The following is our review of the primary and most representative events relating to misuse of Russia’s anti-extremist legislation in March 2014.

Lawmaking

In March, obviously in relation to the conflict with Ukraine, parliamentarians engaged in the struggle against Nazism in all its manifestations.

Already in late February, State Duma deputy Irina Yarovaya (United Russia) presented to the State Duma a new version of her bill on the rehabilitation of nazism. This bill was developed back in 2009. Yarovaya suggests to introduce a new article into the Criminal Code in order to punish with a heavy fine or imprisonment for up to five years the following acts: “denial of the facts established by the decision of the International Military Tribunal for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries, the approval of the crimes established by the aforementioned decision, as well as the dissemination of false information on the activities of the Soviet Union during World War Two in relation to the prosecution of the crimes established by the aforementioned decision, committed in public.” Just like a few years ago, the government gave a negative opinion on this bill, due to shortcomings in the wording used by the authors and the duplication of bans already existing in legislation. From our perspective, if such a bill is accepted, it will not bring anything new into the struggle against real neo-Nazism, but because of its unclear formulations, it can lead to a restriction of freedom of speech, particularly in historical discussions.

Senators are also reanimating in haste their own version of the bill on the rehabilitation of nazism, which, like Yarovaya's initiative, has not yet obtained the government's support, due to similar reasons. Konstantin Dobrynin, member of the Federation Council, has declared that he intends to present his own bill to the State Duma soon. Essentially this bill will be virtually the same as the previous version.

At the end of March, Sergey Zhelezniak (vice-speaker of the State Duma and United Russia deputy) introduced a bill to the Duma in order to make amendments to article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (propaganda and public display of Nazi attributes or symbols, or public display of attributes or symbols of extremist organisations). From Zhelezniak's perspective, one should punish as well the propaganda, public display or selling (aiming at propaganda)“attributes or symbols of organisations having collaborated with fascist organisations or movements, and collaborating with international or foreign organisations, as well as their representatives, denying the decision of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Tribunal), or the decisions of either national, military or occupation courts based on the decision of the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Tribunal).” From our point of view, if Zhelezniak's bill  is accepted, with its vague terminology, law enforcement agencies will face significant difficulties in determining which symbols exactly are concerned by the ban, as many wartime symbols and attributes in different countries existed before the war and are in use today outside Nazi propaganda. And we are now confronted to a numerous cases of misuse of Art. 20.3, when the factor of the presence or absence of a propaganda context is not taken into account. If the bill passes, more such abuses are to be expected.

The peak of this month's legislative thoughts was reached with deputy Oleg Mikheev (A Just Russia)'s bill, providing for administrative responsibility in cases of dissemination of information “diminishing the merits of those who died in defense of the Fatherland, or the authority of the Russian Empire, the USSR, the Russian Federation, and their armed forces”. To punish those responsible for disseminating such information, this bill introduces a new article (6.17.1) into the Code of Administrative Offenses, establishing an administrative fine of two to three thousand rubles for citizens, of ten to 25 thousand rubles for officials and of 100 to 500 thousand rubles for legal entities. From our perspective, the voting of such a law would signify a de facto ban on historical discussion and political analysis.

In addition, we learned at the end of March that the government, following a meeting of the Council to the President of the RF on Inter-ethnic Relations, held on 22 October 2013, developed a draft law entitled “On the introduction of amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses (including on the dissemination of false and distorted information in the media)”. The government proposes to add to Art. 13.21 (breach of order of the production or distribution of media products) a fourth part, providing for legal responsibility in cases of production or distribution of media products containing “ information manifestly not corresponding to reality (false), or distorted information, entailing the emergence of a conflict on racial or ethnic grounds”. Such an offense would be punishable by a fine in the amount of ten thousand to thirty thousand rubles for citizens; for officials, by a fine of fifty thousand to one hundred thousand rubles; and for legal entities, by a fine of twenty thousand to two hundred thousand rubles. In addition, and for all categories, the material used for the administrative offense would be seized. We oppose the adoption of this bill. The media usually do not directly provoke inter-ethnic conflicts, but rather discuss events which already happened – not always in a restrained and objective manner, it goes without saying. Incitement is more likely to take place through direct communication with people or on social networks. Besides, according to the logic of law, a criminal act is punishable in itself. The crime's consequences can be considered in the sentencing, but cannot be the sole reason for the sanction.

