The ‘Kirovskiy District Court’ in Crimea sentenced a 42-year-old local resident to forced labor for a period of 5 months with 15% deducted from his salary into the RF income for “anti-Russian messages in messenger”.
‘In July 2022, the defendant posted a text message in the group chat of one of the messengers, which contained calls for violent actions against servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,’ the website of the ‘court’ says, though the name of the defendant is not indicated.
The man was charged under RF CC Article 280-2 (public calls for extremist activity). The man was banned from posting information on the Internet for 2 years.
The persecution of all dissidents, people who oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is known to go on in the temporarily occupied Crimea.
For example, a chatbot has been introduced in Sevastopol for reporting pro-Ukrainian manifestations in Crimea. Human rights defenders have long been watching how denunciations are becoming a common practice on the peninsula.
‘Even relatives report their relatives to the FSB if in the kitchen someone said, for example, ‘it’s bad that has Russia attacked Ukraine.’ A wife has reported on the husband, or the pupils have reported on the teacher, who tried to tell them about the war during the lesson. And even the nursery school teachers have reported on the colleague that she is discrediting the armed forces,’ Ms.Iryna Siedova, an expert of the Crimean Human Rights Group, noted.
