Daily Archives: March 29, 2022

The editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee, the popular conservative-run satirical website, has been locked out of his Twitter account after mocking the platform for allowing Chinese officials involved in abuses against the countrys Uighur minority on the platform while conservatives are censored.

Maybe theyll let us back into our @TheBabylonBee Twitter account if we throw a few thousand Uighurs into concentration camps, quipped editor-in-chief Kyle Mann yesterday morning.

As of today, Mann is locked out of his Twitter account over the tweet, which the left-wing Big Tech platform calls hateful conduct.

The censorship of the websites editor-in-chief follows the lockdown of its official account, which occurred after it pointed out the biological gender of the Biden Administrations Health & Human Services secretary, Rachel Levine.

As reported by Breitbart News Paul Bois:

Christian satire site the Babylon Bee has remained defiant 24 hours after Twitter locked its account for calling the transgender HHS assistant secretary Dr. Rachel Levine a man.

On Sunday, the Babylon Bee was sentenced to Twitter jail over an article mocking USA Today for recently declaring the biological male Rachel Levine a woman of the year.

The Babylon Bees Man of the Year is Rachel Levine, said the headline.

Twitter then locked the satire sites account for 12 hours on the condition that they delete the tweet, alleging it violates the platforms hateful conduct policy. Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said they will not cave to Twitters demands.

Not The Bee, a non-satirical news website associated with the Babylon Bee, said they would fight the censorship, pointing out the influence the platform has over current events.

You may think its easy to just ignore Twitter, but remember that its a major outlet that influences news, education, and literal law around the world. Its also a major revenue stream for many businesses who are forced into the Big Tech marketing system to stay afloat.Its worth fighting against discriminatory policies on platforms that claim to be the new public square.And The Bee is gonna fight.

This is not the first time that the Babylon Bee has tangled with Silicon Valleys far-left censors. As Breitbart News previously reported, Facebook has also repeatedly censored the satirical website for poking fun at the left.

Breitbart News has reached out to Twitter for comment.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.He is the author of#DELETED: Big Techs Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.

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Twitter Suspends Babylon Bee Editor in Chief for Mocking ...

At the University of Virginia and elsewhere, hushed voices and anxious looks dictate so many conversations, UVA senior Emma Camp wrote in an essay published in The New York Times earlier this month. Camp said some students who are only comfortable discussing controversial topics in private experience a pile-on when they voice unpopular views in class and lie about their views to avoid confrontation. According to Camps point of view, backlash for unpopular opinions and the pressure to conform has led students to censor themselves on college campuses nationwide, which has hindered her and other students abilities to have meaningful debates.

Though student self-censorship is real and hardly limited to UVA, the panic surrounding it is utterly laughable in the face of far more serious censorship of students and staff, including at GW itself. University-led attempts to punish political expression and outside pro-censorship pressure campaigns pose a more serious threat to student and staff members speech than feeling bad about an in-class debate ever could. Whether you lean liberal or conservative at GW, youve no doubt elected to keep quiet during classroom discussions about controversial topics. Camps uncritical commitment to unpopular ideas in the classroom even those which lack evidence and logic does not further students education by exposing them to new views. Instead, promoting so-called intellectual diversity amounts to uncritically platforming and rewarding certain views on their face.

More than 80 percent of students report censoring their viewpoints at their colleges at least some of the time, and 21 percent of students say they censor themselves often, according to a 2021 College Pulsesurvey that Camp cites in the essay.

Collegiate self-censorship and personal censorship in all walks of life is as much about politeness as it is politics. Though it can be anxiety-inducing, thinking before we speak or not speaking at all ensures people dont view us as inconsiderate jerks or something far worse. The ability to navigate difficult situations with different people requires a degree of social and emotional intelligence it is a survival strategy in a rapidly changing world.

Societal pressure stemming from the context of the conversation tips the balance of when we decide to self-censor. Democratic respondents to the 2021 GW Marriage Pact outnumber their Republicans counterparts 10 to one. While that may not be representative of the entire University, that overwhelming consensus around liberal ideas might push conservative students to self-censor.

