The regional court overturned the fine of Ilya Frishman for videos with swastikas

The Omsk Regional Court overturned the decision on the fine under Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for publishing parody videos on a social network.

On June 14, 2019, the Omsk Regional Court overturned the decision of the Pervomaisky District Court of Omsk, which fined designer Ilya Frishman under Part 1 of Art. 20.3 (public display of Nazi symbols). The proceedings have been terminated.

Frishman was fined 1,000 rubles on April 11 for posting videos with Nazi symbols on the VKontakte social network. Initially, he said that the claims of law enforcement agencies were connected with an excerpt from the First Channel program "Big Difference" published back in 2010, which was a parody of the film "Seventeen Moments of Spring" (on the sleeves of the suits of the actors who played Muller, Stirlitz and Hitler, there was visible swastika). As it became known later, there were also three humorous videos based on a popular fragment from the movie "Bunker" in the case.

Frishman himself stated that he was not going to promote Nazi ideology, that he was a Jew by nationality and an Israeli citizen, and his ancestors died at the hands of the Nazis, but the district court did not heed these arguments. However, the District Attorney defended him, demanding that the Frishman case be dismissed due to the lack of corpus delicti. Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in turn, opposed the abolition of the fine, pointing out that fragments of the film "Bunker" taken out of context and altered do not condemn fascism, but, on the contrary, present it as "something funny, fun", and the demonstration of Nazi paraphernalia in such videos not only does not cause rejection among young people, but also forms a fashion for it. The court appointed an examination of the videos, the results of which canceled the fine.

We welcome the decision of the Omsk Regional Court, as we believe that Frishman's punishment was unlawful. The current Russian legislation punishes citizens and organizations for any display of Nazi symbols without regard to context, however, in our opinion, they should be punished only in cases where it is a question of promoting a banned ideology. The parody of "Seventeen Moments of Spring" certainly did not promote Nazism. What specific videos based on the film "Bunker" were present in the Frishman case, we do not know, but they, as a rule, are not aimed at promoting Nazism, but only use a scene involving Hitler and other leaders of Nazi Germany to create a comic effect in relation to certain topical issues.

Sources

• The Omsk Regional Court dismissed the case against Ilya Frishman. Message in the Telegram channel "Apology of protest". 2019. June 14.
• Case card No. 77-72/2019 // Website of the Omsk Regional Court. 2019. June 14.