Referring to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the news service said that the law will go into effect immediately on July 30. Earlier reports put that date at November 1.

Officially, the law creates a blacklist of web sites with content that the government deems to be dangerous for children. This refers first of all to child pornography, information on how to prepare or use narcotics, and information on ways to commit suicide or calls to do so.

Sites seen as containing this content will be banned without having to be subject to a court process.

Sites with other unlawful content, such as “war propaganda” and “inciting interethnic hatred” can also be blacklisted if a court deems necessary.

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal media and technology supervisory body, will be responsible for monitoring compliance with the new law, and a special non-commercial organization will be in charge of tracking the internet for offending websites. The organization will then notify Roskomnadzor about a certain site, and Roskomnadzor will then notify the domain owner that their site contains illegal content. If that content isn’t deleted within 24 hours, the hosting company will be required to take it down. If it refuses, the site will be entered into the government’s blacklist.

Critics of the new law fear that its actual purpose is to begin to censor the Russian internet.

Wikipedia’s Russian page went dark for all of July 10 to protest the measure. Other internet companies that have spoken out against the law include Yandex and the Russian branches of Google and LiveJournal.

Members of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights have also called for the law to be struck down.

As the Kasparov.ru online newspaper reports, internet providers in the region were ordered to limit user access to the IP address used by the “Revinform” online news agency.  When two providers complied, some 63% of the republic’s residents lost access to all blogging content on LiveJournal.  Authorities were apparently unaware that the shut-down, which affected thousands of bloggers, would be so wide-reaching.

The order to close the news blog came after a court in the capital of Ufa deemed the site to be extremist.  The case was launched against the blog after it reprinted articles from the Maydan newspaper documenting corruption among regional officials.

The online newspaper’s editorial office said it considers the court decision unlawful and politically motivated, and has since released a mirror website for its content.

Revinform publishes both original news content and reprinted material dedicated to local news in Bashkortostan.  The site is run by the “Revinform” News Agency, which describes itself as “news from Bashkiria without censorship.”  According to an unnamed source, the news agency is controlled by two of Bashkortostan’s opposition leaders, Ramil Bignov and Robert Zagreyev.

Bashkortostan has a history of blocking internet access to opposition websites, and a similar court order was used against the Ufa Gubernskaya (Ufa Gub) opposition portal in March of this year.  At the request of prosecutors, all 11 of the region’s internet providers cut access to both Ufa Gubernskaya and a number of other independent news sites identified by officials as “extremist.”

The hubbub over net-speak—purposeful misspellings and emoticons combining into what Russians call “Olbanian” (a made-up language in itself a misspelling of Albanian)–comes as Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, is preparing draft legislation to regulate all aspects of the Internet.  One part of the law intends to control the language used by Russians to communicate online, according to Yelena Zelinskaya, the deputy-chairwoman of the Public Chamber Commission on Preserving Cultural Heritage.

“There is very much good on the Internet, this is practically common sense,” she said.  “But there are things that have a destructive effect on the younger generation.  A child can’t distinguish between what is grammatically correct and incorrect.  What do we do?  Tear off the hands of those who use slang?  Or rip out tongues?  Of course not.  The problem can only be solved with education.  For instance, we are proposing a whole series of efforts to raise literacy.  First of all, we need to forbid anonymity on the Net: reduce the amount of sites where people act using nicknames [usernames] instead of their real names.  And when users will stop hiding behind masks, their treatment of the written word will improve, because everyone knows that making mistakes is improper.”

Lawmakers have proposed various methods of battling slang in the past.  Actor Nikolai Gubenko, the last Minister of Culture of the USSR and now a Moscow City representative, suggested in 2005 that people who “unreasonably use jargon and slang expressions” on the Internet be treated as hooligans.  Gubenko urged that violators be fined from 500-1000 rubles, or arrested for 15 days.  In the end, the former minister’s colleagues decided to respectfully disagree, and block the proposal.

Independent experts, meanwhile, downplayed the effect of web slang on the Russian language, and argued that common grammar mistakes were much more pernicious.