But feeling like you cant speak is different from not being able to speak at all. Unlike Liberty University, for example, no culture of fear or concrete policies stop GW students from voicing their beliefs. Instead, the University has a long history of political activism and expression.

If youre genuinely concerned with self-censorship, then take part in that tradition. Speak up and welcome whatever comes next. But dont expect to have it both ways. You can be popular, or you can say what you believe. By and large, your peers are a captive audience, not an eager one. They arent obligated to applaud controversial or unpopular opinions simply for being controversial or unpopular.

Some students are clearly comfortable making their voices heard. Ive witnessed fellow students explain their opposition to including transgender women in womens sports in front of their gender non-confirming peers and watched male students describe so-called reverse sexism to a group of largely female students.

Besides being offensive, these debates amount to ego-driven, mind-numbing soapbox stands that waste valuable time meant for professors professional expertise. Unlike skillfully delivered lectures, such discussions hardly enrich students education. The free speech problem rocking college campuses isnt so much that students politics are taboo as their points are asinine.

Ironically, embracing intellectual diversity would only make that issue worse. Its foolish to make uninformed or ignorant ideas untouchable simply because theyre controversial. Artificially balancing views or guaranteeing equal time for each side of a debate prevents the best ideas from rising to the top and hardly furthers the intellectual rigor of college campuses. And even worse, officially protecting intellectual diversity for its own sake would force students to censor their responses for fear of reprisals.

Student self-censorship is here to stay in a world where we judge people by what they say and do. Its not fairly innocuous self-censorship, but institutional censorship, that should concern college students of all political stripes.

The University faced a genuine censorship scare in February after interim University President Mark Wrighton condemned and said he would remove posters criticizing the Chinese government. Though Wrighton later backpedaled in a statement, his hasty response and alleged promise in an email to investigate the students responsible gained national attention and criticism.

And paradoxically, Turning Point USA, which bemoans conservative students self-censorship, maintains a professor watchlist of radical professors that includes two GW faculty members. Under the guise of informing prospective students and their parents, the watchlist has a chilling effect on professors own speech and opinions.

Students come to college for professional development, the expertise of their professors and ultimately a degree, not to listen to their peers ramble incessantly about personal political grievances. The demagoguery of cringeworthy controversial opinions and half-baked hot takes in the classroom is just as bad as any campus culture of silence. While we all have a right to speak and ought to exercise it, self-censoring makes you a mature adult not a victim of your peers tyranny.

Ethan Benn, a sophomore majoring in journalism and mass communication, is an opinions columnist.

This article appeared in the March 24, 2022 issue of the Hatchet.

Original post:
Column: Self-censorship is an act of tact, not a widespread phenomenon - GW Hatchet

On Saturday, Facebook deleted a popular anti-war video produced by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) without providing any reason. The video, titled No Third World War! Against Ukraine war, NATO aggression and German rearmament! had been viewed over 20,000 times within a few days.

The SGP called on Facebook on Sunday to immediately reverse the deletion. We are exercising our constitutional right to participate in the formation of political opinions with the video, the party stated in its appeal, but the corporation did not give any response. The deletion can therefore only be seen as an act of political censorship directed against the SGPs independent anti-war perspective. We call on all readers to oppose this censorship and use all their channels on social media and beyond to protest against it in the strongest possible terms.

In the video, SGP Chair, Christoph Vandreier, and German WSWS Editor-in-Chief, Johannes Stern, unequivocally condemn the Russian governments war. But they also explain how it was provoked by the wars conducted by the United States and its European allies over the past 30 years and the military encirclement of Russia by NATO.

They make it clear that a proxy war is being waged in Ukraine between NATO and Russia at the expense of the population, which threatens to end in a nuclear world war. The only way to prevent a catastrophe, Vandreier and Stern explain, is to unite Russian and Ukrainian workers as part of an international, socialist movement against war and its root: capitalism.

