Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Open Media, MBH Media and Pravozashchita Postcards announced the closure
Mikhail Khodorkovsky's projects MBH Media, Open Media and Pravozashchita Postcards announced their closure on Thursday. The day before, the sites were blocked by Roskomnadzor (RKN) “at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office” without a court decision. Lawyers and employees of the resources that closed today told Kommersant that they do not regard the incident as a ban on the profession and will continue to work on their own, however, there is no talk of creating new media and human rights companies by them.
The websites of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's projects – information resources MBH Media and Open Media, as well as the legal association Pravozashchita Postcards – were blocked on August 4 late in the evening. Roskomnadzor explained to Kommersant that the blocking occurred at the request of the General Prosecutor's Office, it is “about restricting access to information resources of Open Russia Civic Movement and Open Russia.” The mentioned organizations, we recall, are included in the list of undesirable in Russia.
At the request of Kommersant about the grounds on which the department demanded to block the sites, the Prosecutor General's Office explained: “The General's demand was adopted on the basis of Art. 15.3 of the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” “.
The department also recalled the decision of 2017, according to which “the activities of the public network movement Open Russia Civic Movement, Open Russia are recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation.” “The inspection of the prosecutor's office revealed a number of Internet sites related to the named organizations,” the department explained the reasons for the requirement to the RKN.
On Thursday morning, August 5, these resources announced the closure and shutdown. The first to make a statement were the journalists of Open Media . They indicated that they had not received notifications from the RKN and the Prosecutor General's Office, but together with the investor, they made a decision “to stop the work, because the risks for the project staff are too great”. The statement emphasized that the publication never worked with undesirable structures: “The Open Media project was launched on September 1, 2017, Mikhail Khodorkovsky provided the project with a five-year grant through his company Open press – we never hid this. None of the journalists of the project had contracts or unregistered relations with other companies of Khodorkovsky. “
Earlier, the Ministry of Justice included the editor-in-chief of Open Media, Yulia Yarosh, and her deputy, Maksim Glikin, as well as the publication's correspondent, Ilya Rozhdestvensky, in the list of foreign media agents. According to Kommersant's information, then the editorial office began to consider the possibility of closing the publication in the fall.
Maxim Glikin on Thursday explained to Kommersant that the team did not discuss the possibility of creating a new media outlet: “There are no plans yet, everything is very unexpected, no one warned us. So far, I'm trying to figure out how to live on. “
“List me in publication as a former employee of Open Media and an acting foreign agent,” he added.
Lawyer Anastasia Burakova, its coordinator, lawyer Anastasia Burakova announced the termination of the work in Russia of the “Legal Protection of the Postcard” project immediately after the project's channel was removed. She told Kommersant that the organization's employees will continue to work in private, because “a lawyer is more a profession than belonging to a human rights organization.” In the current environment, this is the only possible option to continue her work, she said.
“It is impossible to create an analogue of our organization,” Ms. Burakova explains. “There have already been precedents when, after creating a new structure instead of a closed one, the Prosecutor General’s Office said that this was also a continuation of the activities of an undesirable organization. And so far there is no legal mechanism to overcome this, because the legislation on undesirable organizations is as opaque as possible. Therefore, there are no such plans yet. We do not want to substitute our clients and lawyers ”.
According to Ms. Burakova, a trend has been set to limit the right to freedom of association: “Therefore, I do not see an opportunity in Russia to continue working in this format. Only individually. “
On Thursday afternoon, the editor-in-chief of MBKh Media, Veronika Kutsyllo, announced on Facebook that the publication was closed and recalled that during its three and a half years of operation, it was blocked several times by the RKN, then resumed its work, but “this time the risks are too great” : “Not only for the journalists who worked on the resource, but also for any people who liked our content and who decided to share it with others … I'm not ready to jeopardize the freedom and lives of other people. Mikhail Khodorkovsky too. “
Ms. Kutsyllo also stressed that the closure of a number of media outlets, the recognition of their employees as foreign agents and the accusation of journalists of “links with mythical undesirable organizations is another step” on the way, following which “the country is rapidly falling into some incredible feudal darkness.”
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in turn, confirmed that he had agreed to terminate the work of the offices of MBH Media and Open Media.
“The voiced reason (blocking – Kommersant )” contact with undesirable organizations “(and in fact with me – a citizen of Russia) means a high level of personal risk for journalists,” – said Mr. Khodorkovsky in Telegram.
The blocking of resources occurred the day before without a court decision. Director of the Center for the Protection of Media Rights (included in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent) Galina Arapova explained that “this effective procedure” has been applied since 2013, when Art. 15.3 of the Law “On Information” Deputy Andrei Lugovoi introduced the corresponding amendment. The adopted bill was named “Lugovoy's Law”, Galina Arapova recalled: “Already in 2014, the websites of Grani.ru, Kasparov.ru and Daily Journal were blocked under this procedure. The latter is protected by our lawyers, and in 2020 the ECHR recognized that blocking the Daily Journal was illegal, and the right to freedom of dissemination of information was violated. For this, the Russian authorities paid compensation of € 10,000, but the site has not been unblocked so far. “
Ms. Arapova explains the effectiveness of “procedure 15.3” by the exceptional difficulty of getting the blockages lifted and points out that the only way out in this case is to appeal against the actions of the Prosecutor General's Office by filing an administrative claim: “The courts will last about a year, and it’s unclear how it will end.”
The expert calls the wording about connections with undesirable organizations and participation in their work as vague as possible, since even speaking at a round table on a topic opposite to an “undesirable” event can be recognized as “participation”.
In addition, the current practice, according to the lawyer, shows that the “mirrors” of closed sites will also be subject to further blocking: “The Prosecutor General's Office will consider such sites (similar in address, logo and other features; such sites may differ in content from the main blocked site and not contain his archival materials. – “Kommersant” ) as a continuation of the distribution of prohibited content. “
Recall that in July, together with the journalists of Open Media, the editor-in-chief of the Project Roman Badanin, the journalists Pyotr Manyakhin, Olga Churakova, Maria Zheleznova, Yulia Lukyanova and the journalist of Radio Liberty were included in the list of foreign media agents (previously included in the media register -inagents) Elizaveta Maetnaya. At the same time, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation introduced Project Media, Inc. (“Project Media”) to the list of unwanted organizations. After that, the company announced its liquidation, and the journalists of “Project” – about the absence of financial relations with it. On July 16, the NGO Project Media was included in the list of undesirable in Russia, according to the website of the Russian Ministry of Justice. A week later, the Ministry of Justice included The Insider SIA (administrator of the domain name of the Internet publication The Insider) and five journalists from the Open Media and Project publications in the list of foreign media agents. The register of foreign agents included Project journalists Mikhail Rubin, Sophia Groisman, Yulia Apukhtina, Open Media journalist Ilya Rozhdestvensky, and Alexey Posternak.
In April, Meduza was added to the list of foreign agents, and then four journalists from the DOXA student publication were searched. The employees of the publication – Armen Aramyan, Alla Gutnikova, Vladimir Metelkin and Natalia Tyshkevich – are accused of involving minors in actions dangerous for them (Article 151.2 of the Criminal Code). As the lawyers reported, the criminal case was opened because of the video in which the newspaper's employees appealed to the students not to be afraid of deductions for participation in the rallies.
Maria Starikova, Anna Vasilieva, Anna Afanasyeva
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