Provider Blocks Sites Of Political Activists
By Sergey Chernov
Staff Writer
Opposition activists say one of the leading Russian Internet providers is practicing “political censorship” by denying access to oppositional web sites for its clients. Clients of the Internet provider Beeline, the trademark of the Moscow-based VimpelCom group of companies, have been denied access to the web sites of oppositional politician and author Eduard Limonov and his banned National-Bolshevik Party (NBP) since last week. VimpelCom said that the web sites had been blocked by a court order, but the sites in question are not listed as banned in the Ministry of Justice’s Federal Register of Extremist Materials. Speaking on Monday, Limonov’s spokesman Alexander Averin said that Beeline clients have been experiencing problems opening the web sites www.limonov2012.ru and www.nazbol.ru since Feb. 2. “By Friday it had become clear that it was a purposeful and planned action; people started writing about it in their blogs, and users were told by the support service that the web sites had been ‘banned on orders from above,’” said Averin, speaking by phone from Moscow. “I’d like to point out that none of these sites has been declared as ‘extremist’ by a court in Russia, so it’s obvious that it is political censorship.” VimpelCom’s press officer Ksenia Korneyeva said a court had ordered that access to the web sites be denied. “These web sites have been blocked as extremist in accordance with a court order,” Korneyeva said by phone from Moscow. Korneyeva failed to specify the number of the order, or which court had taken the decision and when. “This is normal practice,” she said. “When a court or a prosecutor’s office declares some web sites extremist, we block access to those sites.” However, the Federal Register of Extremist Materials, which lists materials, including web sites, that have been banned by court as extremist, and is available from the Ministry of Justice’s official web sites, does not list www.limonov2012.ru and www.nazbol.ru. When asked why other Internet providers, including the state-owned North-West Telecom, St. Petersburg’s largest operator, were offering full access to both sites on Monday and all last week, Korneyeva said: “This is a question for the providers and for those who make the orders — it’s definitely not a question for VimpelCom.” Earlier on Monday, Beeline’s technical support service failed to offer any explanation. A technical specialist who did not introduce himself said he could not open the sites either and asked this journalist to hold. Fifty-nine minutes into the call, it was disconnected by Beeline. Averin suggested that the sites had been blocked in the wake of the recent protests that were part of the Strategy 31 campaign initiated by Limonov last year. Limonov proposed a schedule of events by which protesters would go to Triumfalnaya Ploshchad in Moscow on the 31st day of each month containing 31 days to defend the right to assembly, which is guaranteed by Article 31 of the Russian Constitution. “We are linking this to the success of the Jan. 31 protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg, because these [sites] are the resources that played a role in promoting [the protests] and reporting what was happening,” said Averin. The peaceful Strategy 31 protests, which were expanded to St. Petersburg and several other cities on Jan. 31, were dispersed in Moscow and St. Petersburg by the OMON special-task police force, with dozens of activists being arrested. Limonov and the NBP were joined in the protests by human rights activists such as Lyudmila Alexeyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and oppositional leaders such as former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov. In November, Limonov was sentenced to 10 days in custody for taking part in the Oct. 31 protest. VimpelCom, which owns the Beeline brand, was the third most popular home Internet provider with 979,600 clients in Russia during the first 10 months of 2009, according to a report by ACM-Consulting. In St. Petersburg it is the fourth biggest provider, with 119,000 clients.
|
Ïåðåâåñòè íà ðóññêèé
Print this article
Issues Archive
Issue in PDF
Issue in RSS