Moscow: Russia has blocked the website monitoring of tracking the rights of political abuse, by saying that it promotes terrorism and extremism, in the midst of an unprecedented official democracy about differences of opinion.
This step comes in a year that has seen the opposition dismantled and received independent media values ​​and branded rights groups as “foreign agents” or directly prohibited.
OVD-INFO, which tracks opposition protests and also provides legal support to victims of political abuse, said Roskomnadzor Media Regulator has blocked its website earlier this week.
“At present, we have not received the notification and do not know the reason for blocking,” the group was tweeted.
The Roskomnadzor registry blocked website shows that the Moscow regional court has issued a decision on December 20 to “limit” access to the site.
The website cannot be accessed by AFP journalists in Russia on Saturday.
Then on Saturday, Russian news agency quoted Rosomnadzor as confirming that it had blocked the Info-OVD website because the Moscow court decided that the group’s activities aimed to promote “terrorism and extremism” in Russia.
Roskomnadzor added that it has sent “demands” to social media networks to “delete an organizational account”.
“We consider this as a continuation of the country offensive to civil society,” said Ko-founder OVD-Info Grigory Okhotin on the telegram, rejecting charges and swore that OVD-INFO will continue his work, despite the blockage.
Pressure on social media companies to remove OVD-info from their platform came after the Moscow court on Friday slapped Google with an unprecedented fine from nearly $ 100 million, while Meta (previous Facebook) received a fine of $ 27 million because it failed to delete content which is prohibited.
Roskomnadzor said US companies had “ignored many demands” to remove material that incited religious hatred and promoting the views of “extremist and terrorist organizations”, including violations.
OVD info, which was established a decade ago during the first mass protest against the government of President Vladimir Putin in December 2011, was labeled “foreign agents” in September.
Bringing the Conference of Stalin-era’s negative, entities or individuals identified as “foreign agents” must accompany their texts, videos, and post their social media with the provision.
The label is a deterrent for advertisers and makes it difficult for the function of the organization and journalists.
OVD info, which led the campaign against the law, condemned the move as “the action of political pressure.” The “foreign agent” label has been used specifically against journalists, with the list of justice ministries and news outlets from 17 at the beginning of the 103th year on Saturday.
The critics referred to the decision by Putin’s top domestic opponents Alexei Navalny to return to Russia in January as triggering historic clampdown.
The 45-year-old opposition leader has been in Germany recovering from an almost fatal poisoning attack which he blames Putin – claims that have been repeatedly rejected by Kremlin.
Navalny was imprisoned immediately after the return of an accusation of old fraud and since then saw the organization was banned as “extremist” and all the top allies escaped from the country.
Asked about the hard action on Thursday, Putin said that it was intended to limit foreign influences.
“I remind you of what the enemy has said for our enemies for centuries: Russia cannot be defeated, it can only be destroyed from inside,” he said at a press conference.
He added that it was a domestic dissent that brought the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago this month.
Also this month, the Russian Supreme Court is considering whether to close the commemoration of the country’s leading rights organization, which works with OVD-INFO.
The prosecutor accused the legislation “foreign agent” violation rights and justify terrorism by releasing a list of political prisoners covering numbers that were prohibited like Navalny.