“First of all, this only encompasses a very small audience,” said Marina Koroleva, author of “Let’s Speak Russian,” and the host of a radio show of the same name.  “Secondly, this is a language game, where the players are more likely adults than teenagers.  If a child sees the word “krasavcheg” [a misspelling of “beaut” or “handsome one”] by accident, of course this will present some sort of threat to his literacy, but not a a comprehensive one.  A much greater danger is the complete misuse of grammar in the Internet, which no one controls.”

Koroleva adds that there is no way to have leverage over Internet-users.  “And this is frightening, because poor grammar enters the subconscious,” she said.  “Even, excuse me, I come into situations, where I start to doubt spelling simply because I spend too much time in blogs.”

According to the Russian Ministry of Education, youngsters are more and more frequently using misspelled “Olbanian” web-speak in their essays.

Emoticon smilies and acronyms like LOL are cropping up next to humorous misspellings of common words popularized online, like “hello,” (preved) “something,” (chenit) and “somehow” (kaknit).

Net-speak has also become embedded into the language of business.  The General Director of one oil company even made the order to fine employees for using “Olbanian,” after he noticed its use in an outgoing business letter.

In 2007, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev had a different take on the web language.  The web-savvy Medvedev, who now runs both a text and video-blog, was a First Deputy Prime Minister at the time.  During a conference on the Internet, Medvedev commented that controlling the use of Olbanian in the country was impossible but said that it needed to be considered closely.  “You may like it, you may not like it,” Medvedev said, “someone could say that it’s a change in the norms and rules of the Russian language.  But this is a current language environment, which, by the way, is nonetheless based on the Russian language.”

The Republic of Tatarstan, located in the center of Russia’s European territory, has a slight majority of ethnic Tatars, who practice Islam.  Around 40 percent of the region’s residents are ethnic Russians, most of whom practice Russian Orthodox Christianity.

“The investigation and court has established that Kashapov placed articles titled “No to Christianization!” in his blog on the Internet,” the Investigative Committee of the Public Prosecutor’s Office wrote on its website.  “According to the conclusions of a complex psychological assessment, [the article] had information which incited ethnic discord.”

Kashapov published a total of five articles under the same headline.

According to the IslamNews online newspaper, Kashapov penned his entries in response to a simmering religious scandal from early 2008 (Rus) in the region’s second largest city, Naberezhnye Chelny.  Allegedly, children from Muslim families were being baptized by an Orthodox minister against their parent’s will at an area maternity clinic.

After the articles appeared, Kashapov’s home and the office of the Tatar Public Center were searched, and a case was launched against Kashapov.

Aksana Panova, owner and editor of the online news agency, said the first extremist text was left as a comment on the forum in 2008.  Responding to a news article titled “On April 20th, skinheads will mark Hitler’s birthday with mass attacks on foreigners,” an unknown user called for the death of government leaders and wrote a series of racist slurs.  Despite the fact that moderators quickly removed the comment, the local office of Roskomsvyaznadzor had already noticed it and issued a warning.

After that, similar comments began popping up daily on the forum.  “We are certain that this was a planned campaign,” Panova said.  “At first, we removed these comments, which had the same identical text, but in the end it was noticed, and we received a second warning.”

The Ura.ru editorial office then turned for help to law enforcement authorities in every region where it has correspondents.  This, however, merely led to an inspection from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and local police, who scoured the website’s materials for extremism.  The authors of the offending comments have yet to be found, although Ura.ru provided with investigators with the user’s IP addresses, which should lead directly to the perpetrators.

“Formally, we now have the right to turn to court with a claim to close the media outlet,” said Yevgeny Strelyakin, press-secretary of Roskomsvyaznadzor.  “But this doesn’t happen automatically.  We will see how they react, we’ll understand if this is a one-time problem or the publication’s policy.  After all, these types of comments need to be moderated and kept track of on a timely basis.”

According to the Russian Union of Journalists, authorities have accused two other web-publications on charges of extremism in the same manner.  The Altai-based Bankfax agency and the Khakkasia-based Novy Fokus web-magazine were each ultimately fined 20 thousand rubles ($600 or €450).

On the Russian internet, speaking the wrong words can land you in jail. Denis Styazhkin, a young activist in this central Siberian city, learned this fact firsthand Thursday as he was arrested and sentenced to 15 days administrative arrest (Rus).

Styazhkin’s alleged crime? Posting an image with curse words within a popular social networking website. Although truth be told, city authorities seemed most concerned that the unsavory text was addressed to a highly ranked public official.

