Russian judges are completely relied on the opinions of experts from the prosecutor's office, and expert the conclusions presented by the other party were refused to be taken into account, as were the opinions heads of Muslim organizations and experts on Islam.
During 2018, the ECtHR communicated at least 12 more complaints about the application of anti-extremist articles of the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses and bans for extremism organizations, in particular, local communities of Jehovah's Witnesses. At the same time, the ECtHR did very pertinent remarks concerning the methods of proof in these cases, use of expertise, determining the proportionality of repressive measures and etc. We believe that the documents of the ECtHR provide the most important guide for a possible bringing Russian law enforcement practice in line with common European legal principles.
Main lines of persecution
Ideological opponents of the authorities
Activist social media pages remain in focus the attention of law enforcement. The result of heightened vigilance law enforcement officers in relation to such publications last year became a number of cases of unfounded criminal prosecution.
Persecution for incitement to extremist activities
In June, the Toropetsky District Court of the Tver Region ruled verdict in the case of a local resident Vladimir Yegorov, who was accused of public calls for extremist activity on the Internet (part 2 of article 280 of the Criminal Code). Opposition activist was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison freedom on probation with a three-year probationary period and a ban on moderation websites. The court also decided to confiscate the system unit of his personal computer. Yegorov filed a complaint with the ECtHR. Reason for persecution served as an activist post in the public "Citizens of Toropets" in the social network "VKontakte", which he moderated. The post contained a photo of Putin and text stating that intelligence-driven propaganda aims to justify the head of state, shifting the blame for all the mistakes of the authorities to other officials. Author urged "not to be conducted" on similar propaganda tricks and declared that "it is necessary to bring down the main Kremlin rat with his cronies-accomplices." Such abstract, albeit aggressive, anti-government statements ordinary citizens, obviously, do not pose a significant danger, since they do not can be implemented by the audience to which the author addressed. On our view, criminal prosecution in such cases is unjustified: quite a sufficient measure may be the removal of a provocative publication.
In the summer, the media also reported on a criminal case initiated by Part 2 Art. 280 (public calls for extremist activity on the Internet) in against a resident of Abakan, Lidia Bainova. The reason for the persecution of the Abakan woman, which is known in the republic as a popularizer of Khakass culture, served a post she posted on VKontakte in July 2017. According to her, she made an entry on the social network after she and her daughter were in one of the city cafes at the entrance to the playroom, the children who were there said: “The entrance here is only Russian". Bainova protested against the fact that people in Khakassia are not respected, "who owns this land" and described the degree of her indignation, adding: “At such moments one wants to arrange a revolution and a coup! Take back power, land our people! Reclaim!" However, in November, the FSB of Russia in the Republic Khakassia terminated the criminal case against Bainova due to the absence in her actions motive to induce extremist actions. Later, the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic formally apologized to her for the harm caused by the unfounded criminal persecution. Indeed, Bainova's post was emotional and therefore sharp, but such statements should not be regarded as real calls for extremist activities that pose a public danger and deserving of criminal prosecution.
Persecution for calls for separatism
In April, the Severomorsky District Court of the Murmansk Region sentenced a local resident P. to one and a half years of imprisonment on probation a probationary period of one and a half years under Part 2 of Art. 280 1 UK (public calls to violate the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation via the Internet). Reason for persecution of P. was the fact that he posted comments on the information and news post on VKontakte "Bark Sedov will no longer belong to Murmansk" next content: “It is necessary to separate the Murmansk region from Russia. Whole table Mendeleev in the bowels of the region. We need to hold a referendum, and all the money remained in the region”, “I am for the referendum. Each resident of the Murmansk region for a personal bill for 10 thousand euros”, “separate from Russia”. It was reported that “at the hearing, P. admitted his guilt completely, repented of his deed, actively assisted the bodies of preliminary investigations in the detection and investigation of the crime. In our opinion, calls for a referendum should not be prosecuted, sanctions are appropriate only in the case of calls for violent action with separatist goals. Art. 280 1 , which does not provide for such restrictions, without proper reason restricts the discussion on the topic territorial composition of the Russian Federation.
In November, a court in Ulyanovsk sentenced an activist from the Community Indigenous Russian People” (OKRN) Ivan Kolotilkin to two years in prison freedom conditionally with a ban to lead public organizations, recognizing it guilty under Part 1 of Art. 282 and part 1 of Art. 280 1 . Persecution of Kolotilkina was due to the fact that he handed out leaflets with ethnoxenophobic propaganda (probably anti-Semitic) and calls to create on the territory of Russia a new, Russian in the ethnic sense, the state. Accusing an activist of calling for change of territorial integrity seems to us unlawful, since the materials of the Ulyanovsk OKRN known to us do not contain calls for violent separatism.
Prosecution for inciting hatred towards civil servants and others
anti-government remarks
In November, the Magas District Court of Ingushetia sentenced oppositionist Magomed Khazbiev to two years and 11 months in prison with serving a sentence in a colony-settlement with a fine of 50 thousand rubles, recognizing him guilty of illegal possession of weapons and explosives under Part 1 of Art. 222 and part 1 of Art. 222 1 Criminal Code, insulting a representative of the authorities under Part 1 of Art. 319 Criminal Code and inciting hostility towards the head of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, “representatives of the judiciary, law enforcement structures, government and power structures of the Republic of Ingushetia as a whole" according to part 1 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code. The last of these allegations was related to interview with Khazbiev, in which he criticized the republican authorities and called on them change. We consider the verdict in this part unlawful, since the inducement to change of power, not associated with calls for unlawful actions, is to the realm of public debate, not criminal law enforcement. Besides, as the Supreme Court has clarified, criticizing officials “should not in itself be regarded in all cases as an act aimed at humiliating the dignity of a person or a group of persons, since in in relation to these persons, the limits of permissible criticism are wider than in relation to individuals."
We doubt the verdict handed down in May according to part 1 of Art. 282 by the Balaklavsky District Court of Sevastopol to local resident I. glass; he was sentenced to two years of probation with eight months probation. According to law enforcement agencies, Balaklava on his page in the social network published an image with an inscription aimed at inciting hatred and enmity towards law enforcement agencies of the Russian Federation". We do not know which image was referred to and contained whether the inscription calls for violence. However, in general, we believe that employees law enforcement agencies do not constitute a vulnerable social group, in need of protection under Art. 282: on the contrary, they are among officials who should not be too susceptible to harsh criticism.
In July 2018, it was reported that in Grozny under arrest is student Ibragim Yangulbaev, accused under Art. 282 in inciting hatred against the social group "Russian military personnel." The reason for the persecution of Yangulbaev was his publication photos of civilians (both Chechens and Russians) killed on VKontakte during the first and second Chechen campaigns. We didn't have a chance to see with Yangulbaev's publications and cannot judge their content. However, military personnel are hardly among the vulnerable groups that need to be protected from inciting hatred.
In July, it became known that a criminal case had been opened on Art. 282 in relation to Rafis, an activist of the Tatar nationalist movement Kashapov. According to the investigation, he posted on his page in one of social networks some text and images that incite hatred. In 2015 Kashapov was convicted under the same article. 282, as well as art. 280 1 UK for calls to separatism, according to the Sova Center, illegally, and sentenced to three years general regime colonies. Upon release, fearful of what will come over him administrative supervision was established, Kashapov left for Ukraine, and then for Great Britain, where he asked for political asylum, which he granted for five years; Russia put Kashapov on the wanted list. March 2018 Kashapov, together with representatives of the Ukrainian Erzya community, announced the creation public platform "Free Idel-Ural", advocating the creation of an "integration association of independent states of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Mari El and Erzyano-Mokshania (Mordovia)" . What specific publications imputed to the activist, it is not known. On his social media pages, he criticizes the policy of the Russian authorities and characterizes Russia as a state that for centuries carried out expansion in relation to the neighboring Russian peoples, often criticizes passive, from his point of view, political installations of Russian citizens. However, xenophobic rhetoric in statements Kashapov, we did not find and do not see any grounds for persecuting the activist for inciting hatred.
In August in Saratov, a criminal case under Art. 282 was filed against a local resident Natalya Kovaleva. She was accused of inciting hatred towards the social group "judicial community" for publishing on own YouTube channel of videos with satirical songs and statements to the authorities, in which she denounced “corruption, nepotism, curatorship”, practiced, in her opinion, in the judiciary community of the Saratov region. The case was initiated as a result of an audit, carried out on the complaint of the Saratov Regional Court, the head of which was the main target of criticism in the materials of Kovaleva. In our opinion, persecution Kovaleva under Art. 282 was unjustified. In addition to the fact that judges are protected by other legal norms and additional protection against hatred as a vulnerable group they do not need publications by Kovaleva and were not directed against the judicial community as a whole, they dealt with only a few of its representatives. Besides on the other hand, in her videos there were no aggressive calls that would deserve prosecution as dangerous. After in September, the plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia adopted amendments to the resolution on procedure for considering cases of an extremist orientation, the persecution of Kovaleva under Art. 282 was terminated: the investigation stated that it did not see in her actions intent to incite hatred. Kovaleva even managed to sue compensation in 15 thousand rubles for illegal criminal prosecution under this article, however, it were charged with contempt of court and libel against the judge.
