Once again, I have decided to share a translation of an article from Snob.ru that I found intriguing and relevant. The political situations in Russia and the United States are complex, interconnected, and surprisingly similar. How far from this are we really?
“He disrespected vatniki.” How can people be jailed for social media posts?
by Evgeniya Sokolovskaya, 26 July 2018
In Russia you can be prosecuted for liking photos with swastikas, criticizing Putin on your VKontakte* page, and reposting photos of [Duma member] Milonov. Snob reports several true methods of being called to court.
Criticize the Russian Orthodox Church and the roads
On May 8 investigators came to Barnaul resident Maria Motuznaya’s house with a search warrant. First they took her phone and computer, then took her to be questioned at the police station, where they forced her to sign a confession.
A criminal case was opened against Maria under the law against “extremism” – she published several “demotivational images” on her VKontakte page. Among them was a picture of a Russian orthodox procession along a dirty road with puddles, with the caption “The two biggest downfalls of Russia.”
Motuznaya was assigned a public defender, Irina Sertyagina, but she says that the defender did not try to help her, refused to answer questions, and did not even introduce herself. On the other hand, she conversed energetically and familiarly with the prosecutor.
“I believe that I am in this difficult position, of having allegedly admitted guilt, because of this so-called defender. When no one told me that I have the right to not sign anything and not give any explanations! All of her actions were in the interests of the police,” Motuznaya said. She is now being represented by Aleksei Bushmakov, a lawyer from the international human rights group “Agora.” He previously defended the blogger Ruslan Sokolovskiy, who was convicted for catching Pokemon in a church.
Defend yourself from attacks by nationalists
Recently in Abakan, the defender of Khakas culture Lidia Bainova has been accused of extremism. She published a post on her VKontakte page that criticized those who harass Khakas people, and the FSB considered it an incitement to violence against “members of the Russian ethnicity.”
The majority of the inhabitants of Khakassia are ethnic Russians. Only 12% of inhabitants consider themselves Khakas, but even they are slowly forgetting their native language and culture.
Lidia Bainova, who is Khakas, is trying to remedy this: she works to popularize the Khakas language, performs at ethnic culture festivals, and calls on Russians not to demean the Khakas.
“Some people are lucky enough not to encounter nationalism. I have constantly encountered it in my 29 years of living in Abakan. My mother and father constantly deal with microagressions, like “they’re Khakas, but somehow they got a two-bedroom apartment downtown” or “you’re so well-dressed for a Khakas,” and so on,” said Bainova.
For trying to stop ethnic discrimination, she faces up to five years imprisonment.
Call attention to violence against children
For six months, Evgeniya Chudnovets’s life seemed more like a reality show than the life of an ordinary day-care worker from the Kurgansk region.
Everything started when Evgeniya reposted a three-second video in which the leaders of a children’s camp are making fun of a naked child. She wanted to call attention to the problem, but instead attracted the attention of investigators: in November 2016 Chudnovets was sentenced to five months jail time for distribution of child pornography.
The caregiver spent New Year’s 2017 in detention. During the New Year’s holiday she was sent to solitary confinement for having covered her legs with a blanket to avoid freezing. There was a scandal, Chudnovets was released from solitary confinement early, and the Attorney General took an interest in her case.
A month later the Supreme Court, which had previously agreed with the prosecutor, was asked to review the caregiver’s case. Evgeniya Chudnovets was released at the beginning of March – not without Putin’s help, as the Kremlin noted.
Repost news about how you were convicted for another repost
In 2010, a court in Moscow designated the slogan “Russian orthodoxy or death” as extremist.
In 2012, the Duma member Vitaliy Milonov asked for the slogan to be removed from the list of extremist materials, but he was not successful.
In 2014, Milonov posted a photo of himself online in a T-shirt bearing the words “Russian orthodoxy or death,” and Dmitriy Semenov, the national coordinator of Open Russia**, reposted it on his VKontakte page.
In 2016, Semenov was charged a 1000 ruble fine for the circulation of extremist materials. He was not criminally charged, but he was outraged that anyone could be investigated based on their photographs.
In 2017, another case was opened against Semenov – for posting a news article about his conviction for the first post. This time he was fined 2000 rubles. As previously, he was not criminally charged.
Expressing your opinion on social media
Semenov was lucky – he was not charged under the criminal law against “extremism,” but only under the civil law on “production or distribution of extremist materials.”
The electrician Vladimir Egorov from the Tversk region was less lucky. He was given two years probation for criticizing his local government and Putin on his VKontakte page.
19-year-old Aleksandr Gozenko, from Saratov, was sentenced to 160 hours community service for having “disrespected vatniki†” in online comments.
A resident of the Altai Republic got 18 months probation for posting a link to an article calling for the separation of Siberia from Russia.
Oksana Pokhodun, a nurse from Krasnoyarsk region, was sentenced to two years probation for pictures criticizing the church and government, which she published in a private album on VKontakte. If not for supporting statements from her work, Pokhodun could have gotten jail time.
*VKontakte is the Russian copycat of Facebook.
**A non-governmental organization that promotes free speech and press, free and fair elections, and rule of law in Russia. Banned as of mid-2017, according to Wikipedia.
†Vatniki is a derogatory term used by anti-Putin Russians to refer to a certain subset of Putin’s supporters. The image is similar in many ways to the stereotypical (whether true or not) image of Trump supporters here: poor, rural, uneducated, white/Russian supremacist, jingoist.
Perpetual Motion 