The young activist explained the sequence of events. In late November, he advertised an upcoming protest on “V Kontakte,” a Russian online network nearly identical to the US-based Facebook. The protest itself, which is scheduled for December 6th, has been sanctioned by the city. Shortly thereafter, militsiya officers visited Styazhkin and suggested that he remove an image located on the page describing the event.

The picture and corresponding text, which displayed as the event’s avatar, have not been republished. Apparently, the image contained cursing addressed at someone with the same last name as a highly placed public official. Only the first letter, “P” has been made public, suggesting that the target was Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

On December 4th, Styazhkin was summoned to his local police precinct, allegedly to discuss the upcoming protest. When the activist arrived, he was met by a justice of the peace, who charged him with “disorderly conduct,” or breaking the peace in a public place. Styazhkin will now serve 15 days administrative arrest.

The part of the law used against Styazhkin has not previously been applied to the internet. Usually, it applies to improper behavior, such as rowdy public intoxication, in a physical location, like a sports arena.

Fellow activists in Styazhkin’s movement, the Left Front, said the charge was absurd.

The actual protest will still take place on December 6th, and should not raise as much ire from officials. Demonstrators, who are speaking out against proposed changes to the Russian Constitution and asking for fair elections, will have another banner to rally. The first one that comes to mind is a Soviet propaganda poster showing a stern woman with a finger in front of her lips and the caption: “Keep your mouth shut!”

The proposal seems to mimic an idea expressed by Russia’s Minister of Communication, Igor Schegolev.  Schegolev had earlier spoken about the need to protect the Russian share of the internet (called the Runet for websites ending in .ru), from external threats.  The ministry is currently working on creating a Cyrillic alphabet alternative to the Latin-based domain name system, and the controls could feasibly go hand-in-hand.

The proposal on “providing access to foreign Internet resources through a funnel,” appeared in a report written by Makarov titled “Proposals for developing the information society.”  As of yet, Makarov says he hasn’t discussed the project “with the people who make the decisions on these issues in Russia.”

The computer expert firmly believes that an information funnel will not necessarily be used to restrict Internet freedoms.  “International rules and standards must be worked out to attribute sources that are dangerous to society, and control of the national network must be established based on a dialogue between the government and the online community,” Makarov explained.

Kremlin critics are concerned that such a move would give the government undue power over the internet, which has remained relatively free even as authorities have clamped down on independent print and broadcast media.

The idea harkens to the example of China, which controls online information flows with a wide-scale funneling network.  The system, known as the Golden Shield Project and the Great Firewall of China (Read a detailed account from The Atlantic) controls the flow of information in and out of China, and has been used to block independent international news websites as well as information about dissidence in the country.

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Yevloyev, who was shot in the temple on August 31st after being detained by police in Ingushetia’s largest city, Nazran, died short afterwards at an area hospital. Police maintain that he was killed accidentally, but supporters said his death was intentional.Yevloyev was the owner of Ingushetiya.ru, one of the Republic’s few media outlets not connected with the state. The site was a frequent voice of criticism of Murat Zyazikov, the president of the Republic, and its administration, and was known for its investigations of corruption. Since it was launched in 2001, the site has faced a number of lawsuits, and was ordered shut by a Moscow District Court in June. Its editor-in-chief, Roza Malsagova, fled Russia to seek political asylum in France, saying she feared for her life.

Yevloyev was flying to Ingushetia from Moscow on the same flight as Zyazikov, and was detained quickly after he disembarked. Two of his supporters, Magomed Khazbiev and Maksharip Aushev, tried to free the opposition leader, chasing after the police motorcade in their own cars. Khazbiev acknowledged that the two beat up several militsiya officers and took away their arms and identification. Khazbiev and Aushev have now been charged for assaulting police and stealing weapons, charges that carry a maximum of 5 and 12 years jail time, respectively.

Zyazikov has maintained that he did not argue during the flight with Yevloyev, as was reported earlier. Still, a source within Russia’s presidential administration told the Vedomosti newspaper that the scandal may lead to Zyazikov’s resignation. “There is a bad situation with Zyazikov,” the source said. “We will keep thinking about it.”