In 2018, activists continued to be prosecuted under Art. 20.29 Administrative Code for distribution of illegally prohibited materials. Oppositionists were attracted to responsibility for distributing Alexei Navalny's video about unfulfilled promises of "United Russia" "Remember the Rogues and Thieves of their Manifesto-2002", commercials about the alleged involvement of Putin and the FSB in the terrorist attacks of the late 2000s, photos of Conservative MP Vitaly Milonov in a T-shirt with banned the slogan "Orthodoxy or death", satirical songs of the group "Christ Ensemble Savior and Mother Earth Cheese "(precisely for the dissemination of the latest anarchist from Sevastopol went under arrest for 11 days, although in the rest known to us cases, it was about fines), etc.
"Ukrainian question"
In 2018, we recorded several cases where law enforcement authorities used anti-extremist legislation in relation to statements related to the conflict in Ukraine, and their reaction was inadequate or clearly disproportionate to what has been said.
In January, the Voskresensky City Court of the Moscow Region found guilty under Part 1 of Art. 282 Kolomna activists Valentin Sokolov, in 2016 year nominated for deputies of the Moscow Regional Duma from the Rodina party and sentenced him to actual term of imprisonment. Publications served as the reason for persecution on Facebook videos with xenophobic comments calling, among other things, to violence against blacks, as well as placement in Odnoklassniki an image with text that was deemed hateful to Russian. With regard to the publication in Odnoklassniki, the prosecution was unreasonable. According to the screenshots, Sokolov reposted the image from pro-Ukrainian text containing calls for the murder of Russians, accompanying it with the comment: "How you have to be stubborn to carry such heresy. Or deliberately kindle. It's scary to read." However, the fact that Sokolov republished the text was not the purpose of promoting the ideas set forth in it, but on the contrary, with the aim of discrediting them, was not reflected in the case file: the investigation drew attention only to the fact that in folder "Miscellaneous" on Sokolov's page, the picture with the text was preserved without comments (on the Odnoklassniki social network, all published images saved in this folder automatically). In March, the Moscow Regional Court reduced Sokolov's sentence from 1.5 years to 8 months in prison.
In April, in Velikiye Luki, Pskov region, 21-year-old gamer Mikhail Larionov was sentenced to two years' imprisonment suspended under Part 1 of Art. 282. In January Velikoluchanin posted a recording of the World of Tanks game stream on Twitch.com under the title "Disrespect for the Ukrainian people!", In which "he called on the public to aggressive actions against the Russians. Larionov's statements should interpret in the context of the game and the style of communication accepted among the players. The main audience of gaming streams recognizes even aggressive statements as humorous, not inflammatory. It is unlikely that Larionov set out to arouse national hatred, most likely, he wanted to annoy the interlocutor. If law enforcement agencies feared that Internet users not those who belong to the gamer community may misinterpret the conversation players, it would be enough to warn Larionov and ask him to remove public video.
In April, a court in Kromy, Oryol Region, passed a sentence on a local poet Alexander Byvshev in the case of the publication of the poem "On Independence Ukraine". He was sentenced under Art. 282 as 330 mandatory hours works with a three-year teaching ban, but in June the regional court reviewed this decision and increased the punishment to 400 hours of compulsory work, but at the same time, he credited Byvshev with 300 hours of work that he had already served under the sentence of 2015 the year that was awarded to the poet for another poem on the same topic; so Thus, the actual period of compulsory work amounted to 100 hours. IN poem "On the Independence of Ukraine" contained statements that can be interpreted as humiliating for Russians, but it had rather political, not xenophobic. Moreover, as the center has repeatedly pointed out "Owl", humiliation of dignity - an act that does not represent a significant public danger - should not be prosecuted.
In the same month, another case was brought against Byvshev. case under Part 1 of Art. 282. He was charged with publishing on the Orlets website poems "Russian Spirit" and "Mighty Heap", this time not pro-Ukrainian, but, according to law enforcement officers, containing “pejorative statements in relation to a certain nation." Byvshev published these poems in September 2017 in comments on an article about a garbage heap in the yard of a house in Orel. Ironically about the Russians' disinclination to maintain cleanliness and order, the author speaks unflatteringly about fellow citizens, and, nevertheless, in both poems there is nothing that could serve as a pretext for a criminal persecution for inciting hatred.
Deciding, obviously, not to stop there, in July law enforcement authorities filed another case against the poet - this time under Part 2 of Art. 280 (calls for extremist activity on the Internet), upon publication poem "Dedicated to the expansion of NATO to the East." Doubtful this accusation appears. Although the author resorts to militant rhetoric, he calls for the expansion of NATO's borders as part of a containment strategy, not war with Russia. In addition, the leadership of the NATO countries and the bloc itself to the audience Byvshev does not apply, and therefore it is difficult to perceive his calls as posing a real threat.
In August 2018, a criminal case was initiated in St. case under Part 1 of Art. 282 against Evgeny Nikolaev, the author of the video blog "Diary Belarus". He was accused of publishing under a video of another author a comment that incites hatred and degrades dignity on the basis of nationality. We got acquainted with the commentary of Nikolaev, in which he furiously argued with the thesis of "Vatniks" that "Ukraine was invented Lenin. In the emotional text of Nikolaev, one can really see signs humiliation of the dignity of not only Russians as a political community, but also ethnic Russians. However, in our opinion, this fact in itself did not grounds for criminal prosecution, given that no aggressive appeals did not include a comment.
In 2018, the Federal List of Extremist Materials included a number of heterogeneous Ukrainian materials seized in the Library Ukrainian literature [3] in Moscow and banned back in 2015 by the Meshchansky District Court. with the majority of which we did not have the opportunity to familiarize ourselves and cannot assess the validity their prohibition, it is only obvious that not all of them are nationalistic. Surprisingly, among other materials, two editions of the book were banned famous Sovietologist and publicist Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov (1908-1997) "Empire Kremlin”, first published in Germany in 1988. Court's arguments to us unknown. “Kremlin Empire” is dedicated to the Soviet period of Russian history, which the author considers through the prism of the "colonial policy" of the leadership in against the peoples of the USSR, revealing the chauvinistic attitudes of the Soviet leaders. The book contains neither nationalist rhetoric nor aggressive appeals due to the ideological attitudes of the author, nor statements, justifying Nazism. Perhaps the claims to the book were related to the interpretation Avtorkhanov of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or the history of the Bandera movement, which the prosecutor's office and the court could interpret as spreading false information on the activities of the USSR during the war years, however, the signs of the composition of Art. 354 1 The Criminal Code does not provide a formal basis for recognizing material as extremist. We also recall that, in our opinion, the provision of Part 1 of Art. 354 1 , punishment for the dissemination of false information about the activities of the Soviet government in years of the Second World War, should be excluded from the article as excessively limiting discussion on historical topics and thereby violating the right to freedom of expression.
Persecution for "rehabilitation of Nazism"
In October, a criminal case was opened in Cheboksary under Part 2 of Art. 2 tbsp. 354 1 Criminal Code against opposition blogger Konstantin Ishutov, who posted on Facebook a German leaflet from 1941 with promises to the population of the USSR and accompanying the publication with the comment that the Third Reich treated the Soviet people "better than Putin treats the Russian people." Blogger chose unsuccessful formulation: it can indeed be interpreted as an indirect approval of the actions of the Nazis. At the same time, from the content of Ishutov's pages in social networks does not follow that he is fond of Nazi ideology - obviously, his the goal was not to justify Nazism, but to criticize the policies of the President of Russia. We We believe that in this case an appropriate and sufficient measure would be the requirement delete post. In addition, it is not clear why the case was initiated under the second part criminal article on the rehabilitation of Nazism, which punishes for actions committed with the use of official position, with the use of the media or with "artificial creating evidence for the prosecution.
Persecution for group anti-government initiatives
In 2018, several criminal cases were initiated against groups of citizens whose actions were perceived by law enforcement agencies as dangerous anti-government demonstrations or preparations for such.
In March, a criminal case was opened in Moscow under Art. 282 1 UK (organization of an extremist community and participation in such) against ten members of the New Greatness group led by Ruslan Kostylenkov, part of of them, including two girls, was sent to a pre-trial detention center. For February 2019 in jail four people remained, the rest were under house arrest. By version of the investigation, in early December 2017, several young people created group of the same name in social networks, where they posted the charter of the movement he founded, and See also texts promoting and justifying violence against the police. Judging by some materials of the case, "New Greatness" conducted shooting classes with using two barrels of hunting firearms, as well as making and throwing Molotov cocktails. However, the cause of "New Greatness" seems doubtful to us. The specific plans of the group have not become known. In addition to preparing for some future events (judging by the group’s program, by the time fall of the existing regime), the group distributed leaflets, but they did not contained calls for violence, only for regime change. At the same time, the group had three or even four agents were introduced, who, judging by the materials of the case, played an important role in its development, in particular, found an office and wrote a charter. Difficult agree with the investigation, which considers New Greatness to be established a community with clear goals that are extremist in nature and representing a real danger to society.
In May in Chelyabinsk, as part of an investigation under Part 2 of Art. 213 UK (hooliganism committed by an organized group based on political hatred) a series of searches were carried out at a number of participants in the opposition rally “He not a tsar”, including from the coordinator of Navalny’s headquarters Boris Zolotarevsky, who became a suspect in the case. According to the police, the participants in the uncoordinated marches, showing clear disrespect for society and political hatred, called for the resignation of the local governor, and also "chanted hostile, malevolent, hostile, slogans imbued with social hatred against the President of the Russian Federation of Putin V.V.: "Putin is a thief", "one, two, three, Putin is go away." In our opinion, the chanting of slogans calling for non-violent change of persons in leadership positions of the state and the region, and also with accusations of bad faith not only is not a manifestation of political hostility, but should not be qualified as hooliganism, because it does not in itself violate public order.
In August it became known that the central office of the FSB filed a case on the activities of publics on VKontakte and an Instagram account criminal themes. A married couple from Yekaterinburg was presented with charge under Part 2 of Art. 280 and hh. 1 and 2 Art. 282 1 ; another defendant in fact, their friend. The Verkh-Isetsky District Court sent the men under arrest, they are in the Moscow Lefortovo pre-trial detention center, and from the pregnant wife of one of them took a written undertaking not to leave. They are accused of administering public in social networks, spreading the ideology of "A.U.E." ("The prisoner of Urkagan unity"), including promoting violence against employees law enforcement agencies and distributing products "with the symbols of the movement." The ideology of the underworld (and the A.U.E. subculture) is focused on illegal activity and is conceptually incompatible with the implementation constitutional rights of citizens. However, this ideology is not political and not aimed at changing the constitutional order. Therefore, we believe that activities to popularize this ideology should not be the subject of anti-extremist legal regulation, although in principle there may be criminalized. Perhaps for the organizers of structures that exploit criminal themes and incitement to violence, should be provided a new criminal norm, similar in composition to Part 1 of Art. 239 of the Criminal Code (creation public association whose activities involve violence against citizens).
Meanwhile, in Moscow in October, the court returned the prosecutor because of vagueness and inconsistency of the accusation in the case of pensioner Vyacheslav Gorbaty, accused under Part 2 of Art. 282 2 UK (participation in activities extremist organization) in involvement in the Initiative Group for referendum "For Responsible Power" (IGPR "ZOV"), which continues activities of the People's Will Army (AVN) banned in 2010. We guess, however, that this organization of the Stalinist-nationalist persuasion, repeatedly seen in xenophobic propaganda, was recognized as extremist unlawful, since this decision was based only on an unreasonable prohibition leaflets "You have chosen - you will judge!", Calling for a referendum with the aim of establishing the responsibility of the authorities for the deterioration of the lives of citizens up to outlaw announcements. Accordingly, we consider the persecution unlawful. Humpbacked. In our opinion, the AVN case should be reviewed on its merits.
Costs of the fight for tolerance
Abuse of criminalizing incitement to hatred
We considered it unlawful or insufficiently substantiated several cases of persecution for incitement of various kinds of hatred, not aimed at criticizing the authorities.
In May, activists of the Sudak Anti-Corruption Bureau of Crimea Dmitry Dzhigalov and Oleg Semyonov were sentenced under Art. 282 to fines in the amount of 300 thousand rubles and 50 thousand rubles, respectively (the lower amount the fine was imposed on Semyonov, taking into account the six months spent in the SIZO). They were found guilty of humiliating the dignity of the Bulgarians. The case concerned the publication video in which Semyonov reproached the Bulgarians for not inviting a delegation from Russia to celebration of the anniversary of the liberation of the country from the Ottoman yoke in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, in ingratitude to the Russians, and also allowed some statements about the Stalinist deportation of the Crimean Bulgarians. The real reason for persecution of Semyonov and Dzhigalov served, apparently, their public activities to combat landfills and illegal construction in the Crimea, annoying local authorities. We expressed doubts about proportionality criminal prosecution of Dzhigalov and Semenov: it was about humiliation dignity, i.e. about a low-risk act. In addition, Semenov and Dzhigalov were not previously seen in xenophobic propaganda. However, in February 2019 the Supreme the Crimean court overturned the verdict on the activists due to partial decriminalization of Part 1 of Art. 282.
The attention of the press and society was attracted by the according to part 1 of Art. 282 criminal case against a feminist activist from Omsk Lyubov Kalugina. Activist accused of inciting hate on social media men. The statements contained in her posts, which caused criticism from law enforcement agencies, differed in the degree of aggression - from rude humor to those in which one can see signs of humiliation and calls for violence. In our opinion, the public danger of aggressive statements radical feminists is small, since their rhetoric is not connected with practice the use of real violence, so the need for criminal prosecution Kalugina was not there. The Kalugina case was closed by the investigation in February 2019 year, also as a result of the reform of Art. 282.
In December 2018, the Presidium of the Moscow City Court overturned the sentence on the case of Evgeniy Kort, convicted in 2016 under Part 1 of Art. 282 for arousal national hatred, and sent the case for a new trial to the Zelenograd district court. Cort was sentenced to a year in a colony-settlement (the punishment was later replaced by a fine) for publishing one images - racist collage from the account of the famous far-right Maxim Martsinkevich (Tesak). In the picture, Tesak presses Pushkin against the wall, accompanying this is a xenophobic slur. The cassation appeal in the case was transferred to Moscow City Court Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of Russia Vladimir Davydov. He pointed out that the verdict did not provide evidence that Kort acted with direct intent to humiliate the dignity of a group of persons on a national basis, and a guilty verdict cannot be "based on conjecture". Cort's verdict served as the basis for filing a complaint with the Constitutional Court against the application of Art. 282, which, however, was not taken into consideration. Cassation appeal against the verdict went to the Supreme Court and was initially rejected; Sun changed position after adopting a new resolution on practice in cases of extremist orientation.
In September, the Chelyabinsk Regional Court sentenced Alexander Giryu, who was hiding from the investigation and court, a participant in the pogrom at a rock festival "Tornado" in 2010. Recall that then local residents beat several dozen guests of the festival and were subsequently held accountable. Gir was found guilty not only of organizing mass riots accompanied by violence, but also according to paragraph "a" part 2 of Art. 282 (actions aimed at excitation hatred, as well as to humiliate the dignity of a person and a group of persons on the basis of belonging to any social group, committed publicly, with use of violence). We consider unlawful what was brought against Giryu, as well as to several more participants in the pogrom, charged with inciting hatred. lovers rock music, which they were accused of inciting hatred, can hardly be considered a separate social group. In addition, the main reason for the attack was not some kind of ideological confrontation, but a domestic conflict between defendants and guests of the festival, which took place on the eve of the pogrom.
Persecution for extremist symbols
According to statistics from the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court, only in the first half of 2018 to liability under Art. 20.3 Administrative Code (propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols, and symbols of extremist organizations) 963 persons were punished [4] , however, only in some of these cases do we know the details of the administrative cases and we can judge the degree of their legitimacy. During the year we marked 29 episodes prosecution for public display of Nazi symbols or symbols of banned organizations that are not aimed at dangerous propaganda that significantly less than a year earlier (46 episodes).
This article continues to be often misused for putting pressure on activists objectionable to the authorities. So, in August the activist Navalny headquarters in Naberezhnye Chelny, one of the organizers of the rally against pension reform, Dmitry Teterin was fined 2,000 rubles for publication on VKontakte of a picture in which Russian President Vladimir Putin depicted in Nazi uniform, signed "Führer of the Fourth Reich". We guess, that Teterin was wrongfully prosecuted because he used Nazi symbols as a means of political controversy, and did not promote ideology of Nazism.
The attention of law enforcement agencies is attracted and historical photographs published without any political subtext. In August in Kyzyl (Tyva) the court imposed a fine of 1,000 rubles to a local activist Oyumaa Dongak. Law enforcement claims have caused several her posts on VKontakte. One of them contained an excerpt from a contemporary interview with a German woman who participated in the activities of the Nazi Union of German Girls, and link to the interview itself. The post was illustrated with an archival photograph in which girls waving swastika flags. The second post contained a photo Hitler, sitting at a table with a newspaper, and information that the leader of the Nazi Germany was recognized as the person of the year according to the British magazine Time. In the third post was given a famous 1936 photograph from a shipyard in Hamburg showing one of the people in the crowd cheering Hitler does not raise his hand. Fourth the image illustrated material about the creation of the atomic bomb in Germany. Court not considered it significant that the activist’s posts condemned Nazism, appreciating only the formal side of her act. The Supreme Court of the Republic upheld this decision.
However, in some cases, the courts sided with persecuted. For example, in February 2018, the Arkhangelsk Regional Court overturned the decision of the Isakogorsky District Court, which had fined volunteer of the Arkhangelsk headquarters of Alexei Navalny Mikhail Listov because of two publications on VKontakte: the famous photograph of 1945, in which the Soviet soldiers throwing Nazi banners to the Mausoleum during the Victory Parade, and a frame from the scandalous dance show on the Russia 1 TV channel, one of participants of which acted in a Nazi uniform. Listov's posts are explicitly not were aimed at propaganda of Nazism, and his case received wide publicity because of the flash mob announced in his support by Alexei Navalny: users social networks distributed a photo published by Listov with Nazi banners. It is possible that it was precisely the resonance produced by this case that led to the fact that bills on reforming Art. 20.3 Code of Administrative Offenses.
The fight against "offenders to the feelings of believers"
February 2018 Naberezhnye Chelny City Court of Tatarstan sentenced 20-year-old Anton Ushachev, who was accused of putting insulting inscriptions on the fence near Borovets Church of the Holy Ascension Bishops' Metochion and the local spring. Ushachev was sentenced to 320 hours of compulsory labor under Part 1 of Art. 148 UK (insulting the feelings of believers) and Part 1 of Art. 214 of the Criminal Code (vandalism without a hate motive), while the charge under h. 1 Article. 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting religious hatred) with it was removed. The court decided that Ushachev applied the inscriptions "with the aim of insulting the religious feelings of believers", realizing that a large number of Orthodox people come to the church and to the spring (with At this, the representatives of the Holy Ascension Compound themselves stated that “these are just dirty tricks”, and not a serious crime). At the same time, according to the court, the actions incriminated to him were committed out of hooligan motives, and not out of motives of religious hatred or enmity. As a result, the prosecution under Art. 282 from Chelnin was withdrawn with the recognition of the right for rehabilitation, and the prosecution under Art. 148 of the Criminal Code was reclassified from Part 2 to part 1 (the reference to the commission of actions in places specially intended for worship). Considering that Ushachev is more than half a year spent in custody, the sentence assigned to him was considered served. We believe that Ushachev's actions would be sufficient to qualify under Art. 214 of the Criminal Code (and in the case of establishing a motive of hatred - under part 2 of this article).
