Russian Bloggers: Working the Net

The Internet has been called the last refuge of free speech in Russia, but now two bloggers are in court and "hate blogging" is rife

by Galina Stolyarova

In the wake of two court cases against Russian bloggers, the country's Internet community and human rights advocates are complaining about the increased attention of security forces towards the Internet and accusing the authorities of fostering a climate of fear and intimidation.

Media professionals often describe democracy in modern Russia as "electronic" and "hypothetical," with the free exchange of opinion now restricted to the Internet, the last remaining censorship-free refuge in the country. Now they warn that even this last resort is under threat.

BLOGGERS ON TRIAL

In what has been called Russia's first "hate blogging" case, a 21-year-old musician faces trial for inciting hatred towards a social group. In February, Savva Terentyev, a resident of Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic, left a harsh opinion about the police on a friend's blog on the popular LiveJournal website. Terentyev was immediately summoned to the local prosecutor's office and is now facing up to four years in prison if convicted for using such language as "the cops and scum are the same thing" and suggesting that the "infidel police officers be burnt alive."

The Russian criminal code makes it a crime to distribute information inciting national, racial, social, or religious hatred through the mass media. A date for Terentyev's trial has not been set.

In April, the Moscow prosecutor's office launched a criminal case against Timofei Shevyakov, who under the blogging name Tarlith allegedly used obscene language aimed at State Duma lawmaker Viktor Alksnis in a comment on Alksnis's own LiveJournal blog. Tarlith's supporters insist that all opinions and phrasings, however harsh or offensive, should be allowed in people's private blogs and forums, where people often communicate using nicknames to protect their real identity, and it is the task of the site moderators, rather than the prosecutor's office, to filter or remove them.

Alksnis, in turn, claims to be against introducing censorship to the Internet. But the conservative nationalist lawmaker campaigns for self-censorship instead.

"I am convinced that if the Internet users themselves do not end this mess, especially if we do not restrict our speech to filter obscenities, then the state, sooner or later, will do it for us," Alksnis wrote in his blog. "And if the authorities do intervene, then we will all get what is coming to us and we will never see the end of it."

Boris Vishnevsky, a political analyst and member of the St. Petersburg branch of the liberal Yabloko party, thinks that blogs are trusted more than propaganda and advertisements around the globe, but it is only repressive regimes that busy themselves developing responses to the challenge.

"Russia has become a police state; it is no coincidence that the Terentyev case involves the police," Vishnevsky said. "This spring, Russia made international headlines for the horrendous police violence against the public who took to the streets in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod to participate in the Dissenters' Marches. The authorities feel they need to justify the tough stance the police took against the protesters. They need to prove there is an unfair image of the police in Russia, that many people are willing to clash with the police, and the Terentyev case serves that purpose well."

Prosecutors in Moscow and St. Petersburg are looking into more than 50 cases of alleged excessive police violence against the "dissenters' march" protesters. Yabloko party lawyer Olga Pokrovskaya said photos and video recorded during the demonstrations and distributed via Internet forums have helped to spread the news about the violations and encouraged more people to file suits.

Yury Korgunyuk of the Moscow-based democracy and governance think tank INDEM, said the blogger cases illustrate, once again, how selective justice is in Russia. "Justice is used against a carefully chosen target," he said. "The charges brought against the two bloggers are absurd and groundless. First of all, the police are not a social group, and secondly, Terentyev was not campaigning against the police but talking to a friend through his blog."