14 November 2020
Hi. It’s Lera Vetoshkina, a lawyer at Team 29
In today’s newsletter, I’d like to tell you about events over the past week. The main news came from “the service that shall not be named”. The Public Prosecution concluded the presentation of its evidence in the case of Karina Tsurkan, who has been charged with espionage. You can find out on our website what it amounts to: barely legible transcripts that we are supposed to take as authentic. But Team 29 insists that such evidence is inadmissible, and that Karina herself is no spy.
Also, Team 29 Senior Associate Maksim Olenichev held some offline training on access to information. On the face of it, it’s a bit of a random subject. There’s a pandemic going on, after all. It’s a crisis, and it’s 2020. What kind of access to data are we talking about, and why are people worried about it? Well, it’s just that in today’s society, whoever controls information controls the world. Here, I’d like to tell you about Team 29’s Telegram chat room. Our lawyer offers free advice there on anything to do with the freedom of information. You don’t know how to get your conscription office to issue paperwork to conscripts? Just ask! You want to get access to town planning documents, but officials have marked them as confidential? Feel free to post your questions in the chat room!
But let’s not forget about the Coronavirus pandemic. The issue of vaccinations is especially urgent, and much debate surrounds it, both in the medical and the legal fields. So if you are forced to get a shot, you must read our new guide. In it, we tell you why this is illegal, to put it mildly.
In addition, our team has been angered by the introduction of a legal prohibition on the publication of dissenting opinions by judges of Russia’s Constitutional Court. In a new video, our lawyer Artem Kutlovsky tells us about the genesis of the Constitutional Court in Russia. You know, it feels like the government is shutting us all out and like the space for free speech is shrinking.
In this video, T29 Senior Associate Dasha Sukhikh discusses another attempt to constrain the freedom of speech. It’s a case where our lawyers successfully asserted the right to express their opinion in a fight with the KGB. So, all is not lost!
May the fire in your hearts never die!
Lera
Translated by Lindsay Munford