In April, in Krasnodar, the investigation terminated the proceedings on the case of Maxim Drozdov, who was accused of humiliating the dignity of atheists under Part 1 Art. 282 of the Criminal Code. The case was initiated in connection with the publication of a satirical poem "The Heretic", according to the plot of which the villagers, led by the local a priest burned a schoolteacher at the stake, who declared at the lesson that science is important, but there is no god. However, the investigator concluded that the poem was not aimed at inciting hatred, since "it was Drozdov’s self-expression”, was ironic and did not contain calls “to any specific action.
In general, most of the proceedings in connection with insult feelings of believers in 2018 concerned the dissemination of atheistic images in social networks. As a reminder, we do not see any need to prosecute publication of such materials, even rude ones, if they do not contain aggressive appeals to believers. For the public, such publications do not represent no danger and sanctions for their distribution can be regarded as unreasonable interference with freedom of expression in relation to religion.
In January, it became known that in Orel a case under Part 1 of Art. 148 in relation to a 29-year-old local resident who posted on his page on VKontakte "Photographs with inscriptions, offending the religious feelings of Orthodox believers and defiling the main objects of religious worship. The outcome of the case is unknown.
In the same month, the world court in Sochi dropped the criminal case against Viktor Nochevnov, previously convicted under Part 1 of Art. 148, due to expiration statute of limitations for liability. Nochevnov in August 2017 was sentenced to a fine of 50 thousand rubles, but then the district court overturned verdict and remanded the case for retrial. Sochi resident accused of publishing in the social network a series of caricature images of Christ.
In March, it became known that in Kurgan the court stopped the criminal prosecution An 18-year-old local resident who was accused of insulting the feelings of believers Part 1 Art. 148, imposing a court fine of 30,000 rubles on him. By version of the investigation, in December 2017, celebrating a birthday in a removable cottage, a young man discovered an Orthodox icon there. Flipping the icon he took a picture with her in the mirror and posted the photo on the social network, accompanying insulting to the Orthodox commentary. During preliminary investigation Kurgan repented of his deed and, in order to make amends caused harm, apologized to all believers through the social network, as well as donated money to an Orthodox church. Since he first made crime of minor gravity and at the same time compensated for the damage, the investigation sent to the court a motion to dismiss the case.
In September, he was fined 15 for posting eight atheistic memes. thousand rubles under Part 2 of Art. 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (intentional public desecration of objects religious veneration) Igor Markov, a resident of Severodvinsk. We believe that posting atheistic pictures on the net, albeit crude content, in itself itself should not be interpreted as desecration of objects of religious veneration, since the publication of photo collages does not imply any active actions with these items. It should also be noted that having an obviously religious The origin of the concept of "defilement" in the legislation is not defined in any way.
In October, in Irkutsk, the court began to consider the case of anarchist Dmitry Lytvyn, accused under Part 1 of Art. 148 in connection with the publication of four anti-Christian memes on VKontakte. The defendant refused to dismiss the case due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, since this ground is not rehabilitating. Images published by Litvin with gospel characters were rude and obscene, but did not contain aggressive appeals regarding Christians.
In the summer of 2018, in the wake of discussions on the application of Art. 282 scandal erupted around the criminal cases of three residents of Barnaul - Maria Motuznaya, Andrey Shasherin and Daniil Markin. The first two were immediately accused under Part 1 of Art. 148 and part 1 of Art. 282 UK of publishing atheistic and xenophobic images, and Markin is accused of humiliation of Christians for publishing anti-Christian memes was brought only according to part 1 of Art. 282. In our view, the charges against Markin were brought without any reason; Motuznaya and Shasherin published, among other things, xenophobic images, but their posts did not give enough reason to persecution.
The case of Motuznaya was considered by the Industrial District Court of Barnaul. In October at conditions of public pressure, the defense, the prosecution and the court took advantage of the new decision of the Supreme Court and agreed that Motuznaya's case should be returned to prosecutor's office "to establish new circumstances." At the same time, the same district the court, on the proposal of the Federal Penitentiary Service, canceled the probation appointed in 2017 barnaulka Natalya Telegina, who was convicted under the same articles for reposting seven anti-Christian images and one anti-Christian image immigrants from the Caucasus.
In January 2019, the cases against Motuznaya, Shasherin and Markin were dropped. in connection with the decriminalization of Art. 282, law enforcement agencies did not consider it necessary continue the persecution of Motuznaya and Shasherin only under Art. 148.
In our opinion, numerous examples of the failure of accusations of insulting the feelings of believers, revealed at the stage of investigation and trial, testify in favor of proposals for the abolition or at least partial decriminalization hh. 1 and 2 Art. 148.
Religious groups
"Hizb ut-Tahrir"
According to our information, in 2018, on charges of involvement to the activities of the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, which was banned in 2003 as terrorist, 15 sentences were handed down against 49 people, all under Art. 205 5 (organization of activities terrorist organization or participation in it), but within the framework of two sentences 24 people were also convicted under Art. 278 of the Criminal Code in conjunction with Part 1 of Art. 30 UK (preparation for a violent seizure of power). Judgments known to us distributed as follows: one sentence was handed down against 21 Ufa residents, three sentences against three Muslims from Tatarstan, three sentences against six residents of the Chelyabinsk region, three - against ten residents of St. Petersburg, two - against two Muslims in Moscow, one against two residents of Sevastopol, one - against four residents of Bakhchisaray, one - against one prisoner in Vologda region. In 2017, we recorded 15 such sentences against 37 Human.
Recall that the decision to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir as terrorist organization, we consider unlawful, since the party does not practices violence and does not consider it as a suitable method of struggle for the construction of the world Caliphate. However, from our point of view, Hizb ut-Tahrir still could be banned - on other grounds [5] .
Meanwhile, for involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, they are being persecuted under Art. 205 5 which provides for punishment up to life deprivation of liberty, and the terms of punishment that courts assign to convicts, with each grow year by year. Thus, the Volga District Military Court in July sentenced ten Ufa residents out of twenty-one sentenced to terms of 20-24 years in a penal colony regime, despite the fact that none of them was accused of involvement in violence.
As before, when considering cases of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir” we are not talking about proving the real preparation of the accused for carrying out terrorist attacks or seizing power: the investigation states the fact involving them in party activities in the form of distribution or simply studying Hizb ut-Tahrir literature, holding meetings of like-minded people, and then district military courts [6] satisfy the requirements of the prosecutor's office.
At the same time, the overall scope of persecution of adherents of the party in 2018 decreased: although at least 20 people were charged under five criminal cases, it should be noted that in 2017, about a dozen against more than four dozen Muslims. Of the five cases in 2018, two were initiated in Tatarstan (including the largest - against 14 people, one more - against three), two in the Crimea (two arrested) and one in Chelyabinsk. Against 18 people charged under Art. 205 5 , one is charged under Art. 205 2 of propaganda of terrorism, another was charged under both articles straightaway. In the latter case, we are talking about Amir Gilyazov from Chelyabinsk, who was placed under arrest despite being almost completely paralyzed and needs constant help. Requires active intervention human rights community and the press, so that Gilyazov would be released on bail recognizance.
In 2018, the Federal List of Extremist Materials 26 items with Hizb ut-Tahrir materials were included, among them four electronic editions of the magazine "Al-Wai" and other party materials, as well as videos about the persecution of adherents of the party in Russia. In addition, according to according to Roskomnadzor statistics, at least 17,000 times in the first three quarters 2018, Hizb ut-Tahrir materials were blocked extrajudicially on "Lugovoy's law" (not counting court blocking) [7] . As before, law enforcement agencies and courts prohibit party materials automatically by association with a banned organization without considering them content on the merits and without ascertaining the degree of their potential danger. Us known cases of persecution under Art. 20.29 and 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for distribution materials and demonstration of the symbols of Hizb ut-Tahrir, however, we do not attribute them among the unlawful when it comes to the spread of party propaganda.
Tablighi Jamaat
We are aware of 5 sentences handed down in 2018 against 22 people accusation of involvement in the activities of an international organization banned in Russia religious movement "Tablighi Jamaat" under Art. 282 2 UK (organization activities of an extremist organization or participation in one): 14 people were convicted in Moscow in two trials, four people in the Moscow regions, three - in Bashkortostan, and one in the Altai Territory (under part 1.1 of article 282 2 O involvement of a person in the activities of an extremist organization); they all got real terms of imprisonment, from one to six years. Note that in 2017 we recorded seven such sentences against 19 people.
In 2018, at least one new case was opened against followers of Tablighi Jamaat: two people were arrested in Tatarstan. IN Last year, according to our data, at least four such cases were initiated.
There are still reports from the FSB Border Service about cases when citizens of other states regarding which there is information about their involvement to Tablighi Jamaat are not allowed on the territory of Russia.
Recall that the religious association "Tablighi Jamaat" was banned in Russia as extremist in 2009. We regard this ban as unlawful, since this movement is engaged in the peaceful propaganda of Islam, albeit fundamentalist, and was not seen in any calls for violence.