Criminal prosecution

On March 5, the magistrates' court of the Ongudaisky district (Altai Republic), found Serzhan Svatov, former imam of the village of Kosh-Agach, guilty of organizing the activities of the banned religious movement Tablighi Jamaat, based on Part 1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code, and sentenced him to a fine of 100 thousand rubles and the interdiction to conduct religious activities for two years. The case against Haidar Ali Bugusynov, imam of the mosque of the village Tashanta, was closed due to expiration of the statute of limitations. The imams were accused of having disseminated the ideology of the movement among local inhabitants. Back in late February Savtov resigned from his functions as an imam, explaining that he wanted to relieve the local community of its problems. We wish to recall that we consider illegal the ban on the movement Tablighi Jamaat, which was not involved in violence or propaganda as such.

It became known in mid-March that on 19 February 2014 two inhabitants of Naberezhnye Chelny, Ilnur Hafizov and Fidail Salimzyanov, were sentenced to a fine of respectively 100 and 50 thousand rubles under Parts 1 and 2 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization of the activities of an extremist organization and participation in them), for having organized a home madrasa where the books by Said Nursi were studied. Hafizov and Salimzyanov were accused of having read and discussed, together with their Muslim acquaintances, Islamic religious literature, including the prohibited works by the Turkish theologian Said Nursi. We wish to recall that we do not consider as lawful either the ban on Nursi's works, since they do not contain any extreme statement, nor the ban on the organization Nurcular, which did not actually exist in Russia. Accordingly, we oppose the prosecution of individual believers studying Nursi's books.

It became known on 21 March 2014 that a case was initiated under Part 2 of Art. 214 (vandalism) of the Criminal Code concerning the action Freedom (Svoboda), which was held on 23 February by the church of the Savior on Spilled Blood in Saint-Petersburg. As a reminder, the five participants to this action in support of Euromaidan got on the Malo-Konyushenny bridge, opposite the church, and deployed two flags – one black, the other the national flag of Ukraine. They went on with burning car tires and banging sticks on metal sheets. Three people were arrested and taken to the police: artist Peter Pavlensky, activist Yaroslav Gradil and anarchist Maria Alexandrova. On 25 February, the Dzerzhinsky District court in Saint-Petersburg pronounced Pavlensky and Gradil not guilty under Part 1 of Art. 20.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (petty hooliganism), but then Pavlensky was sentenced to a fine of 10 thousand rubles under Part 5 of Art. 20.2 (violation of order at a public event). On 21 March Pavlensky, Gradil and Alexandrova's apartments were searched. All the three were questioned as witnesses in the case for vandalism committed by a group of persons or for motives of political, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or social hatred or hostility. It is still unknown whether the participants to the action Svoboda are being charged for motives of hatred, but regardless of this, we consider the opening of this case to be unlawful. This action does not fall under the definition of vandalism as it exists in the Criminal Code, since in its course no damage was done to any building or structure, and no property was destroyed either on public transport or on another public place. Seemingly, the most important material damage caused by the action has been soot on the street.

Administrative prosecution

Early in March, the Sovietsky District Court of Samara found the leader of the religious association Jehovah's Witnesses of Samara guilty for distributing prohibited Jehovah's Witnesses' literature during prayer meetings, and sentenced him to a fine of 50 thousand rubles under Art. 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. As a reminder, we consider the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses and the prohibition of their texts for extremism to be unlawful, and regard these actions by the authorities as religious discrimination.

It became known in mid-March that the Pallasovsky District Court of the Volgograd Region sentenced the owners of the local café “El'” to a fine of 20 thousand rubles under Part 2 of Art. 6.17 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (violation of the legislation on the protection of children from information harmful to their health and/or development). The reason invoked was that clients could access forbidden information, including extremist materials, from the computers put at their disposal in the cafe. Available systems for filtering information are not effective, and the owners of computer clubs, Internet cafes, etc, must not be blamed for this.