This analysis and perspective struck a nerve, and reached tens of thousands of people on Facebook in a short time. The video received over 150 likes, was shared 140 times, and commented on 120 times. It expresses widespread opposition to NATOs warmongering, which is suppressed in the official media, which instead provides a torrent of deafening war propaganda aimed at all-out war against Russia, and ultimately, China.

The weekend the video was deleted, US President Biden declared that regime change in Russia was a goal of American foreign policy and announced a decades-long state of war. Germanys Chancellor Scholz made similar statements when he defended the tripling of the war budget on Sunday so that Germany would once again be able to wage war against Russia.

This insane drive towards a third world war is rejected by the vast majority. That is why the media have switched into war propaganda mode and will not allow discussion of even the most basic questions. The censorship that is now to be imposed is the desperate response to the fact that this propaganda is fooling fewer and fewer people and masses of workers are looking for an independent perspective against the war.

Censorship measures by governments in collaboration with the tech giants have been systematically increasing for years. In 2017, Google announced that it would favour authoritative sources in search results in the future. At the same time, socialist and anti-war websites, and in particular the World Socialist Web Site, were censored and banished from search results.

Facebook has hired more than 20,000 people to monitor posts on its platform and censor undesirable posts. Many of these employees have intelligence or law enforcement backgrounds and work closely with the US government. In Germany, the close cooperation of tech companies with the government has even been regulated by law through the Network Enforcement Act.

In the last year, Facebook has already tried twice to censor the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), of which the SGP is the German section. On January 22, Facebook blocked the accounts of prominent representatives of the ICFI and of local sections of the party in the US, and only restored them on 25 January after massive protest. A month later, Facebook prevented users from sharing the WSWS article Washington Posts Wuhan lab conspiracy theory stands exposed. Facebooks reasoning was that the article was spreading misinformation. In May, the company was forced to admit the untenability of this statement and unblocked the article.

Facebooks censorship is directly linked to the German governments efforts to silence the SGP and criminalise any opposition to war. In 2018, the Interior Ministry had for the first time included the SGP in its annual secret service report as being left-wing extremist and defamed it as anti-constitutional. After the SGP filed a complaint against this, the ministry justified the surveillance of the party by the intelligence agencies on the grounds that simply arguing for a democratic, egalitarian, socialist society and agitation against alleged imperialism and militarism were unconstitutional.

In response to this attack, the SGP stated in July 2019: The attack invokes the criminal traditions of authoritarianism and fascism in Germany. The Interior Ministrys attack on the SGP is intended to set a dangerous precedent. It will be used to legitimize state action against organizations, groups and individuals who oppose social inequality, environmental destruction, state repression, the buildup of the military or other injustices of capitalist society. This was confirmed once again when the Berlin Administrative Court backed the federal government in its legal ruling.

Facebooks censorship of the SGPs anti-war video confirms these warnings. In the face of growing social inequality, the murderous profits before lives policy in the pandemicand above all the reckless course towards a world waranyone who opposes the war drive and policies in the interests of the rich is to be suppressed.

The struggle against the suppression of the SGP, which ultimately targets any opposition to the official war policy, is therefore of utmost importance. The censorship by Facebook and the German government can only be stopped by the mobilisation of the international working class. Therefore, spread this article and protest against the censorship on all channels. Use the hashtags #defendSGP, #StopCensoringSocialism and #SpeakOutAgainstWW3 and share the video that has been censored by Facebook.

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Stop Facebook's censorship of the SGP's anti-war video! - WSWS

This is a version of an article published in the Out of Frame Weekly, an email newsletter about the intersection of art, culture, and ideas. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

In this newsletter, we often talk about how social media companies decide what content is and isnt allowed solely based on the subjective opinions of people who run the platforms. And this week gifted us two glorious examples.

The Intercept reported that Facebook will allow users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian White nationalist paramilitary group, in contradiction to the social network's policy banning support for "dangerous individuals and organizations." According to the United Nations, the Azov Battalion raped and tortured civilians in 2014.

Facebook said it made the change to "allow Facebook users to obtain information about the forces' military activity" and "ensure that news coverage of the conflict can continue to be shared on the platform," according to Insider. It is unclear why this change was necessary to allow that, but that may speak to bigger problems in how Facebook's rules conflict with users' ability to freely share information.