Yevloyev’s family, meanwhile, has made calls to avenge his death, and police categorically refused to give the name of the suspect in Yevloyev’s killing, citing concerns for his safety.

Opposition activists in the region said Yevloyev’s death was not an accident, and accused Ingushetia’s Interior Minister, Musa Medov, of direct involvement. A criminal investigation has been started, on charges of manslaughter.

“Magomed was not killed accidentally,” said Kaloi Akhilgov, the attorney for Ingushetiya.ru. “He did not put up any resistance during the arrest, knowing that there was no point in doing so. He couldn’t fight back in the militsiya car either. Consequently this was a deliberate killing, and we will press for the criminal case to be transferred under this article [of the criminal code].”

Vigils to honor Magomed Yevloyev’s memory have been held in Moscow (photos and video) and Finland (video).

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Video transcript:

[Magomed Yevloyev speaking]

Hello. I just now heard Timo Kiravuo’s report on the topic of website blocking.. in Saudi Arabia, and came to the conclusion that just about the same formula is being used against the Ingushetiya.ru website at the present moment. So, a so-called stopping plug, though a little bit differently, is established on the routers. When a person opens the IP address of Ingushetiya.ru, a page appears that says it’s impossible to display the page. Certain providers do this.

Ingushetiya.ru was created by me in 2001, in order to illuminate at least a little bit the situation of the Republic. In our Republic, only state-run mass-media outlets were operating. Two newspapers, one state television channel, and several small regional media outlets. We did not have any other media sources that could cast any light on the situation, that could speak about the cultures and traditions of the people of Ingushetia.

From the first moment the site was created, we adhered to a policy of objectivity. If something good happened, we would write about the good. If it was bad, we would write about the bad. But we displayed everything as it really happened in our Republic.

And we didn’t expect it ourselves.. When I was making the site I didn’t have any plan to make it such an well-visited resource, we wanted to make it an ordinary site which would display the situation. But from the very start, we became an actively popular site, and reached almost 40%– 30 to 40% of the population of Ingushetia. Because people didn’t just look at it on the internet, people would print the materials and distribute them on paper.

Starting in 2003, I was a person who had no relation, neither to human rights work, nor politics. I was engaged in a law practice. And then starting in 2003 I started sensing that speaking the truth about the country, and speaking the truth about the situation is accompanied by persecution, problems for business and everything. And all this, from 2003, the persecution started. They started to persecute me, and the site, accusing it of inciting ethnic hatred, of inciting..publishing extremist materials.

Over the course of two-three years, around 8 criminal cases were launched against me and against the people working with the site.

As it was, we didn’t have journalists. We had one employee who was considered a journalist, and two times, his building’s courtyard was pelted with grenades. His house was fired on.

There were other moments.. And the lawsuits, of course, started in 2004 and 2005. There were suits for the site’s closure.. on the closure.. on the cessation of its broadcast on the territory of Ingushetia. So, for the first time in all of Russia, the issue of filtering a web-site’s IP address was raised, I think, on the territory of Ingushetia.

In November 2007, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia obligated, not under the basis of the law or any kind of court decision, simply obligated all the providers, the three internet providers that work on the territory of Ingushetia to block access to the Ingushetiya.ru website. Which they did.

After the blocking system was introduced, our traffic across Ingushetia increased two times over. So, they gave us good publicity, and people started, people learned to get around the block using anonymizers, using… they started to buy.. the companies, the satellite companies that provide internet access.. these companies made a fortune in one month, because around 2000 satellite dishes were purchased to connect to the internet.

Ingushetia’s prosecutor’s office continued its battle with the site, and to legalize the blocking system used by local providers, won in a local court, the Nazran Regional Court, won a court decision on limiting access to our site.

Those judicial decisions were made in secret, without the participation of a representative of our site. There was a moment when we thought that the courts had taken our side, because Russia’s Supreme Court dismissed two appeals from the Ingush prosecutor on the site’s closure. However, the Ingushetia Prosecutor’s Office brought a lawsuit on my place of resident in Moscow, the Kuntsevo district of Moscow, and two weeks ago, well, a week ago, the Kuntsevo district court carried out a decision to close the Ingushetiya.ru website. The Kuntsevo district court in Moscow.