At about the same time, the administration of Saint-Petersburg declared that the Nevsky District Police is conducting raids in order to combat the trafficking of “objects of an extremist nature” and to seize such objects. It was also said that as a result of recent raids, a steel belt buckle from the Third Reich was discovered, whose price was set at 1,5 thousand rubles. A lawsuit has been engaged at the court against the seller. From our perspective, the police are acting illegally when confiscating antique goods. Indeed, Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses prohibits the display of Nazi symbols, as well as the production, sale, or acquisition with the aim of selling either of Nazi attributes or symbols, or attributes or symbols confusingly resembling Nazi attributes or symbols, and aimed at Nazi propaganda. That is why entrepreneurs commercializing antiques with such symbols should be fined if they show them in window displays, and obliged to remove them from display. However, confiscation of antiques representing financial value for their seller, which are not a tool for propaganda, is unjustified. The destruction of antique objects seems to us inappropriate as well, since they possess historical value and can be transferred to a museum. We are convinced that Art. 20.3 of the Administrative Code should be applied not against antique dealers, but rather against contemporary producers of objects with Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols (badges, clothes, copies of weapons, etc) and against the distributors of such objects.

Prohibition of materials for extremism and other state and public actions

In March 2014 the Prosecutor's Office of Naberezhnye Chelny initiated a lawsuit concerning the recognition of 18 books – 17 works of Said Nursi and M. Veld's book “Islam in modern Turkey” (biography of Said Nursi) – as extremist materials. These books were seized during a search at the apartment of Nakia Sharifullina, who is at the center of a criminal case under Part 1 of Art. 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization of the activities of an extremist organization) and is accused of having coordinated the activities of a “home women's madrasa” where Nursi's books were studied.  Some of these books, including “Islam in Modern Turkey”, have already been banned and included into the federal list of extremist materials.

In mid-March, the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Dagestan declared that the Nogai District Court decided to consider as extremist A. Philips’ brochure “The true religion of Allah”, as well as a videodisc containing a lecture by Khalid Yasin, entitled “The duties of the Muslim woman”. From our point of view, both Philips’ brochure and Yasin's lecture were unlawfully classified as extremist. “The true religion of Allah” is a small booklet about Islam, asserting the truth of the latter as a faith, but does not contain any aggressive attacks against followers of other religions. Yasin's lecture is dedicated to the problems of Muslim women in today's world, describing their rights and duties. It contains rare occurrences of rhetoric against Western civilization and its values, alien to a Muslim. However, no provocative appeals can be found in the lecture.

In mid-March, under the pretext of checking “for extremism”, copies of the newspaper “Modern Kalmykia” were seized by the police in Elista. The police seized the copies by entering into the private apartment of one of the chief editor's acquaintances. The chief editor, Valery Badmaev, tried to stop the police's action. As a result, he was taken to the Elista city Ministry of Interior department, where he was charged with hooliganism. Badmaev appealed against the police's actions – trespass, death threats, illegal detention, and seizure of a newspaper – before the city court. The reason invoked for the seizure was that it contained an address by Professor Vladimir Gorbatenko from Kiev to the Russian public about a possible deployment of Russian troops in Ukraine. We did not find signs of extremism in this text. Besides, it must be highlighted that the seizure of the whole print run for a check was unjustified, as one or a few copies would have sufficed.

In March the companies Yandex and Rostelecom contested the decision of the Tsentralny District Court of Khabarovsk about the restriction of access to the websites Yandex.Video, Kinopoisk, Wikipedia and several online libraries. As a reminder, the court ordered the company Rostelecom to restrict access to a range of materials deemed extremist, and the links leading to them. Thereupon the court decision states that access to the concerned websites should be limited as a whole, by adding to the border router new rules for filtering IP-addresses. The representative of the Tsentralny Court of Khabarovsk declared that the court's verdict mentions blocking access for “concrete IP-addresses containing prohibited materials”, and not for the resources as a whole. Apparently, members of the Khabarovsk Court do not understand the difference between restricting access by IP-addresses and by the URL-address of a page. Sadly, Russian courts often prove to be incompetent in matters linked to the functioning of the global network.