Facebook also made an exception to its hate speech policy to allow statements like "death to the Russian invaders" and calling for violence against Russian president Vladimir Putin and his ally, Belarussian president Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The change only applies in several countries in the Caucasus and Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, where Facebook is currently banned.

People should rightfully condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But these actions by Facebook, along with decisions to ban propaganda from only one side in the war, demonstrate that decisions that should be made on some kind of objective principle are instead being made on the basis of team sport. Policies are chosen on the basis of trying to help "the good guys" and harm "the bad guys." What is the objective reason that people should be allowed to call for the death of Putin and Lukashenko but not any of the world's dozens of other dictators?

This shows that while banning "false information" or "hate speech" sounds good in theory, in practice it is not so simple, and the execution is prone to political bias.

Continue reading here:
The Most Blatantly Biased Social Media Censorship Decisions of the Week | Matt Hampton - Foundation for Economic Education

Theres a really horrifying censorship story unfolding in Anchorage, Alaska. But much as I wish I could tell it, part of the reason the true depths of whats going on there arent being shared broadly is because of how officials are using their states FOIA laws to keep that information impossible to access.

The story is out of the playbook were seeing across the country, and its destroying the Anchorage Public Library.

Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson won a very tight mayoral race in late May 2021. Of note were the tactics his team took to intimidate and suppress voters, including stationing people outside voting areas to watch who was going in and out of those areas. He is radically anti-LGBTQ.

Among the first tasks for Bronson was appointing a new director for the Anchorage Public Library. The most recent had retired, and the first candidate Bronson put forward was Sami Graham. Graham, who had failed in her attempts to win a school board seat the previous election, had no library experience, no library degree, and had reached out to Bronsons transition team about wanting to get involved somehow. She is a proud conservative.

After backlash from the public, the Assembly did not confirm Grahams appointment. Bronson needed to find another person, and he did immediately. This candidate was Judy Eledge who, coincidentally, also lost a school board election earlier in the year (indeed, in trying to pack the Anchorage Public Schools school board with a conservative slate, more than one did not succeed).

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Eledge also has no library experience, but her choice proved a little less controversial than Graham, despite her outspokenness as a conservative. She was the President of the Anchorage Republican Womens Club. She was a Republican elector for Alaska in the Electoral college.

Despite the fact the job required library experience and a library degree, Eledge was approved by the Assembly without being qualified for the role.

One of the powers of the Anchorage Mayor is that they can appoint who sits on various boards within city departments. Up to 150 board positions are available annually, and all board seats end after members have served for three years. In October of 2021, numerous library board seats were available for appointment.

Bronson packed the board with his friends, including Dennis Dupras, a state trooper (who has posted queerphobic, all lives/blue lives matter material on Facebook), Doug Weimann (with right wing affiliations), Travis Gularte (proudly posting right wing social media posts), and Deb Bronson (his wife). A fifth appointment was that of a teenager, Denali Tshibaka. Shell become important shortly. She serves as part of Anchorages Youth Advisory Committee.

The Anchorage Public Library board notes begin to shed light into what Eledge aimed to do in her role as Director. Among those were to ensure a safe environment for employees and others to have honest discussions with differing views and opinions, as mentioned in the October minutes. She met with leaders of homeschool cooperatives and began to invite them into library partnerships (the results of which arent clear). Likewise, Eledge began to talk about the librarys strategic plan, which, coincidentally, is under the Mayors direction.

When December rolled around, the new board was introduced by none other than Sami Graham. Its then things took a real turn. Eledge brought a Bible Story Hour to the library, allowing her pro-life, right-wing friend Wendy Perkins to partner with one of the librarians on this event.

Denali Tshibaka brought up inappropriate books during this initial meeting. Remember Denali is the teen appointed to the board for youth input. Perhaps its pertinent to mention that she is the daughter of Kelly Tshibaka, who ran a Trump-endorsed campaign to win Lisa Murkowskis U.S. Senate seat and lost. Decembers meeting minutes note that Denali found inappropriate books in the childrens section, specifically noting those were transgender books. Gularte bolstered her discussion by mentioning something about men in dresses being derogatory. Denalis task for the January board meeting would be to research these inappropriate books and present on them to the board.