Followers of Said Nursi
In 2018, the persecution of Muslims studying Turkish theologian Said Nursi, which, in our opinion, are banned in Russia groundlessly. Russian law enforcement agencies are persecuting believers who who are found by Nursi's books, for membership in a certain unified organization "Nurcular", which was banned in Russia despite the fact that even its very existence has not been proven. Believers are usually accused of being organize and visit "home madrasahs" where Nursi's works are discussed, as well as in distribution of his books.
We became aware of five sentences handed down against five followers Nursi under Art. 282 2 , - three people were convicted in Krasnoyarsk, and according to one in Novosibirsk and Dagestan. In Krasnoyarsk, those convicted for involvement in activities of the local "cell" "Nurcular" Andrey Dedkov and Andrey Rekst got off with fines, Sabirjon Kabirzoda received two years probation. However, two out of five convicted in 2018 were sentenced to real terms of deprivation freedom. In 2017, we recorded four such sentences against nine Human.
The most severe in the history of pressure on the followers of Nursi was the sentence of a 21-year-old Ilgar Aliyev, who was sentenced by the Izberbash City Court of the Republic of Dagestan in May to eight years in a penal colony (in July this decision was confirmed by the Supreme republics). According to the version of the investigation, with which the court agreed, he spent in Izberbash, Makhachkala and Khasavyurt classes on the study of the works of Nursi, involved in activities cells of young people, as well as attended international conferences and forums, organized by the followers of the theologian. Long term imprisonment assigned to Aliyev is explained by the fact that he was charged simultaneously with two parts of Art. 282 2 - under Part 1 on the organization of the activities of an extremist organization and under part 1.1 on the involvement of others in this activity.
Imam Kamil Odilov was sentenced in July by the Oktyabrsky District Court Novosibirsk under Part 1 of Art. 282 2 to two years in a penal colony. Odilov was accused of having already been sentenced on probation in a similar case in 2013, continued its activities, resuming the lessons of "home madrasah” with the forbidden books of Nursi.
In addition, in December, the Pervomaisky District Court of Novosibirsk satisfied the claim administration of the penal colony where Odilov is serving his sentence, on the appointment him administrative supervision upon release. The court noted that Odilov was convicted of a crime of an extremist orientation, belonging to the category serious, and “during the time of serving it is characterized negatively”: in the colony he received four disciplinary actions, received no promotions and does not respond to measures educational nature, in particular, “does not take proactive measures to psychophysical adjustment of one’s personality and resocialization”, as well as to employment. In this regard, supervision was established for Odilov for the entire term. until the repayment of a criminal record, that is, for eight years from the date of serving the sentence.
Note that one of Odilov's accomplices, accused under part 2 of Art. 282 2 participation in the classes of his "home madrasah", was released in March from criminal liability with the appointment of a court fine (the same happened in 2017 with two other defendants in the same case).
In the Kurgan region in 2018 it was terminated due to the expiration of the deadlines statute of limitations criminal prosecution under Part 1 of Art. 282 and part 1 of Art. 205 2 behind dissemination on social networks of certain religious materials calling for armed struggle. Muslim accused of publishing these materials law enforcement authorities considered a follower of "Nurcular" because, according to in their opinion, he "for a long time collected the relevant library and independently produced brochures of works Said Nursi, planning to use them for further education of fellow countrymen.
We have no information about new cases brought in 2018 against followers of Nursi. However, in October 2018 the Vakhitovsky District Court Kazan began to consider the case of two local residents on charges of organizing the activities of the "cell" "Nurcular". Information about when filed this case, we do not have. In addition, in Krasnoyarsk he was arrested a local resident who previously served as a witness in cases of activities Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk "cells". In 2017, we became aware of bringing three such cases against five people.
In 2018, the Federal List of Extremist Materials was replenished with five Nursi brochures, all of them were banned in Krasnoyarsk, one in 2012, and four in 2018.
Other Muslims
At the end of February, the Chebarkul City Court of the Chelyabinsk region sentenced Kh. Dinmukhametov, 67-year-old assistant to the imam of the mosque "Al-Amin", to two years in prison conditionally with a two-year probationary for a period of hours. 1 Article. 282 for the distribution of four copies of The Woman in Islam and in the Judeo-Christian world." The brochure was declared extremist in 2015 in the Sverdlovsk region. We believe that there are grounds for banning this there was no pamphlet: its author sought to show that Islam provides women with more rights and promotes a more respectful attitude towards women than Judaism and Christianity; while in general the text is designed in a spirit of respect for these two religions. Thus, there were no grounds for persecution Dinmukhametova.
In August, the Kirovsky District Court of Ufa considered the case of Amin Shayakhmetov, accused under Part 1 of Art. 282 in inciting religious hatred based on the publication of six texts on the website of the self-dissolved a year earlier organization "Shura Muslims of the Republic of Bashkortostan". These texts have been recognized extremist in 2017, for a ban on at least three of them, we did not see. The court decided to stop the criminal prosecution of Shayakhmetov with imposition of a court fine, but this decision was appealed by the prosecutor's office, and in November the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan sent the case back to the district court for new consideration [8] .
In July 2018, it became known that in Tatarstan a criminal case is being investigated on the continuation of the activities of the Faizrahmanist community, which is considered extremist. There are five people involved in the case. Defendants under Part 2 of Art. 282 2 Rustam Galeev and Galimyan Khazetdinov are under arrest. According to investigators, they were engaged in recruitment in religious group, organized its gatherings, where they studied the forbidden religious literature, urged to refuse medical care and performance of civic duties, and also raised money for the activities communities. Muslim community founded by a former deputy mufti of Tatarstan Fayzrakhman Sattarov, was recognized as an extremist organization in 2013 after the control authorities carried out an inspection of the community and found that it members led an isolated lifestyle, they were forbidden to contact medical institutions and send children to schools. Such phenomena are not the subject of anti-extremist legal regulation. As far as we know the community led a closed, but not aggressive lifestyle, so we believe that the decision to recognize it as extremist is unlawful, and accordingly, no grounds and for bringing to responsibility under Art. 282 2 behind continuation of her activities.
In June, the Krasnoglinsky District Court of Samara received a claim for recognition of a number of Islamic religious books as extremist. Among them are interpretations Qur'an by ibn Kathir and al-Saadi. In addition, the lawsuit includes books from the series "The Meaning and Meaning of the Qur'an" published in Germany; we do not need to get acquainted with them managed. The books were confiscated in a prayer house in the village of Krasny Pakhar Samara area as part of a search in the case of a certain “underground Salafi cell”. lawsuit based on the results of a linguistic expertise carried out in March 2018 year FSB of Russia in the Samara region. Prosecutors say experts found in the literature submitted for the study “statements of an extremist nature aimed at inciting hatred, enmity or discord on the basis of attitude to religion (in relation to groups "Jews", "Christians", "non-believers"). In the tafsir appearing in the lawsuit Ibn Kasir did not find any signs of extremism. Mention contained in the Qur'an calls to fight against infidels, as well as negative statements about non-believers, with from our point of view, should not be interpreted as direct aggressive calls, posing a threat to followers of other religions. At the same time in Al-Saadi's Commentary on the Holy Qur'an contains a number of sayings, loosely interpreting verses of the Qur'an, which can be regarded as the approval of the military jihad. The interests of publishing houses that have published books are represented by a group of well-known lawyers who have previously acted in processes to ban Islamic literature, the process attracted the attention of Muslim organizations and the media.
During 2018, the Federal List of Extremist materials included 22 paragraphs containing groundlessly prohibited muslim materials. The basis for recognizing them as extremist was affirmation of the superiority of Islam in one form or another over other religious currents, which, in our opinion, should not be interpreted as excitation religious hatred.
In 2018, we learned about eight cases of involvement of Muslims to liability under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for the dissemination of religious materials recognized as extremist without proper grounds, or their storage with purpose of distribution. A number of cases of levying fines under Art. 16.13 Code of Administrative Offenses (non-compliance with customs prohibitions) for illegally trying to import into Russia banned Islamic literature.
Jehovah witnesses
In 2018, a massive harassment campaign unfolded Jehovah's Witnesses, whose Russian organizations number 395 communities in head of the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia were in 2017 banned as extremist.
During the year, we counted at least 36 new criminal cases against at least 100 believers in 28 different regions of Russia, from Smolensk to Far East (this set does not yet include Moscow and St. Petersburg, although there are already precedent when a suspect was detained in Moscow in a case initiated in another region).
Jehovah's Witnesses are accused under Art. 282 2 V continued activities of the banned communities. It is about organization and holding prayer meetings, that is, about religious activities, the right to carry out which, individually or jointly, is guaranteed by Art. 28 of the Constitution RF. As a rule, charges are brought on sch. 1 and 2 Art. 282 2 , but how in at least four cases, Jehovah's Witnesses are accused under part 1.1 of this article of involvement in the activities of prohibited communities, and in three - also under Art. 282 3 - in financing extremist activities. Among the accused are believers in aged 23 to 84, including more than two dozen women, two of who at the time of publication of the report are in a pre-trial detention center in the Smolensk region. IN during the year, the total number of accused in the pre-trial detention center varied: from one on the other hand, more and more arrests were made, on the other hand, the courts changed some arrested to a milder measure of restraint (house arrest, ban certain actions, a written undertaking not to leave). In the second half of the year, this number fluctuated between three and a half and two dozen people.
