(CJES/IFEX) – On 14 November 2006, in the city of Abakan, acting on a matter affecting him personally, a police officer from the Abakan public prosecutor’s office, Lieutenant Sergey Burdogov, visited the office of Michael Afanasyev, and prepared an official report on an administrative offence allegedly committed there. Abakan is located in Khakassia, a republic […]
(CJES/IFEX) – On 14 November 2006, in the city of Abakan, acting on a matter affecting him personally, a police officer from the Abakan public prosecutor’s office, Lieutenant Sergey Burdogov, visited the office of Michael Afanasyev, and prepared an official report on an administrative offence allegedly committed there. Abakan is located in Khakassia, a republic in south-central Russia.
Afanasyev told CJES that the public prosecutor’s office considers his website, “Noviy focus” to be a periodical, and that because it has not been registered properly by Afanasyev, an offence has been committed. “The offence here means that I prepared and distributed the products of an unregistered media outlet,” Afanasyev said. “In the report, referring to clause 13.21 of the Code of administrative offences of the Russian Federation, it is specified that the offence is punishable by a fine of 10 to 15 times the legal monthly minimum wage, which is equivalent to 1,100 rubles (approx. US$41), along with confiscation of the subject of an administrative offence, meaning my website in this case. It is difficult for me to imagine how it will happen, but my suspicions that law enforcement bodies have long wanted to silence me have proved to be true.” On 27 October, searches were conducted of the office and house of the website’s editor-in-chief, and the computers were seized. The searches were conducted by Dmitry Yl’chenko, the Abakan public prosecutor’s office’s inspector.
According to CJES lawyer Victoria Blonskaya, in this case the public prosecutor’s office was not right. “The specified clause is inapplicable to this situation, as it involves not a media outlet but an information web-portal, which, under the Media Law of the Russian Federation, is not classified legally as a ‘media outlet’, unless it has gone through the procedure of registering as one. So, the responsibility stipulated by the legislation of the Russian Federation for media outlets does not apply to this web-portal,” commented Blonskaya.
According to Afansyev, on 14 November the police officer also served him with a summons to appear in court on 22 November, on charges of slander, an offence under part 2 of art.129 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
“On 11 November I was officially charged with slander. The case is that in September on my website there was material on how the officer of the public prosecutor’s office of Khakassia had injured a child in a road accident and after that has avoided criminal liability. I wrote it on the basis of documents and testimony by relatives of the injured child. However, later it appeared that the perpetrator of the accident had deceived everyone; he had hidden his actual surname and instead, identified himself using the surname of the officer of the public prosecutor’s office. I have apologized both through ‘Noviy focus’ and personally to the officer of the public prosecutor’s office; the conflict seemed to be settled, but now it appears that criminal proceedings have been initiated,” explained Afanasyev.
This is already the tenth time criminal charges have been brought against Afanasyev in the three years that his web-portal has been operating and displaying documents. However, all of the previous criminal charges have been dismissed by the courts.
Afanasyev is afraid that this time he will be punished. “It was clearly declared to me that I should stop writing critical articles. Probably, the local authorities’ patience has ended,” Afanasyev concluded.
