Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 29 – Mariya Kravchenko,
a specialist on extremist crimes for the SOVA monitoring center, says that
approximately 95 percent of all charges of extremism brought by Russian
officials involve postings of various kinds on the Internet, just one of the reasons
why the country’s anti-extremism laws are being applied indiscriminately and
incorrectly.
Not only does it mean that most charges in
this area are about speech rather than action, but it allows the authorities to
define the nature of the charges they want to make before doing any
investigation, she says. As a result, “ever more people are being convicted of
extremism” (https://mbk.media/suzhet/pochemu-vse-bolshe-lyudej-sudyat/).
Her conclusions are based on
analyses SOVA experts have performed on data recently released by the Russian
Supreme Court (sova-center.ru/religion/news/extremism/counter-extremism/2018/04/d39283/
and kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5AE43BB23475C). They show the following:
·
The
number of people charged for inciting hatred rose from 502 in 2016 to 571 in
2017;
·
The
number charged in 2017 for public calls for conducting extremist activities
rose to 170;
·
And
the number charged with propagandizing terrorism rose to 96. In addition, eight
were convicted of calling for separatism, eight for the rehabilitation of
Nazism, and ten for offending the feelings of believers.
Kravchenko says that “the term ‘extremism’
is in general very problematic, and we try not to use it,” even though Russian
investigators, prosecutors and courts employ it in an indiscriminate fashion.
Especially elastic is the paragraph of Article 282 about inciting hatred, and
that may be why it is used more often than the others.
Despite the fact that this law has been on
the books for more than 15 years and that the Supreme Court has issued a
special order on how it is to be applied, there remain many problems connected
with its application and sometimes clear evidence of direct misuse, the SOVA
analyst says.
Similar if somewhat few problems involve
the application of other paragraphs. The one about violating the territorial
integrity of the Russian Federation has been used to block any discussion of the
regions, that about rehabilitating Nazism to prevent discussing historical
issues, and the one about offending believers has been applied often without
justification.
Igor Golovko, a lawyer for the FMG Group,
says that another problem with the application of anti-extremism laws is that investigators
often interview someone they plan to charge without an attorney being present
and thus get a confession before any legal procedures are in place.
Kravchenko says that “the growth in the
number of prosecutions for propaganda over the Internet since the mid-2000s is
connected with the fact that the number of users has grown while the number of
independent spaces for discussion has contracted. As a result, independent
discussion has shifted to the Internet.”
The authorities are frightened by this
trend and they also have discovered that going after people who post things on
the Internet is far easier than going after those who may actually be engaged in
extremist activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment