Mari El is among 20 Russian regions, where the situation with Internet freedom worsened in 2017, states the report of the international human rights group "Agora" on February 5.
The republic is mentioned along with Bashkortostan, Dagestan, Karelia, Yakutia, Crimea, Murmansk and Ulyanovsk and several other regions.
The authors of the report mention the "zelyonka attack" in Yoshkar-Ola on the head of the School of Journalistic Investigations Galina Sidorova. She conducted an investigative seminar in the capital of Mari El. On April 27, an unknown man threw zelyonka in her back. Later, in a private hotel outside the city where Sidorova stayed, unknown people broke the window and put a dead rat in the building.
The report mentions a criminal case, according to which a resident of Kozmodemyansk was fined for video in the social network VKontakte.
Human rights activists of "Agora" included two facts when journalist of «7x7» Dmitry Lyubimov was not allowed to attend the meetings of the National Assembly of the Republic. On October 23, Lyubimov was denied accreditation and was not allowed to attend the meeting, on December 26 the guard referred to the fact that the correspondent's name was not on the "invited" list.
According to "Agora", 115 706 cases of restriction of access to the Internet were fixed in Russia in 2017. Human rights activists note that the Federal Security Service (FSB) exerted most pressure on the Internet.
