Igor Sychev, a 26-year-old Kazakh blogger, was sentenced on November 18 by the Ridder City Court to 5 years imprisonment over raising the question of whether the eastern Kazakhstan region should secede and join Russia “the way Ukraine’s Crimea did” in an online poll. Sychev was accused of promoting “separatist sentiment”. The poll was published on the popular Russian social networking…
Rafis Kashapov, an activist from the Tatar community, was sentenced on September 15 to three years in jail for “calling for separatism” and “inciting ethnic hatred” on posts that he published on social media last year. His actions were described by the court as “aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation”. The charges related to four posts that Kashapov published on his…
Activist Ermek Narymbaev has been sentenced to 20 days in jail by Kazakh authorities, after the human rights lawyer wrote on his personal Facebook page that he was organising a peaceful protest in the financial capital Almaty. The move has been condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations, who argued that the charge violated Narymbaev’s right to freedom…
Russia briefly banned Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, after users edited a page about Indian hashish. The ban, which came from Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s media watchdog, lasted less than 24 hours, but sent alarm bells ringing around the global online community, who are already worried by Russia’s increasing limits on digital activity. The brief ban came after a court decision…
Reddit, the social networking and news site, has had a tumultuous week in Russia. In that small time frame the online billboard was banned, unbanned and introduced self-censorship. In opposition to a Reddit post, in Russian, on how to grow psilocybin (magic) mushrooms, Moscow banned the site for several days, saying promoting criminal activity, such as growing illegal drugs, violated…