The decision hasn’t come into force yet. We have appealed it. But considering how boldly the Prosecutors are acting, and how the courts are behaving, who for some reason are very afraid. And depending on the Prosecutor’s Office, it seems to me that the decision on closing Ingushetiya.ru will be enacted.

And in Ingushetia, and those who know the site, and who watch it is a huge audience, and they all understand perfectly that the site’s prosecution is taking place for strictly political reasons. For the fact that it presents opposition forces, and raises problems, speaks the truth, and is absolutely not under the control of local authorities.

In practice, the people we deal with say that [authorities] are taking away a source of truth, and are pushing people, the people of the Republic into visiting more extremist websites, which can be freely opened in Ingushetia. That is to say, the rift between the public and the authorities is increasing. And people are pressed into actual extremism and other methods in the struggle for justice. To armed struggle, the departure of the youth to the mountains. That is to say, they are taking away the legal methods of learning the truth about the situation.

Even if we close the site, as they say, nature abhors a vacuum, I am absolutely certain that, because we have enough Ingush abroad, a site will appear which… for this audience who visited this site, well a site, а severely extremist site.

That’s why, essentially, the actions of the Ingush Prosecutor’s Office and the courts lead to, and I told this to the Kuntsevo court, lead to the growth of extremism and the escalation of the situation.

We also believe that the whole situation happening in the Republic: the explosions, the terrorist attacks, and at the same time the extrajudicial executions, the kidnappings. This whole situation, when it is displayed on only one internet resource, on ours. There is not a word, if you look now at the… there’s an official Ingushetia website. There is not one incident, not one fact of human rights violations, there is not one publication on that site.

That is to say, the government wants the people to know nothing about this, and wants to keep lining its pockets, because the corruption there is severe. And it thinks that by closing the site, the problem is solved. Well, I’m done.

To the question of which media outlets will remain if Ingushetiya.ru is closed, I’ll answer that if Ingushetiya.ru is closed, there will be not be any independent media left. But if the decision will go into effect, and I will be compelled to close it, I will write in the news column of the site, that the Ingushetiya.ru website is closed, and the court order is executed. And if it continues to operate, I will say, I will answer.. that I don’t know why it’s running.

translation/subtitles by theotherrussia.org

Solovyov joins a long list of individuals and organizations charged under a controversial anti-extremism law (article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code). He faces a possible two years behind bars if charged and convicted.

According to Oborona, police searched Solovyov’s home on August 12, seizing computer equipment and Oborona literature.

The criminal investigation against the activist was first launched on August 5th, and was justified by several blog posts written by Solovyov on LiveJournal, Russia’s most popular blogging service. The entires in question, published form December 2006 to June 2008 under the “dimon77” monicker (Rus), criticize the activities of the FSB (Federal Security Service) and militsiya. An Oborona spokesman said that they did not contain any calls for violence or grave insults.

Solovyov has taken part in a number of opposition demonstrations staged by The Other Russia coalition. Oborona believes the investigation against him may be an attempt to pressure and silence the group, which frequently criticizes Russia’s security services. “We are convinced that our close associate has not done anything illegal or objectionable, and will strive for his full acquittal, as well as punishment for those who initiated his persecution,” the group wrote.

Solovyov’s case resembles the case against another Russian blogger, Savva Terentyev, who was given a suspended sentence in July after a year-long court battle. Terentyev, of Syktyvkar, had written a single offensive blog comment, later retracted, saying that corrupt police should be burned in every town center.

The man left comments on the web-forum of Kuban.ru, a regional website often filled with lively discussion, while he was at work. The statements referred to a fight between Dagestani nationals that took place in the city of Timashevsk in June 2007. The comments in question were not available for publication.

Charges were filed under article 282 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which is used to combat extremism.

This is not the first time that Kuban.ru users have been charged for speaking out on the forum. In June, area resident Vyacheslav Yushkin was charged (Rus) after starting a discussion about a fight between OMON riot police and restaurant-goers in Armavir. The thread, titled “Around 20 persons of Caucasus nationality have been hurt at the hands of special forces troops” reprinted selected news about the incident. It allegedly incited racial discord and “hurt the dignity of all Armenians.”

According to the lenta.ru online newspaper (Rus), another forum user was charged with defamation for comments left in the summer of 2007.