28 August 2020
by Damir Dainutdinov. Damir is a lawyer specializing in freedom of expression.
Source: Source: Moscow Helsinki Group [original source: Pavel Chikov, head of Agora, on Telegram]
Hi, this is Damir Gainutdinov. The Judicial Department of the Russian Supreme Court has published crime statistics for 2003-2007. We have been waiting for them because it is extremely interesting to compare the current situation with the situation when RuNet was still free.
In the first statistical five-year period (2003-2007) 276 people were convicted of crimes against the constitutional order and state security. For the most recent period (2015-2019) the number convicted was 2,642. The growth is almost tenfold. The graph shows the significant share of those convicted under Article 282 of the Criminal Code, which was decriminalized at the beginning of 2019.
Crimes against the constitutional order and state security are primarily those of treason, espionage, disclosure of state secrets, extremism, and creation of an extremist group. In general, over the past 17 years the number of articles in this chapter of the Criminal Code has risen from 10 to 16.
Translated by Simon Cosgrove
