Misuse of Anti-Extremism in November 2019

The following is our review of the primary and most representative events in misuse of Russia's anti-extremist legislation in November 2019.

Lawmaking On November 21, the State Duma approved in the third reading a bill proposed by deputies from United Russia to increase liability for violations of the information-related legislation. According to the bill, Article 13.11 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (violation of the legislation of the Russian Federation on personal data) should be supplemented by a norm establishing liability for refusal to store personal data of Russian citizens in Russia. In addition, it is proposed to impose large fines for repeated violations of the law on information that fall under Articles 13.31, 13.35, 13.36, 13.37, 13.39 and 13.40 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, which include anti-extremist restrictions among others.

On November 25, the Federation Council supported the law “On Amending the Law of the Russian Federation ‘On Mass Media’ and the Federal Law ‘On Information, Informational Technologies and the Protection of Information.’” This new legislation provides for the possibility of recognizing individuals as “foreign agent” mass media and establishes the procedure for disseminating information by the media recognized as “foreign agents.” An individual can be branded a “foreign agent mass media” resource, if they distribute any messages or materials to an unlimited number of people, and, at the same time but not necessarily in connection with this activity, receive money from any foreign sources. In addition, this status can be imposed for participating in the creation of materials by “foreign agent mass media,” if a participant also receives money from abroad or from a “foreign agent mass media” outlet. Russian physical and legal entities engaged in such activities will be included on the Foreign Agent Mass Media Register, and might fall under the provisions of the Law “On Non-Profit Organizations” that apply to “foreign agent” non-profits. The Ministry of Justice will maintain the new register, but the decision to add a particular individual to it will be made in consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Imprints, messages and materials of both “foreign agent mass media” resources and their corresponding Russian “foreign agent” legal entities will have to indicate this status. A similar indication should be included in the output of a registered mass media outlet established by such a legal entity. In the event that a decision in an administrative case on violation of the procedure by a “foreign agent” mass media outlet or its Russian legal entity enters into force (the corresponding article is proposed for inclusion in the Code of Administrative Offenses), Roskomnadzor will block the offender’s resource in the manner determined by the government.

On November 25, the Federation Council approved the law “On Amending Article 6 of the Federal Law ‘On Immortalization of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945,’ and Article 1 of the Federal Law ‘On Combating Extremist Activity,’” which changes the rules on the use of prohibited symbols. The newly adopted law replaces the legislative ban on “propaganda and public display” of Nazi symbols and attributes and symbols of extremist organizations with a ban on its “use.” “Cases of using” such symbols, “that form a negative attitude towards the ideology of Nazism and extremism and contain no signs of propaganda or justification of Nazi or extremist ideology” will be exempt from the ban.

We welcome the abolition of the blanket prohibition against demonstrating banned symbols, but it is not clear how the fact of forming a “negative attitude” towards Nazi ideology is to be established. In addition, this clause will not cover all the cases, in which banned symbols are displayed without the purpose of advocating the corresponding ideology. It is also unclear what legal consequences may follow in practice from including the use (even non-public) of prohibited symbols in the definition of extremism. Notably, the amendments to Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses on penalties for displaying Nazi symbols are currently only being prepared for the first reading in the Duma, so we still do not know whether this norm is also going to replace the ban on public display of symbols by the ban on its use.

Prosecutions for Display of Nazi Symbols

Meanwhile, inappropriate prosecutions of citizens for displaying Nazi symbols continued in November. A juvenile affairs commission in Kursk decided to fine Stepan L., a minor, one thousand rubles under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. The decision was based on the teenager’s post on his VKontakte page, which contained the meme “Tom and Jerry: USSR vs Germany” – аn excerpt from the Tom and Jerry cartoon, edited so that a flag with a swastika is attached to Tom’s figure, and a Soviet flag is attached to the figure of Jerry. In the end of the video Jerry defeats Tom to the sounds of the USSR anthem. Obviously, the teenager’s post was not aimed at promoting Nazi ideology.

The Zavolzhsky District Court of Tver imposed a fine of the same amount on Georgy Babanin, an employee of the Tver ambulance station, for two anti-fascist posts he made in 2014 on his VKontakte page. The first post is a caricature of an eagle from the Third Reich coat of arms held by the throat by a red fist; the cartoon is set to the song “Fascism will not pass!” by the Zasrali Solntse band. In addition, Babanin published a photograph of a Hanukkah menorah standing on the windowsill, behind which a Nazi flag was visible in a window. The photograph was taken in 1932 by a rabbi from the German city of Kiel; it is stored in the Holocaust Museum of the Yad Vashem Memorial Complex in Jerusalem. Babanin intends to appeal the court decision.