Since April 2018, the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Orel has been the trial of the Dane Dennis Christensen, who was accused under Part 1 of Art. 282 2 in organizing local community activities banned in 2016. From May 2017 years during the entire investigation and trial, he was in a pre-trial detention center. Christensen process attracted the attention of the media, Russian human rights activists and international organizations, its outcome was perceived as an important precedent, outlining the future fate co-religionists of Christensen, accused under the same article. harsh sentence, handed down to Christensen in February 2019, i.e. already outside of the report of the period - six years in a general regime colony - caused a loud resonance and international protests. Thus, the call to the Russian authorities to stop persecution for exercising the right to freedom of religion, belief, expression opinion and freedom of assembly and review anti-extremist legislation came from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights person.
In addition, in December 2018, the Prokhladnensky District Court of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic recognized a seventy-year-old pensioner, a Witness Jehovah Arkady Hakobyan guilty of inciting religious hatred under Part 1 of Art. 282 and sentenced him to 120 hours of community service. Hakobyan was recognized guilty on the testimony of five witnesses who do not adhere to the same denominations, who declared that they, on behalf of Hakobyan, were distributing banned brochures of Jehovah's Witnesses. Hakobyan's defense argued that he did not distribute prohibited materials, and in addition, the distribution extremist materials, even if it took place, may be punishable under Art. 282 only if it is proved that the accused pursued the aim incite hatred or enmity. Meanwhile, in text editions, the spread who were imputed to Hakobyan, there were no allegations about the need illegal actions against any group of persons, namely such appeals, according to the Resolution of the Supreme Court "On judicial practice in criminal cases on crimes of an extremist orientation" 2011, should be considered a sign of incitement to hatred. Note that all followers Jehovah's Witnesses who have previously been convicted of incitement to hatred were acquitted by the higher courts with recognition right to rehabilitation. The defense has filed an appeal against the verdict, which is to be canceled as a result of decriminalization of Part 1 of Art. 282.
Pressure on believers is not limited to criminal persecution. According to Jehovah's Witnesses themselves, in 2018 law enforcement agencies conducted at least 270 searches of believers with seizure printed materials, papers, technology and information media. Note that these activities are often carried out in a harsh manner: armed officers law enforcement agencies broke into houses and apartments, frightening the elderly and children, in some cases force was used, so that believers turned for medical assistance, night interrogations are not uncommon without regard to age and condition the health of the interrogated. Also noteworthy is the increase in the number of cases of refusal Jehovah's Witnesses have the right to perform alternative civilian service. How reported by Jehovah's Witnesses, as a result of the banning of communities and the subsequent wave of persecution about five thousand of their co-religionists left the country.
We know of only a few cases where Witnesses were involved. Jehovah to administrative responsibility under Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for distribution banned literature, although it can be assumed that they were significantly more. On the other hand, the Federal List of Extremist Materials has been replenished with twenty paragraphs with the literature of Jehovah's Witnesses. Among them are the Holy Scriptures in New World Translation, that is, the Bible in the translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, and a number of other brochures banned in 2017 in Vyborg, as well as brochures recognized extremist in 2016 in Odintsovo, Moscow Region, whose ban was confirmed by the Moscow Regional Court in January 2018, and an issue of the Awake magazine, banned in June 2018 in Yelabuga (Tatarstan).
Meanwhile, Jehovah's Witnesses continue to defend their rights to the ECtHR, where, according to them, as of the beginning of 2019, there were already more than 40 of their complaints about the violation of the rights of believers as a result of the bans on literature and community activities, obstruction of religious gatherings and persecution of individual citizens. In May 2018, the ECtHR communicated the complaint of Glazovskaya and 394 other local religious organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, their chairmen and privates members. Complaint concerns Supreme Court decision to ban activities of the Administrative Center and local communities of Jehovah's Witnesses in litigation in which local communities were not even given the opportunity participate to protect their interests. Recall that the ECtHR intends to consider communicated back in 2017, the complaint of the Administrative Center in priority order. The decision of the ECtHR will give Russia a chance to reconsider the erroneous decision to recognize organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses as extremist, which led to an apparently impasse in which the state forces itself to prosecute tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens for the implementation of peaceful religious activities.
Sanctions against libraries
In 2018, prosecutors continued to expose libraries sanctions due to contradictions between the law "On librarianship", prescribing not to restrict readers' access to funds, and anti-extremist legislation requiring the exclusion of the mass distribution of prohibited materials.
Recall that prosecutors present libraries with a variety of claims, starting with the fact that there are prohibited materials (usually books) in collections, although libraries have no legal grounds for removing them, and ending content of library charters, which do not stipulate a ban on distribution of extremist materials [9] .
Most often, however, we are talking about prosecutorial protests against library charters and representations on the elimination of violations of the law on countering extremist activities, as a result of which libraries check the literature against the Federal List of Extremist Materials and take disciplinary action against responsible employees. According to our data [10] , at least 170 such sanctions were imposed on management in 2018 libraries, including school libraries (in 2017 - at least 155). Despite the small growth in 2018, in general, the data of the last two years indicate reducing the number of such sanctions. Apparently, this is due to the fact that employees libraries mostly understood the peculiarities of the existing legislation and began to show heightened vigilance, allowing safely overcome prosecutorial checks.
Internet and anti-extremism
In 2018, the Russian authorities continued to use previously created network content blocking tools. We still have raises doubts as to the validity of the selection criteria chosen by the authorities materials for blocking, and the quality of the mechanisms of this blocking.
The practice of blocking
The Unified Register of Banned Websites, created in 2012, continues to be replenished mainly due to the resources that contain pornographic information or related images, propaganda drugs and psychotropic substances, as well as information encouraging children to actions that could harm their health, including calls for suicide. In addition, the registry, by court decision, includes resources with information recognized as prohibited for distribution in Russia, including materials recognized as extremist (or similar). According to Roskomnadzor, the total number entered into the Register for the first three quarters of 2018 years of resources amounted to 161,171 [11] . Presumably, resources with extremist materials account for only a small part of them.
We only have data on 611 resources blocked "for extremism" by the decision of the courts in 2018, which were collected by the project "Roskomsvoboda" [12] .
Separately, mention should be made of sites and pages subject to blocking under the “Lugovoy law”, which replenish a special register on the website Roskomnadzor, created in addition to the Unified Register of Prohibited Materials. Let us recall that the information “containing calls for mass riots, the implementation of extremist activity, participation in mass (public) events, conducted in violation of the established procedure, information materials foreign or international non-governmental organization whose activities recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation” and “information allowing access to the specified information or materials”, are blocked out of court, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office to Roskomnadzor. According to Roskomnadzor [13] , in the first three quarters of 2018, 51,892 were blocked for “extremism” resource. In the vast majority of cases, it was about "mirrors" earlier blocked pages discovered by Roskomnadzor itself; requests from The Prosecutor General's Office received only about 400.
For both registries, we consider it illegal blocking oppositional materials and websites that do not incite to violent overthrow of the regime, in particular, containing announcements of peaceful actions; materials and websites of organizations recognized as "undesirable"; materials regionalists and peaceful separatists; historical materials not sent to incite hatred; Ukrainian information and analytical materials, not containing calls for violence, and sites of Ukrainian media; wrongfully religious and anti-religious materials recognized as extremist and some materials of nationalists; materials and sites related to illegally banned organizations; material of a humorous or satirical nature. We are also concerned about the mass blocking of information about the persecution in Russia adherents of the radical Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Other sanctions
Educational institutions and libraries continue to face claims of prosecutors in connection with the imperfection of the content filtering system, installed on computers. All computers available to minors must be equipped with filters that block access to prohibited information, in including extremist materials. If the protection system user does not work or works defectively (despite the fact that the ideal filters simply do not exist), the prosecution authorities make submissions not software developer and supplier, and the directors educational institutions and libraries, after which the "guilty" are involved in disciplinary liability.
The number of inspections we noted in educational institutions (schools, technical schools, etc.) and libraries and various kinds of acts of the prosecutor response based on their results in 2018 amounted to 38, that is, less than we noted in 2017 (53). Our data are certainly incomplete, but allow suggest that, under pressure from prosecutors, educational institutions in In recent years, increased attention has been paid to the effectiveness of systems content filtering.
For the low quality of content filtering under Art. 6.17 Administrative Code (“Violation of legislation on the protection of children from information that harms their health and/or development”) in 2018 were wrongfully fined as at least five legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, including a school, cafe, hotel and shopping center.
Media and anti-extremism
In the report on its activities for the first nine months of 2018 Roskomnadzor reports that it issued 12 warnings “for using the media to carry out extremist activities (spread of extremist materials)” and sent 47 appeals to the editorial offices of online media demanding remove reader comments with signs of extremism from their pages. However, which publications received warnings and appeals and for what exactly, the department does not report [14] . We are aware of only two cases. abuses by the department in 2018.
In January, the Roskomnadzor department for the Northwestern Federal District sent "Business News Agency" (ABN, abnews.ru) notification of allegedly admitted agency violation of the law on the media, corresponding to the composition of Part 2 of Art. 13.15 Administrative Code (dissemination of information about the organization included in the list extremist, without indicating that its activities are prohibited). News from ABN dated July 17, 2017, which was noticed by Roskomnadzor, was is devoted to the refusal of the appellate board of the Supreme Court of Russia to cancel the decision on recognition as extremist and liquidation of the Administrative Center of the Witnesses Jehovah in Russia with 395 of his local organizations. The headline was said about the "liquidation" of the Witnesses Jehovah", and in the text - about the "elimination of organization "Jehovah's Witnesses"", but the wording "an organization banned in the territory Russia" was not in the note. Roskomnadzor's claims to ABN were obvious untenable: the article nevertheless spoke of a ban, even if the wording and differed from that prescribed by Roskomnadzor. In addition, administrative liability is provided solely for failure to mention the prohibition organizations included in the list of extremist organizations, and Witness organizations Jehovahs were added to it only on August 17, 2017, that is, a month later after the announcement of the news. As a result, the department was forced to agree with arguments of the ABN and abandon the idea of initiating the persecution of the publication.
