Even more serious was the increase in the number of people convicted under articles 280 and 280—1 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activity and separatism) from 12 to 69 people.
In 2015, also increased the number of those who were convicted under Part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (the same actions using the media and the Internet). Only four such cases took place in 2014, and in 2015 there were already 19. Also last year, sentences under Article 280.1 (calls for separatism) were passed for the first time in connection with the Crimea annexation.
Increasingly, ordinary citizens fall under anti-extremist articles without much resonance in the media. According to the Sova information-analytical center, the number of people sentenced in recent years to real terms for “extremist” articles, not related to violence and ordinary crimes, has sharply increased. These are articles on offending the religious feelings, participating in extremist groups, calls for extremism and mass riots.
Sova counted up how many citizens were serving sentences under these articles in specific months. Their number is small, but has increased significantly in recent years.
As of December 2013, 20 people were behind bars for these crimes; as of January 2015, there were 29 people. By September 2015 the number has sharply increased to 54. During the same period, the number of people sentenced to deprivation of liberty under art. 280 went up from 6 to 11 people, from 15 to 25 under art. 282 and from 14 to 26 under art. 282.2.
The report presents social portraits of persons convicted under anti-extremist articles 275—284.1 of Chapter 29 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (crimes against the foundations of the constitutional order and state security). The data are also based on the statistics the Supreme Court’s judicial department.
In 2015, 525 people were convicted. 4.6% of them are women. More than half of those convicted are young people under 25; most of the remaining are 25—50 years.
About 19% of convicts had higher professional education, one third had secondary general or secondary vocational, another 14% basic general, 44% are people with no visible means of support. About 23% are workers, about 12% are students.
About 55% of crimes were committed in regional centers. At the time of the trial, 13% of the convicts had unexpunged and outstanding convictions. The share of crimes in the state of intoxication in the group is low, within 3%.
Experts identify several main groups of convicts under anti-extremist articles. First and foremost, these are nationalists, veterans of far-right movements. Another group is spontaneous/casual nationalists. They are not members of nationalist groups. Denounced for their extremist statements they are convicted of instigating racial and national hatred.
The third large group are religious extremists, mostly Islamists. Almost all of them are included in the “Hizbut-Tahrir al-Islami”, banned in Russia. Jehovah’s Witnesses, various non-traditional Christian offshoots, and even atheists also fall under category of religious extremist: in 2015, an Omsk student was sentenced under article 282 for a critical post about “Orthodox activists” who blocked the concert of Marilyn Manson. And, on the contrary, in April of this year a Kuban resident was fined for distributing literature asserting “inferiority of atheists”.
The fourth group, the pro-Ukrainian activists have been sent to prison since 2014 for their harsh statements in support of Ukraine and condemnation of the Russian authorities’ actions in the Crimea and the Donbas.
Among them, for example, Rafis Kashapov from Kazan, accused of calling for separatism in his texts such as “Crimea and Ukraine will be free from the invaders.” Yekaterinna Vologzheninova of Yekaterinburg, a single mother and a housewife, who used to work as a cashier earlier, was accused under part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code in inciting hatred and enmity against representatives of the authorities and “volunteers from Russia who are fighting on the side of Eastern Ukraine militiamen”. She was accused for republishing pro-Ukrainian materials in Russian VKontakte website (similar to Facebook) and sentenced to 320 hours of compulsory work and confiscation of her Notebook along with the mouse. Scandalously famous also the case of the Roofers (urban climbers who scale buildings), accused of hanging out the flag of Ukraine and overpainting the star on the spire on the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment high-rise. One of the roofers was convicted of hatred-motivated vandalism.
After the Crimea seizure, special attention is paid to the issues of the territorial integrity of the country. Now the opposition leaders of the Crimean-Tatar Majlis fall under anti-separatist articles.
In November 2015 in Petrozavodsk under Part 1 of Article 280.1 of the Criminal Code (calls for violating the territorial integrity of Russia) the deputy of Karelian Suojärvi Town Council Vladimir Zavarkin was sentenced to a fine of 30 thousand rubles. At a meeting for the resignation of the governor in May 2015, he jokingly offered to hold a referendum on the secession of the region, unless Moscow hears out the opposition arguments.
And in the summer of 2015 in Chelyabinsk, a criminal case was initiated under Part 1 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (calls for separatism via the Internet) against Alexei Moroshkin, the administrator of the VKontakte group. He posted the slogans “Support the embattled Ukraine! Free Urals! Together against evil!”. The former volunteer of the Donbas battalion “Vostok” advocated the separation of the Urals from Russia and the creation of a Siberian federation. As a result of the proceedings, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Another well-known “separatist affair” happened in the summer of 2015, when three Kaliningradians were accused of hanging a German flag over the FSB building.
The Russian concept of “extremism” does not have an unambiguous interpretation, which could be accepted at the international level. The PACE Resolution of 2003 defines extremism as
“a form of political activity that explicitly or surreptitiously denies the principles of parliamentary democracy and is based on the ideology and practice of intolerance, alienation, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and ultranationalism.”
The authors of the report note that at the heart of the Russian interpretation of extremism, the emphasis is on change of the political regime. Russia signed the “Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism”, in which extremism is understood as an act “aimed at forcible seizure of power.” This convention is also signed by Kazakhstan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
In recent years, the siloviki (law enforcement and security officials) have been increasingly monitoring the repots in social networks. The administrative part of the anti-extremist legislation is now regularly applied against publications and outposts in social networks (mainly in “VKontakte”). Siloviki are looking for texts, videos and audio recordings found on the pages of social networks, corresponding to art. 20.29 of the CoAO (Code of Administrative Offenses) (production and distribution of extremist materials). They base their judgment on the federal list of extremist materials.
In the case of article 20.3 of the CoAO, extremist material is anything that fits the definition of “Nazi symbols” or is similar to it “to the degree of confusion”. What is meant by the degree of confusion, is a subject to court decision. In practice, for example, Celtic crosses can fall into this grey area of the Nazi symbolism.
Usually the verdict under these articles is a fine of one to two thousand rubles or a few days of administrative arrest. However, the blocking of accounts by Rosfinmonitoring can be applied with much more damaging effect.
At the same time, the extremism label can often be applied to, for example, the antifascist material. In September 2015, the anti-fascist Julia Usach was found guilty for the post of the Kukryniksy cartoon and a photo from the 1945 Victory Day parade. The representative of the prosecution, according to her, promised “if necessary,