Russian blogger sentenced for comments on the blog

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

On 7 July 2008, a Russian blogger was sentenced to one year suspended jail
after having been found guilty of “inciting hatred and enmity” for a comment
left on a LiveJournal weblog.

According to Kommersant newspaper, the young blogger Savva Terentiev was
saying on the blog that “Those who become cops are scum,” and calling for
officers to be put on a bonfire. For his alleged offence, inciting hatred
and denigrating the human dignity of a social group, the prosecutors were
asking for a significant fine and two years behind bars, which seemed
excessive. During the trial, Terentyev referred to his statements on the
blog that corrupt cops should burned in Auschwitz-like ovens as “hyperbole
and exaggeration,” and apologized to concentration camp victims and the
police officers he might have “involuntarily hurt with the contested
commentary.” The final court decision was to sentence the blogger to one
suspended jail year.

Free speech campaigners are concerned about the fact that the ruling might
create a dangerous precedent for free speech on the Internet, especially in
Russia where the mainstream traditional media is biased in favour of the
authority.

“This was an absolutely unjustified verdict. (…) Savva for sure wrote a
rude comment … but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude
comments about anybody” told Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA
centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, to
Reuters agency.

Recently, the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has expressed his views on
the freedom of speech saying Russia should use a light touch when policing
the Internet.”Thank God we live in a free society. (…) It’s possible to go
on to the Internet and get basically anything you want. In that regard,
there are no problems of closed access to information in Russia today, there
weren’t any yesterday and there won’t be any tomorrow,” he said last month
in an interview with Reuters.

Russian blogger sentenced for “extremist” post (7.07.2008)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080707/tot-uk-russia-blogger-566e283.html

Russian Blogger Sentenced Over LiveJournal Comment (7.07.2008)
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/07/07/russian-blogger-sentenced-over-livejournal-comment/

EDRi-gram: More control over the Internet wanted in Russia (7.05.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.9/internet-control-russia