The Sverdlovsky District Court of Irkutsk sentenced political strategist and public figure Igor Madasov to two days of administrative arrest for publishing on Facebook a post depicting two badges – one of the Russian police patrol service and the other one of the Third Reich Department of Finance (with an eagle holding a Nazi swastika) – with the caption, “POLICE everything old is new again.” In this case, the defendant’s intent was obviously to criticize the Russian police and not to advocate Nazism.

Conversely, Dmitry Miropoltsev – a lawyer and public figure from the Kemerovo Region –manage to achieve the termination of his case under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. Miropoltsev posted a screenshot on his VKontakte page from the federal TV news segment about a flash mob, which took place in Penza in 2016 and was dedicated to the 55th anniversary of the first manned space flight. The flash mob participants – representatives of the regional branch of the officially organized Russian Student Squads movement – gathered in a formation shaped as the number 55, which resembled a swastika when viewed from above. The court decided to close the case for lack of corpus delicti, stating that “from the submitted graphic file ... it follows that it represents two digits 5 (signs for recording a specific numeric value).”

Meanwhile, in Ingushetia, the republican branch of the Ministry of Justice of Russia went to the Supreme Court of the republic seeking to liquidate the Teips Council of the Ingush People movement. In November, the court suspended its review of the claim due to the fact that the court’s decisions on the legality of the Ministry of Justice’s audit of the movement and on punishment for non-compliance with the Ministry of Justice requirements had not yet entered into force. The Ministry of Justice cites many arguments in support of the need to liquidate the Teips Council; one of them states that the symbols used by the Council do not correspond to those described in its charter. “Thus, 11 additional small symbols (elements) are used around the emblem’s circumference... One of the aforementioned elements is a solar sign, similar to a Nazi symbol up to the degree of mixing,” the claim says. However, according to On the Ancient Evloev Family by R. Kurkiev, the swastika is a tamga (emblem) of the Yovloy (Evloev) family from the village of Tisha Yovli. We believe that requiring representatives of an Ingush clan and Ingush national organizations not to use their traditional symbols merely on the basis of their external similarity with banned symbols is inappropriate.

Prosecutions for Incitement to Hatred and Oppositional Statements

In late November, the Mendeleyevsky District Court of Tatarstan fined Radislav Fedorov 10 thousand rubles under Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for humiliation of human dignity on the grounds of affiliation with a particular social group and attitude toward religion. The prosecution was based on two videos published by Fedorov on VKontakte: “Message from the Kerch Killer” and “Dimon, Who Are You?” We were unable to review the first video, in which college shooter Vladislav Roslyakov sets forth his ideas on religion, and which, in the court’s opinion, humiliates human dignity on the grounds of attitude toward religion. “Dimon, Who Are You?” is an animated video, in which Alexei Navalny and Leonid Volkov escort rapping prime minister Dmitry Medvedev to an electric chair, as Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov and Igor Sechin observe. It is worth reiterating our opposition to applying sanctions for incitement to hatred (humiliation of dignity) to the cases of insulted government officials, since they do not constitute a social group in need of special protection from incitement to hatred; we generally believe that the vague term “social group” should be excluded from the composition of anti-extremist articles. Therefore, in our opinion, there was no reason to hold anyone accountable for the publication of this video.

We are aware of four cases of prosecution under Article 20.1 Part 3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for contempt of authority on the Internet, which took place in November. Three cases had to do with swear words addressed to the president, and in one additional case they were addressed to “Putin’s judges.” One of these cases involved charges against a minor. We believe that Article 20.1 Part 3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses is an excessive norm, which is close to anti-extremist regulation and clearly aimed at suppressing criticism of the authorities that are already adequately protected by other legal norms.

Prosecutions against Religious Organizations and Believers

The news in this category in November pertained only to followers of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic party.

The Oktyabrsky District Court of Tomsk in early November found Sergey Klimov guilty under Article 282.2 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (organizing the activities of an extremist organization, that is, of the Jehovah's Witnesses community) and sentenced him to six years in a penal colony with a subsequent year of restriction of freedom and a ban on engaging in educational activities and publishing materials on the Internet for five years.

The Ordzhonikidze District Court of Perm in mid-November sentenced Alexei Metsger to a fine of 350 thousand rubles under Article 282.2 Part 2 of the Criminal Code (participation in the activities of an extremist organization).

Meanwhile, the Khabarovsk Regional Court commuted the sentence under Article 282.2 Part 2 of the Criminal Code to Valery Moskalenko on appeal. The court replaced his community service verdict with a fine of 500 thousand rubles, from which the believer was released due to having spent more than a year behind bars.

Several cases against Jehovah’s Witnesses were returned to the prosecutor’s office in November on the basis of violations of the Criminal Procedure Code committed in the course of filing the claim. The Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok returned to the prosecutor the case under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code against Valentin Osadchuk and six women aged 61 to 85 years: Nadezhda Anoykina, Lyubov Galaktionova, Elena Zayschuk, Nailia Kogai, Nina Purge and Raisa Usanova.

