In Russia, “offending the feelings of believers” leads to prison

The snap appeared online on September 29. We see a young blonde girl, kneeling in Red Square, in front of a boy to whom she seems to be giving a fellatio. The doubt is however limited: the two are well and truly dressed, and the staging was only intended to feed the Instagram account of a small-time influencer, Rouslan Bobiev, the boy in the photo.

The two jokers only neglected one point: more than the logo jacket ” police “ worn by the young girl, it is the background chosen for their photo, on which the golden bulbs of Saint Basil’s Cathedral clearly stand out, which shocked people.

Immediate online controversy, arrest of the couple the next day and, finally, a criminal conviction pronounced Friday, October 29. Despite their multiple excuses, repeated during the hearing, Rouslan Bobiev and Anastasia Tchistova, 23 and 19, will have to spend ten months in prison.

Archives peeled by the police

This sentence is the first to a firm prison handed down by a Russian court under the law on “offending the feelings of believers”. This text was adopted in 2013, after the intrusion of Pussy Riot in the cathedral of Christ the Savior for a punk “prayer” with very political accents. At the time, judges had to sentence three of the activists to two years in prison for ” vandalism “ motivated by “Religious hatred”.

Read : “Pussy Riot, the punk feminists who challenge Vladimir Poutin”

Since then, around thirty cases have been tried under this law, but without going beyond the stay. Two years and three months, for example, for a man who had played Pokemon Go in a church giving the gesture political significance, and who had still spent four months in pre-trial detention.

This first immediately gave ideas to police officers across Russia, who frantically peel through social media archives. First targeted: a blogger who had shown her breasts in front of the same Saint Basil’s Cathedral. She too will be tried under article 148 of the penal code, even though she assures that the cliché goes back three years and that it was put online without her knowledge.

The Petersburg police, not left out, for their part exhumed the photo of a young girl rolling up her skirt in front of St. Isaac’s Cathedral and showing her butt (dressed in a thong) to the camera. Arrested on October 30, she was presented to a judge the next day, handcuffed and in a cage. The “facts” date back to the summer, but witnesses have been miraculously found, who assure that the sight of these “Bare buttocks” had “Offended themselves, the power, the Church, the State and the society”, according to the court record.

You have 40.01% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.

source site