In January, Denali gave a presentation to the board. Below are the minutes:

The board discussed options and landed on reorganizing the books via age group would be enough. Interestingly, Weimann noted he was having the same problem at his elementary school with inappropriate books.

This comes to light because Lily Spiroski, a teenager serving on Anchorages Youth Advisory Committee, stepped out of their role. They felt that Bronsons leadership was hateful toward queer people, and this move at the library showed the ways in which censorship of queer voices played out under his leadership (remember: he appointed all of those in support of this reorganization project).

Judy Eledge actually stepped down from her role as director in November, though she still played some kind of role thereafter. Utilizing the powers granted to her by the city charter, Anchorage Municipal Manager Amy Demboski took over control of the library as director in January. Dembowski wields her power in that role in some fascinating ways, namely in the fact shes issued gag orders to staff and administration in the library.

And its here where the story Id been hoping to tell falls apart.

On Tuesday, February 8, I submitted a FOIA request to the city of Anchorage. To do so requires sending the request to department heads, meaning that to FOIA information about the library, that request goes to the library director. As Demboski has ceded Eledge, this meant the FOIA request went to her.

I requested the following:

In the above-linked piece, Demboski reminds the library staff and administration that theyre not allowed to use email to communicate among city departments. This came February 10, two days after my request was submitted. Its likely a coincidence, but the message itself is chilling: staff cannot communicate.

A series of emails followed between myself and Demboski, including an initial response that no records could be quickly found. I would be able to continue to request, but because it would be time-consuming, there would likely be a fee assessed. Oh, and I needed to provide a list of all staff noted in my request, which I copy and pasted from the librarys website (seems like all staff wouldnt be a hard thing to search on their end, but I support I can copy/paste).

The note came back with the estimated fee: $940.

For being unable to find anything in an initial search to suggesting that the above search would take over 23 staff hours is certainly something. Without a budget for FOIA requests Id have paid up to $30 or so on my own Im unable to access information that should be publicly available.

But this is precisely what a corrupt system wants to happen. By making FOIA financially inaccessible, the full story cant be told.

Whats going on in Anchorage is whats happening in public libraries around the country. Among them, ImagineIf in Kalispell, Montana. In Pikes Peak, Colorado, the director leftafter the city council appointed a conservative board. The director at Mid-Continent Public Library in Missourileft for a similar reason, as his new right-wing board rejected inclusive programming.

Tune into this rock star panel of authors whove had books challenged, alongside professor Emily Knox, who is a scholar on censorship. The panel is Tuesday night, March 29, at 7:30 pm eastern.

For more ways to take action against censorship, use this toolkit forhow to fight book bans and challenges, as well as this guide toidentifying fake news. Then learn how and why you may want touse FOIA to uncover book challenges.

Read more:
The Censorship Story I Cant Tell You: This Weeks Book Censorship News, March 25, 2022 - Book Riot

ABC bleeped out the expletive-ridden exchange that followed Will Smiths blow to Chris Rocks face during Sunday nights Academy Awards but it didnt matter since unedited footage of the incident leaked onto social media just minutes later.

As is customary for broadcasts of live shows, ABCs feed was on a 20-second delay to enable producers to cut or bleep foul language or any other display that potentially violates Federal Communications Commission guidelines.

But while the audio was cut and censored for several seconds, closed captions indicated that the King Richard star said, Keep my wifes name out of your fking mouth.

International broadcasting crews, meanwhile, were beaming the raw feed of the awards show to global audiences. Audio from the uncensored Australian broadcast appears to confirm this, including Rocks stunned reaction: Will Smith slapped the st out of me.

So while ABC may have momentarily spared American viewers the tense Rock-Smith exchange, it quickly went viral on their mobile devices.

Rob Mills of ABC, who was in the networks production trailer during the show, told Variety that it quickly became apparent that the incident was not scripted.