He was released from the fine under Part 2 of Art. 13.15 Administrative Code for the alleged failure to mention the ban on Jehovah's Witness organizations and the chief Kirill Rubankov, editor of Kostroma.today: the proceedings in his case were terminated in the appellate instance due to the expiration of the term for bringing to responsibility. In August, the editor was punished for the fact that in the text of the news the publication about the detention of a follower of Jehovah's Witnesses was allegedly not mentioned recognition of the relevant organizations as extremist, although such a mention contained in the credits of the video inserted in the news.
Protocols under Part 6 of Art. 13.15 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (release of media products, publicly justifying terrorism) were compiled by Roskomnadzor in connection with broadcast on the radio station "Echo of Moscow in Pskov" of the program "Minute enlightenment” by journalist Svetlana Prokopieva and the publication of the transcript of the broadcast on the Pskov News Feed website. This was an episode aired on November 2018 and dedicated to the explosion in the FSB office in Arkhangelsk, in as a result of which three employees of the department were injured and a 17-year-old was killed the student who caused the explosion. A few minutes before the explosion, a young man published a message on the social network that the FSB is torturing people and fabricating cases. Analyzing this event, Prokopyeva reasoned that the actions of a young man were due to the repressive policies of the state, which restricts opportunities for civilized political struggle and expression of opinion and shows cruelty towards citizens. In December 2018 Roskomnadzor issued a warning to the radio station and the Pskovskaya Lenta Novosti for this material, and at the beginning of 2019 handed over protocols on administrative violations to the court, which fined both publications. In addition, the journalist herself in February 2019 became a suspect in a criminal case under Part 2 of Art. 205 2 UK (public justification of terrorism in the media). In our opinion, the involvement of the media and the author of the material to be held liable for this transmission is unlawful. According to Art. 205 2 of the Criminal Code, under the public justification of terrorism should be understood “a public statement recognizing the ideology and practice of terrorism as correct, needing support and imitation”, and another legal definition of this there is no concept in Russian law. In Prokopyeva's program, nothing was said about the fact that the ideology or practice of terrorism is correct and worthy of imitation, accordingly, we believe that the signs there was no justification for terrorism.
Some statistics
According to the SOVA Center, in 2018 for violent hate crimes, there were at least 11 convictions against 45 people, for vandalism for ideological reasons - 2 sentences against 6 people [15] , for real propaganda of hatred - 55 sentences against 65 people [16] . Citing these figures, let us explain that the data on sentences for statements that we operate, approximately three times less than the actual number of sentences, reflected in the statistics published twice a year by the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The fact is that we learn only about those sentences, about which are reported by the press, law enforcement agencies, courts, the convicts themselves and their defenders, etc., and such information does not always appear. Besides, in In many cases, we do not have enough information to assess legitimacy of sentences. It should not be forgotten that even when it is possible to say that the incriminated statements are indeed illegal, their public danger may be insignificant, for example, due to the fact that only a small audience got acquainted with them. Nevertheless, We believe it is important to demonstrate the at least approximate relation between justified prosecution and manifestly unjustified use anti-extremist articles of the Criminal Code.
Below in this chapter, we present the results of the count of court cases. decisions and newly initiated criminal cases, which seem to us at all unlawful or cause us significant complaints [17] . We group the sentences according to the articles of the Criminal Code (the cases themselves are considered in the relevant chapters of the report).
We consider unlawful 7 sentences against 8 people, issued in 2018 under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (in 2017 - 10 against 10). Public Crimean activists Dmitry Dzhigalov and Oleg Semyonov were fined for video with statements allegedly humiliating the dignity of the Bulgarians [18] . Velikiye Luki gamer Mikhail Larionov received two years probation for publishing in network fragment of the game stream, in which the enemy was trolled by aggressive anti-Russian rhetoric. Poet from the Oryol region Alexander Byvshev was sentenced to compulsory labor for publishing a pro-Ukrainian poems. Ingush opposition leader Magomed Khazbiev sentenced to two years and 11 months colony-settlements for the sum of several items, including for initiation hatred towards the authorities of Ingushetia and the head of the republic. Arkady Hakobyan from Kabardino-Balkaria was sentenced to compulsory labor for distributing materials of Jehovah's Witnesses, and Kh. Dinmukhametov, assistant to the imam from Chelyabinsk region, - to two years of imprisonment conditionally with a two-year probationary for distributing four copies of an unjustifiably prohibited islamic brochure. Finally, we found it unlawful in so far as inciting hatred against the social group "fans of rock music", sentence participant in the pogrom of 2010 at the rock festival "Tornado" in Miass Chelyabinsk region Alexander Giryu, sentenced on the basis of articles to six years in prison.
On the other hand, how at least two people previously wrongfully accused under Art. 282, – Anton Ushachev from Tatarstan, the author of crude inscriptions on the church fence, and Maxim Drozdov, who published a comic poem about the massacre of "heretic teacher" - the charges were dropped in 2018, and in addition, he was the infamous sentence of Evgeny Kort, who was convicted in 2016 for publication of a meme with Pushkin and Tesak.
We classify 6 cases as cases of unjustified persecution, initiated in 2018 under Art. 282 against six people; 2 of these cases were discontinued at the beginning of 2019. These figures are significantly lower than those found by us in the year. earlier when we counted 14 new cases against 15 people.
According to part 1 of Art. 148 of the Criminal Code, punishing for insulting the feelings of believers, in 2018, according to our data, one unfounded sentence was handed down in against one person (a year earlier - 5 against 5): in Naberezhnye Chelny there was Anton Ushachev was convicted for leaving crude inscriptions on the fence near the church. Sochi was the case of Viktor Nochevnov was terminated due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, accused of publishing memes depicting Jesus Christ. Court in Kurgan stopped criminal prosecution of a young man for posting on a social network photos with the image of the icon and an offensive comment, assigning him court fine. Meanwhile, three new cases, two of which were dismissed in early 2019 due to lack of composition crime, and one could not be stopped, because the defendant insisted on exemption from liability only on exculpatory grounds. Besides, the conviction was expunged from the neo-pagan Natalya Telegina, who was wrongfully convicted under this article a year earlier.
According to Art. 354 1 UK (“Justification of Nazism”) in 2018 year, according to our information, as in 2017, not a single wrongful sentence, but one new case was groundlessly initiated - against opposition blogger Konstantin Ishutov from Cheboksary for publishing in social networks of a Nazi leaflet with an appeal to Soviet citizens.
According to Art. 280 of the Criminal Code in 2018, as in 2017, was unlawfully one sentence passed - in Toropets, Tver region, he was sentenced to two years probation for an aggressive but abstract anti-government statement in social media activist Vladimir Yegorov. On dubious - though not unambiguous absent - on the grounds 4 new cases were initiated under this article; one of they, however, were closed by the investigation.
According to Art. 280 1 CC about calls for separatism in 2018 resulted in two wrongful convictions (in 2017 - one) - against the Ulyanovsk activist of the "Community of the Indigenous Russian People" Ivan Kolotilkina, who distributed leaflets calling for the creation of Russia, the “Russian state”, and a resident of Severomorsk, who spoke out on a social network in support for a referendum on the separation of the Murmansk region from Russia; both of them received suspended sentences. We doubt the accusation, brought under this article to the Sevastopol activist Valery Bolshakov, whose prosecution had begun a year earlier.
In 2018, as in 2017, the courts did not issue a single wrongful sentence under Art. 282 1 UK. However, according to this article at least two cases were filed on dubious grounds - against ten activists from the New Greatness group and three public administrators, propagating the ideology of "A.U.E."
According to Art. 282 2 In 2018, 10 wrongful convictions against 27 people (a year earlier wrongfully under this article, according to our data, 11 against 32 people were passed). For organization cells of the banned Islamic movement "Tablighi Jamaat" or participation in their activity, 5 sentences were handed down against 22 people (in Bashkortostan, Altai Territory, Moscow Region and Moscow). 5 more sentences against 5 people were taken out to Muslims studying the books of Said Nursi, on charges of participation in the non-existent, but, nevertheless, banned organization "Nurcular" (in Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk and Dagestan). One case against the accused participation in the banned "Army of the People's Will" of pensioner Vyacheslav Humpback - in 2018, the court returned to the prosecutor's office due to vagueness and inconsistency accusations. However, at least 38 new cases were unfounded, in which at least 108 people became defendants, and 36 of these cases in about 101 people are Jehovah's Witnesses, who in 2018 faced mass persecution (in three of these cases, charges and under Art. 282 3 on the financing of extremist activities). Two more cases under Art. 282 2 was initiated in Tatarstan - against 2 followers of Tablighi Jamaat and 5 members of the Faizrahmanist community. For comparison, in 2017 we counted 7 new cases initiated under Art. 282 2 against 14 people.