The Naberezhnye Chelny City Court of Tatarstan returned to the prosecutor the case of Ilkham Karimov, Vladimir Myakushin, Konstantin Matrashov and Aidar Yulmetiev under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code. The Yelizovsky District Court of Kamchatka Krai returned to the prosecutor the case under Article 282.2 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of Konstantin and Snezhana Bazhenov, as well as of Vera Zolotova.

The Lensky District Court of Sakha Republic (Yakutia) returned to the prosecutor’s office the case of Igor Ivashin under the same part of the same article. The court’s reasoning is worth noting. According to the believers, the court indicated that the charge against Ivashin was not specified – the investigator failed to indicate exactly what the unlawful actions of the believer were; it was also unclear how the “religious chants” and the “sermon” were related to continuing the activities of the liquidated religious organization, which has never been registered in Lensk.

However, we continued to receive information on new criminal cases against Jehovah's Witnesses throughout November.

Thus, four criminal cases were reportedly initiated under Article 282.2 Part 2 of the Criminal Code against Anastasia Sycheva, Svetlana Monis, Elena Reyno-Chernyshova and Yulia Kaganovich in Birobidzhan (Jewish Autonomous Oblast) in September through November. All women were officially named as defendants and put under travel restrictions. According to the investigators, they continued the activities of the local community, which was banned in 2016.

A prosecution under Article 282.2 Part 1 was initiated in Primorsky Krai against two residents of Ussuriysk, Dmitry Tischenko and Anton Chermnykh. They became defendants in the criminal case of Sergei Korolchuk opened in March.

November brought new cases and sentences against real and alleged members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical party banned in Russia as terrorist – in our opinion, without sufficient reason. We view charges of terrorism against Hizb ut-Tahrir followers imposed merely on the basis of their party activity as inappropriate, since the party itself was never known to be involved in terrorism.

We learned In November that, in October, the Judicial Chamber on Cases of the Military of the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the sentence issued in June in the case of 50-year-old Novosibirsk resident Kabul Usenbaev. At that time, the Far Eastern District Military Court found him guilty of participating in the activities of a terrorist organization (Article 205.5 Part 2 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced him to 13 years in prison in a maximum security penal colony.

In mid-November, the Southern (North Caucasus) District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don delivered the sentence in the Yalta case against Hizb ut-Tahrir members. Muslim Aliev and Inver Bekirov were found guilty under Article 205.5 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (organizing the activities of a terrorist organization) and Article 278 of the Criminal Code with the use of Article 30 Part 1 of the Criminal Code (preparations for a violent seizure of power) and sentenced to 19 and 18 years in prison, respectively. The remaining defendants were found guilty under Article 205.5 Part 2 of the Criminal Code and Article 278 of the Criminal Code with the use of Article 30 Part 1 of the Criminal Code and sentenced as follows: Emir-Usein Kuku and Vadim Siruk – to 12 years of incarceration, Refat Alimov – to 8 years, and Arsen Dzhepparov – to 7 years. All offenders were sentenced to a one-year restriction of freedom as an additional punishment.

In the second half of the month, the Central District Military Court issued a verdict to imprison Amir Gilyazov, a follower of Hizb ut-Tahrir from Chelyabinsk. He was found guilty under Article 205.5 Part 2 of the Criminal Code, under Article 205.2 Part 2 of the Criminal Code (public justification of terrorism on the Internet) and Article 205.1 Part 1.1 of the Criminal Code (recruitment into a terrorist organization) and sentenced to 11 years of incarceration with a ban on activities related to the administration of websites and online channels for a period of three years. However, he was released from serving his sentence in a colony for health reasons. Gilyazov has a disability; he moves in a wheelchair due to Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

In mid-November, Azat Lukmanov was detained in Moscow on suspicion of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Lukmanov was taken to Ufa, where the court was to choose a preventive measure for him. Previously, Lukmanov had already been convicted twice under Article 282.2 Part 1 of the Criminal Code for his involvement in the party activities.

In the second half of November, the FSB of Russia reported that two Hizb ut-Tahrir “leaders” and seven “participants” were detained in Moscow, Tatarstan and the Tyumen Region. During the searches, “a significant amount” of Hizb ut-Tahrir materials banned in Russia, communications equipment and electronic media were seized. According to OVD-Info Project, Marat Saibatalov and Alim Timkanov have been charged under Article 205.5 Part 1 of the Criminal Code, Ruslan Bariev, Damir Abdrafikov, Rafis Idrisov, Aidar Tashbulatov, Ruslan Fomin and Uzbek citizen Farrukh Makhkamov – under Article 205.5 Part 2 of the Criminal Code. It was reported that some of the defendants may have been tortured in the course of the searches.