In March, the Russian authorities have launched a new blocking mechanism, the so-called “Lugovoy law”, which allowed the Prosecutor’s General Office to block websites without a court order. In particular, state media oversight agency, Roskomnadzor, at the request of the Prosecutor’s General, brought into the register of banned information the popular opposition websites “Grani.ru”, “Kasparov.ru” and “Daily Journal” (ej.ru), and sent their providers a request to immediately restrict access to them. According to the prosecutors' statement, these sites contained calls for illegal activities and participation in public events held in violation of the established order. The websites' owners, however, have not been informed about which materials exactly are concerned. They are appealing against the authorities' decision before court.

Alexey Navalny's blog on LiveJournal (navalny.livejournal.com) was also added on the register. According to the Prosecutor's Office, the functioning of this page was violating the provisions of the court statement on preventive measures towards a citizen against whom a criminal case is instigated. The website of the radio station “Echo of Moscow” (echo.msk.ru) was also temporarily blocked entirely, because of the re-publication of contents from Navalny's blog. Besides, Moscow Prosecutor's Office sent warnings about violations of the law to several Russian content providers, including the owners of Live Journal and Afisha-Rambler-SUP. It must be noted that Navalny himself did not use the Internet and did not violate the provisions on preventive measures. After he was placed under house arrest and denied access to the Internet, the contents on his blog were posted by his associates. Moreover, it is absolutely not clear what the link is between this hypothetical violation of preventive measures and the law on extrajudicial blocking of websites. The latter provides for a restriction of access in case the information published contains “calls to riots, realization of extremist activities, incitement to ethnic and/or religious strife, participation in terrorist activities, participation in  mass public events held in violation of the established order”. Navalny was not accused of any such activities neither by the Prosecutor’s General Office, nor by Roscomnadzor: the blog was blocked illegally. Moscow Prosecutor's Office, in its warnings to content providers, pointed to the existence of such appeals among networks in support of Navalny, and to the fact that Navalny's Twitter, LiveJournal and VKontakte accounts “form an opinion about the need and possibility of such violations”, but failed to demonstrate any of such violations.

We have reasons to note that, in accordance with our fears, the law on extrajudicial blocking of websites is being used by the authorities broadly and arbitrarily, without consideration for its precise content. Sadly, there is every reason to expect further expansion of this practice in the near future.

In March, sanctions were taken against the portal Lenta.ru, which brought about its actual editorial mayhem. Reprimands from Roskomnadzor were provoked by the publication of the article “We are not armed forces”, an interview by correspondent Ilya Azar of the representative of the Ukrainian Pravy Sektor Andrei Tarasenko, in which the latter declared the inevitability of guerrilla warfare in case Ukraine was invaded by Russian troops. The article also contained a link to an interview with the current leader of Pravy Sektor, Dmitri Yarosh, published by the Ukrainian nationalist organization Trizub. This interview dates back from 2008 and deals with the Russian-Georgian conflict: Yarosh protests against Russia's imperial policy and predicts a war against the “Moscow empire” until its final collapse. On 12 March 2014, Roskomnadzor sent the portal a warning. After that Alexander Mamut, owner of the Afisha-Rambler-SUP holding to which Lenta.ru belongs, dismissed chief editor Galina Timchenko. Julia Minder, the director of publications, subsequently resigned. Mamut also demanded the dismissal of Ilya Azar. Most of the editorial board declared its solidarity with its dismissed colleagues and its willingness to leave the portal. It is worth noting that if the interviewee is not concerned by direct investigation, and does not make open calls for illegal actions, the imposition of sanctions (even in the form of a warning) against the publication of his words is disproportionate and unjustified. As it happens, there were no such calls in the interview conducted by Ilya Azar. When it comes to the interview with Yarosh, law enforcement authorities could well have contented themselves with requiring from the website's administrators to remove the link to the publication. There was no apparent reason for harming the editorial board, and it is not surprising that this was done, as usual, without the formal involvement of the authorities.