Separately, outside the general statistics, we note the sentences followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which we consider unlawful in part, relating to the composition of Article 205 5 Criminal Code on involvement in terrorist organization. There were 15 such sentences in 2018 against 49 people (in 2017 - 15 against 37), i.e. number of wrongfully convicted has grown. In two of these cases, 24 people were charged under Part 1 Art. 30 and Art. 278 of the Criminal Code, that is, in the preparation of the coup, from our point of view, also illegally. At least 20 people were arrested in 2018 on charges filed in 5 criminal cases on involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir (in 2017 we counted about 10 such cases against more than 40 people).
In 2018, according to our data, as in 2017, there were no not a single wrongful sentence was passed under articles 213 and 214 of the Criminal Code (“Hooliganism” and “Vandalism”), taking into account the motive of hatred. However, under Art. 213 was at least one criminal case was groundlessly initiated - in Chelyabinsk, the fact of the opposition action “He is not our king”, searches as part of his investigation passed by five people.
So, in total for anti-extremist criminal articles in 2018 21 wrongful sentences were handed down against 39 people (not counting cases of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which are initiated under anti-terrorist articles), i.e. e. slightly fewer people were wrongfully convicted than a year earlier, when there were 26 sentences against 47 people. At the same time, 11 sentences against 12 person was sentenced for "extremist" statements (in 2017 we counted 15 such sentences against 15 people) [19] , 10 against 35 - for involvement in the activities of extremist organizations (in 2017 there were 11 of them against 32). Thus, as in the previous year, some of the convicts were followers of banned religious organizations.
In total, we know about 50 new criminal cases, initiated during this period without due cause in respect of approximately 120 people, which is significantly more than in 2017, when it was unlawful about 30 cases were initiated against 40 people. Such a significant increase cases under the article on the continuation of the activities of extremist organizations, filed as part of a campaign to prosecute Jehovah's Witnesses, and only a tenth of the new cases concerned public statements.
Before moving on to our data in the scope of articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses aimed at combating extremism, we recall that the number of cases persecution under these articles is measured in hundreds (thus, according to the statistics of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court, only in the first half of 2018 under Art. 20.3 963 persons were punished by the Code of Administrative Offenses, under Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses - 1133 persons [20] ), however, only in dozens of cases do we have information about what served reason for persecution, and we have the opportunity to assess the degree of legality such.
We regard 29 cases as unlawful prosecution prosecution for a public display of Nazi or other prohibited symbols, that is, according to Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (in 2017, we counted 46). In all cases, it was about individuals, mainly about opposition activists. In 15 cases, a fine was imposed, in 7 - administrative arrest, 5 cases were dismissed in the court of first instance, outcome 2 more cases are unknown to us.
According to our information, for mass distribution extremist materials or possession for the purpose of such distribution, then is under Art. 20.29, 17 persons were unlawfully held accountable (in In 2017, there were at least 30 such). We know that in 14 of these cases the courts imposed a fine as punishment, one - administrative arrest, one the case was dismissed in the court of first instance, the fate of another is unknown. Most of those unreasonably prosecuted are Muslims various movements, Jehovah's Witnesses and opposition activists. Usually, actually mass distribution of prohibited materials, these people do not were doing.
The federal list of extremist materials has been replenished for 2018 by 466 points, while in 2017 - by 330 points, i.e. its growth rate picked up again, although it did not reach the level of 2016, when it increased by 785 points. It should also be borne in mind that in 2018 The Ministry of Justice, obviously, was engaged in putting the archives in order, since the list was replenished a significant amount of material prohibited by the courts in previous years, but for some reason not taken into account in a timely manner.
We consider it absolutely unlawful to be included in the list as at least 7 points with various non-dangerous oppositional materials (of which 2 - from Ukrainian sites), 20 points with materials of Jehovah's Witnesses, 22 points with Muslim materials, 2 items with historical writings, 1 item with a video by right-wing activists about a healthy lifestyle, as well as 11 points with various satirical materials, a total of 63 points (against 38, obviously wrongfully listed in 2017). Let us add, as usual, that we are not familiar with all materials from the Federal List and we do not exclude that the prohibitions of those of them, the content of which we do not know, may also be unjustified.
List of organizations banned in Russia for extremism, in 2018 replenished the illegally liquidated in 2014 Karelian regional branch of the interregional youth public charitable organization "Youth Human Rights Group (IPG)" [21] .
[1] Our work in 2018 on this topic was supported by the Norwegian Helsinki committee, the International Partnership for Human Rights and the European Union.
December 30, 2016 RPO Center "SOVA" was forcibly entered Ministry of Justice to the register of "non-profit organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent." We do not agree with this decision and will appeal it.
[2] See the chapter “ECtHR Practice” in: Kravchenko M. Misappropriation anti-extremist legislation in Russia in 2017 // SOVA Center. 2018. March 6 (https://www.sova-center.ru/misuse/publications/2018/03/d38945/#_Toc507372780).
[3] See: A criminal case was initiated against the director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature // Owl Center. 2015. October 29 (https://www.sova-center.ru/misuse/news/persecution/2015/10/d33129/).
[4] Consolidated statistical information on the activities of federal courts of general jurisdiction and magistrates judges for the 1st half of 2018 // Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. 2018 (http://www.cdep.ru/index.php?id=79&item=4758).
[5] Our position regarding the activities of Hizb-ut-Tahrir is based, in particular, on the decision of the ECtHR, issued as an addition to the decision on the complaint two convicted members of the organization against the actions of the Russian authorities. The ECtHR stated that although neither the teachings nor the practice of Hizb ut-Tahrir allow us to consider the party terrorist and it does not directly call for violence, its ban on other grounds, however, would be justified, since it assumes in the future overthrow of some existing political systems in order to establish Sharia-based dictatorship characterized by anti-Semitism and radical anti-Israeli propaganda (for which Hizb ut-Tahrir, in particular, was banned in Germany in 2003), as well as a categorical rejection of democracy and human rights and the legitimacy of the use of violence against countries whom the party regards as aggressors against the "lands of Islam". The goals of Hizb ut-Tahrir" is clearly contrary to the values of the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular, a commitment to the peaceful resolution of international conflicts and inviolability of human life, recognition of civil and political rights, democracy. Activities for such purposes are not protected by the European Convention about human rights.
[6] According to the 2014 law “On Amendments to Certain Legislative acts of the Russian Federation (in terms of improving countermeasures terrorism)”, criminal cases concerning the activities of terrorist organizations under the jurisdiction of the three (as amended in 2016) district military courts.
[7] Roskomnadzor performance results // Official website of the Federal Service for supervision in the field of communications, information technology and mass communications (Roskomnadzor). 2019. February (http://www.rkn.gov.ru/plan-and-reports/reports/p449/).
[8] In January 2019, the court dismissed the case against Shayakhmetov due to lack of composition crimes in connection with the partial decriminalization of Art. 282.
[9] Deployed We provided a list of possible claims in our 2011 report. See: Verkhovsky A. Misuse of Anti-Extremist Legislation in Russia in 2011 year // SOVA Center. 2012. March 29 (http://www.sova-center.ru/misuse/publications/2012/03/d24014/).
[10] About many cases of imposition of sanctions, we do not know for sure. Often known on a series of inspections and subsequent sanctions, but the number is not reported issued warnings and other acts of prosecutorial response. In such cases we count the whole series as a unit.
[11] By according to Roskomnadzor, "due to the presence of prohibited information" in the Unified Register for the first quarter of 2018, 53,848 sites and / or page indexes of sites on the Internet, for the second quarter 2018 - 49,212 sites and/or indexes website pages, for the third quarter - 58,111 sites and / or page indexes of sites on the Internet. See: Results activities of Roskomnadzor // Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Communications, Information technologies and mass communications (Roskomnadzor). 2019. February (http://www.rkn.gov.ru/plan-and-reports/reports/p449/).
[12] See more details in the simultaneously published report of "Owls": Yudina N. On the eve of changes? State against inciting hatred and political activity of nationalists in Russia in 2018.
[13] Roskomnadzor performance results // Official website of the Federal Service for supervision in the field of communications, information technology and mass communications (Roskomnadzor). 2019. February (http://www.rkn.gov.ru/plan-and-reports/reports/p449/).
[14] Results analysis of information on the implementation of activities of the Roskomnadzor activity plan for 3 quarter of 2018 // Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information technologies and mass communications (Roskomnadzor). November 7, 2018 (https://rkn.gov.ru/docs/doc_2342.docx).
[15] For more on this, see: Yudina N. Ultra-right and arithmetic: Hate crimes and countering them in Russia in 2018 // Owl Center. January 22, 2019 (https://www.sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/publications/2019/01/d40542/).
[16] See more details in the simultaneously published report of the "Owl": Yudina N. On the eve of change? State against incitement to hatred and political activity nationalists in Russia in 2018.
[17] Speaking about the legitimacy and illegality of court decisions, we consider them only on the merits, in most cases without touching the topic of possible procedural violations.
[18] The activists' conviction was overturned in February 2019 due to partial decriminalization Art. 282.
[19] The data on sentences given in this report do not numerically match the data in the report of N. Yudina “On the threshold of changes? State against excitation hatred and political activity of nationalists in Russia in 2018”, since here we took into account the sentences handed down under several articles, such as unlawful, if they considered the accusations on one of them unfounded. IN report "On the eve of change?" such sentences are categorized as “not sure".
[20] Summary statistical information on the activities of federal courts of general jurisdiction and justices of the peace for the 1st half of 2018 // Judicial Department at Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. 2018 (http://www.cdep.ru/index.php?id=79&item=4758).
[21] MPG of Karelia included in the list of extremist organizations // SOVA Center. 2018. November 7 (https://www.sova-center.ru/misuse/news/persecution/2018/11/d40252/).