Social activist Yulia Posevkina from Komi filed a complaint about the reference form of "notices about extremism" on the Prosecutor-General's Office’s website with the Office of the Russian President for the Processing of Communications from Individuals on May 7. She reported this on her page on vk.com.
Yulia Posevkina drew attention to the fact that the supervisory department’s website indicated four types of "extremist" information:
- signs of calling for mass riots,
- signs of calling for carrying out extremist activities,
- signs of calling for terrorism,
- signs of calling for participation in mass (public) events held with violations of the established procedure.
Posevkina believes this indicates that "the authorities call the organizers of peaceful rallies extremists", but, according to her, it is illegal. Her complaint says that identifying calls for participation in peaceful actions as "extremism" is contrary to the Federal Act on Counteraction of Terrorism. Its Article 1 contains a definition of the concept, but it does not mention mass events.
"The Prosecutor-General's Office gives the community a false impression of [organizations and citizens calling for participation in mass events] as criminals, thereby inciting social discord in society," Yulia Posevkina wrote in the complaint and asked the president to "urgently take measures to protect the constitutional right of citizens to peaceful assembly."
Yulia Posevkina is a social activist from Syktyvkar. She protects the rights of children with special needs, patients and workers of psycho-neurological boarding houses and heads the Osoboe Detstvo (‘special childhood’) Civic Organization. In 2020, Yulia Posevkina participated in the elections to the Republican State Council, but won the second place in the Magistralny Election District of Syktyvkar, losing Sergei Arteev (the United Russia Party).
On the eve of the unagreed rally in support of politician Alexei Navalny on April 21, the police visited Yulia Posevkina at home and drew up a report under Part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (Arranging or Conducting a Public Event Without Notification) against her for sharing a post about the rally on vk.com. The Syktyvkar Town Court closed the administrative case against Posevkina, who could not even attend the rally because her leg was broken, on April 30.