Before Smith smacked the comedian, Rock had made a joke about Smiths wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, being in the fake action film because of her bald head. She had previously spoken about having a hair loss condition, alopecia.

Chris Rock came on and he was doing, I think, material based on what happened that night, as any comedian will do, Mills told Variety. He made the [G.I. Jane] joke. Obviously, you could see the joke did not land with Jada. And then you see Will start to get up and walk up.

Mills added: There have certainly been unpredictable moments where people have gotten up and done things, so we thought this was one of those.

Once Rock and Smith both used expletives in their reactions, it dawned on the ABC producers that this was real.

You started to realize this is real once Chris, who certainly knows the limits of broadcast standards, said, Will Smith slapped the st out of me, Mills said. Thats when it became obvious that this was not a joke.

Due to strict FCC guidelines on the use of profanity during domestic broadcasts, Mills said, he and his team erred on the side of caution in censoring the aftermath.

When youre on the button, which I wasnt but our standards people were, I think you obviously go towards overcorrection than letting something get through, Mills said.

American viewers instead relied on clips from overseas, which do not apply the same rigorous requirements against profanity.

Americans can be a bit more puritanical and outraged by these things, a radio producer for BBC told the Washington Post.

Continued here:
How ABC tried -- and failed -- to censor Will Smith slap of Chris Rock - New York Post

In Simferopol, Ukrainian journalist Vladislav Yesipenko was sentenced to 6 years in prison and a fine of 110,000 rubles ($1,145) on charges of purchasing (Part 1 of Article 222.2 of the Criminal Code) and manufacturing (Part 1 of Article 223.1) explosives. Yesipenko was detained in March last year during a business trip to the Crimea. During the search of his car, FSB officers found a grenade-type device. The journalist himself claims that Russian security forces planted the explosive on him, and he confessed under torture. Memorial Human Rights Center recognized Vladislav Yesipenko as a political prisoner, noting that his persecution fits into the anti-Ukrainian campaign unleashed by the Russian authorities in 2014.

A court in Chechnya convicted brothers Salekh Magamadov and Ismail Isayev, administrators of the Chechen opposition Telegram channel Osal Nakh 95. They were sentenced to 8 and 6 years in a penal colony, respectively, on charges of assisting participation in an illegal armed formation (Part 5 of Article 33, Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code). The brothers (both members of the LGBT community) were reportedly abducted by Chechen security forces and forcibly taken from Nizhny Novgorod to Chechnya, where they were tortured to extract confessions. Memorial considers Magamadov and Isayev to be political prisoners, and the charges brought against them to be related to gender discrimination and falsified for political reasons.

Since the first days of the military invasion of Ukraine, Russian security forces have been brutally suppressing protests across the country. According to OVD-Info, the total number of detainees at anti-war protests exceeds 15,000. Among them are even young children.

Protesters report violence by law enforcement officers: people have been severely beaten (including with electric shockers), called enemies of the people, threatened with criminal cases under extremism legislation, with deprivation of parental rights, and even with rape. One such episode that received wide publicity involved the beating of a participant in an anti-war rally in Moscows Brateyevo police station.

Military censorship has de facto been introduced in Russia. In the first days of the invasion, Roskomnadzor ordered the media to use information only from official sources when reporting on military actions in Ukraine, and subsequently forbade calling these actions a war or an attack, insisting on the wording special military operation.

Publications that violate the new requirements are subject to blocking. According to Agora International Human Rights Group and the Net Freedoms project, a total of more than 800 media outlets have already been blocked, including the websites of the human rights organizations Golos and Amnesty International, and of the publications Current Time, Meduza, Mediazona, The New Times, Taiga.Info, DOXA, Republic, Agentstvo, Bumaga, Caucasian Knot, BBC Russian Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Liberty, and others.

TV channel Dozhd, Znak.com, and the Tomsk agency TV2 announced the suspension of operations due to pressure on the media. Novaya Gazeta also suspended publishing until the end of the special operation. The Board of Directors of Ekho Moskvy (a popular radio station controlled by Gazprom) decided to close the radio station, including its YouTube channel; Ekhos frequencies were transferred to the pro-Kremlin radio station Sputnik.

