The ECHR registered the complaint of Yegor Zhukov

The Strasbourg court will consider the complaint of Yegor Zhukov, convicted under Art. 280 of the Criminal Code for videos about non-violent methods of resistance.

On October 22, 2020, it became known that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) registered the complaint of the convict under Part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activity committed on the Internet) by Yegor Zhukov. This was announced by the head of the international human rights group "Agora" Pavel Chikov with reference to the head of international practice Kirill Koroteev.

In December 2019, Zhukov was given a three-year suspended sentence with a two-year ban on website administration. The Moscow City Court in February 2020 approved this verdict. Initially, Zhukov was accused of participating in mass riots in Moscow on July 27, 2019 (Part 2 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code), but then he was charged with incitement to extremism, and he was transferred from the pre-trial detention center to house arrest. The accusation was related to the publication on the Zhukov's Blog channel on YouTube of videos "Rally on October 7 or how the protest is leaked", "Peaceful revolution is possible (evidence)", "Rallies. What's next" and "Boycott of the elections is just the beginning."

Zhukov filed a complaint with the ECtHR in May 2020. He indicated that he considers the criminal prosecution and conviction politically motivated, since he was punished for legitimate political statements, i.e., in essence, for criticizing the current government and statements about the effectiveness of non-violent methods of combating it. In his opinion, the sentence, in fact, his sentence became an act of intimidation, which is a violation of Art. 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the use of existing restrictions on rights and freedoms for purposes other than those for which they were provided. Zhukov also claims in the complaint that the principle of equality of arms was violated during the consideration of his case: the court did not give him the opportunity to object to the charges, the main evidence was the linguistic examination of the videos, which was carried out by Alexander Korshikov, an employee of the Institute of Forensic Science of the Center for Special Equipment of the FSB of Russia, while reviews The court did not accept this examination, and refused to interrogate other linguistic experts. Finally, Zhukov stated in a complaint about the violation of his right to freedom of expression: from his point of view, in fact, he was convicted not for his statements, but for separate words taken out of context, in which the expert found the motive of political hatred, although in fact the applicant consistently convinced the audience of the effectiveness and necessity of using non-violent methods of struggle. The remaining videos of Zhukov and his behavior before and after they were posted, which could have been used to assess his commitment to extremist expressions and behavior, were left without consideration, the complaint to the ECHR noted.

The SOVA Center also believes that Zhukov was sentenced unlawfully, since in the videos mentioned he only called on the opposition to fight more actively and thoughtfully against the regime that has developed in Russia, but promoted exclusively non-violent methods of resistance. The methods of political struggle listed by Zhukov, from our point of view, do not fall under the definition of extremist activity in the relevant law, which covers precisely violent actions against the authorities.

Sources

• The European Court registered the complaint of Yegor Zhukov // Pavel Chikov - the head of the Agora in Telegram. 2020. October 22.