How the Russian Law Against Fakes is Being Applied
Amendments to Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code to "protect the Armed Forces" took effect March 4. Since then, according to OVD-Info, the article has been applied against 556 people. Many of these cases appear absurd. At the end of March an activist was detained in Moscow for a poster with eight asterisks. Before that, pacifists had been arrested for holding blank sheets of paper, the novel "War and Peace," a quote from George Orwell, and other seemingly harmless things. Anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova conducted research using open data in social networks and the media to determine which actions have been most often prosecuted under the new law. She found that people are detained most often for attending rallies or pickets, including one-person protests. The second top violation is statements on social networks. Comments, posts and reposts are all considered violations of the law, and more than a hundred people have been charged. In ...