The investigative media project Important Stories became the second Russian media outlet (after Proekt) to be recognized by the Ministry of Justice as an undesirable organization.

In addition, Russian authorities blocked access to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. A court recognized Meta (Facebooks parent company) as an extremist organization and banned its operation in Russia.

Newly adopted laws introduced administrative and criminal liability of up to 15 years in prison for spreading fake news about the actions of the Russian army and the activities of Russian government agencies abroad.

To date, over 10 cases have been initiated under the new article (207.3) of the Criminal Code, some of them against journalists. In total, in the month since the beginning of the war, 60 criminal cases have been opened in the Russian regions one way or another connected with protests and public criticism of the actions of the Russian authorities.

Russia announced its withdrawal from the Council of Europe, thereby denouncing the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It will be difficult now for Russians to apply to the European Court of Human Rights (Russia is the leading country by number of complaints filed against it to the ECHR). This will have a particularly strong impact on residents of the North Caucasus, for whom the ECHR remained the last resort where they could count on justice. One of the most radical possible consequences of Russias withdrawal from the Council of Europe could be the lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty in the country.

Russias Supreme Court approved the decision to liquidate International Memorial (IMR covered this in detail here), and refused to postpone it as requested by the ECHR. The ECHR had demanded that the process be suspended pending a ruling on a complaint against the law on foreign agents filed in 2013 by Russian NGOs.

A court in Astrakhan upheld a series of harsh sentences for local Jehovahs Witnesses. Earlier, Rustam Diarov, Sergei Klikunov, and Yevgeny Ivanov were sentenced to 8 years in a penal colony, and Olga Ivanova to 3.5 years. They were found guilty of involvement in an extremist organization (Parts 1 and 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) and financing extremist activities (Part 1 of Article 282.3).

The Prosecutor Generals Office approved the indictment in the case of journalist Ivan Safronov, accused of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code). The court extended his arrest until September 9 and rejected all the motions of the defense, in particular, permission to allow visits and calls. The first hearing in the case is scheduled for April 4; it will be held behind closed doors. The persecution of Safronov is associated with his professional activitieshe was engaged in covering the work of the military-industrial complex. Safronov has been in jailsince July 2020, and faces up to 20 years in prison.

The Supreme Court of Karelia upheld the verdict for the head of the regional branch of Memorial, 65-year-old historian Yuri Dmitriev. At the end of last year, his sentence was extended to 15 years in a strict regime colony.

In Rostov-on-Don, Crimean Tatar activists were sentenced to long terms in prison for being members of the Islamic religious and political party Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned in Russia. Riza Izetov and Remzi Bekirov each received 19 years in a strict regime colony; Shaban Umerov 18 years; Raim Aivazov and Timur Yalkabov 17 years each; Farhod Bazarov, Eskender Suleymanov, and Asan Yanikov 15 years each; Akim Bekirov, Seitveli Seitabdiev, and Rustem Seitkhalilov 14 years each; Lenur Seydametov 13 years; Zekirya Muratov5 years; and Vadim Bektemirov 11 years. All of them were charged with organizing or participating in terrorist activities (Parts 1 and 2 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code), as well as preparing a violent seizure of power (Article 278, with the application of Part 1 of Article 30). As IMR previously wrote, in recent years, the accusation of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir has become an instrument of mass repression against the Crimean Tatars.

Convicted oppositionist Alexei Navalny was sentenced in a new criminal case to 9 years in a strict regime colony on charges of fraud on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code). He was found guilty of embezzlement for personal purposes of funds donated to the Anti-Corruption Foundation. In addition, Navalny was fined 1.2 million rubles ($12,500) in a separate case of contempt of court (Article 297). Navalny is currently serving a sentence in the Yves Rocher case: last February, the court replaced his suspended sentence3.5 years in prisonwith a real one.

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February-March 2022: War, censorship, increased repression - IMR Institute of Modern Russia