After his arrest, Roizman asks “VKontakte” to remove all posts with his name

Arrested for 14 days, the opposition politician Yevgeny Roizman wrote a statement to the general director of the management company of the social network “VKontakte” with a request to block all accounts on this network opened in his name.

In a statement published by the Yekaterinburg Telegram channel “Not for the Protocol”, the former mayor of Yekaterinburg refers to his right to the protection of personal data and privacy.

The day before, the court in Yekaterinburg sent Roizman under administrative arrest for 14 days, found him guilty of displaying extremist symbols. A video repost was published in VKontakte under the name “Evgeny Roizman” in which the symbols of the Foundation for the Fight against Corruption, banned in Russia, are present. Roizman stated that he does not have a VKontakte account and has never used this social network, however, the court considered that it was he who made the publication. At the same time, the public was not verified – that is, anyone could open it under Roizman’s name. Now VKontakte has several communities using the name “Evgeny Roizman” and at least five personal accounts using this name and surname in combination with a photo of the politician.

The former editor-in-chief of Ekha Moskvy, Aleksey Venediktov, and the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, called on the administrators and members of the groups named after Roizman to delete these groups.

“You used Yevgeny Roizman’s name on the network, posted posts and comments as if in his name, or at least that’s how many users perceived it. The phenomenon is well-known. There are numerous communities in social networks that exploit the names of stars of culture, sports, politics, living or the dead, as avatars, as doppelgangers, increasing the audience and collecting advertising. We understand that this is the price of fame and, of course, public recognition. But Roizman is now being imprisoned under this pretext,” the journalists write, referring to the opinion of the politician’s close friends, his lawyers and friends.

In Roizman’s circle, they fear that the administrative case can be used to change the measure of punishment in the criminal case about the so-called discrediting of the army, which the politician is undergoing. Roizman is prohibited from publishing on the Internet. The oppositionist observes restrictions – in particular, he does not write in his popular Twitter account. However, under the pretext that he allegedly uses “VKontakte”, the measure of suppression can theoretically be tightened.

Roizman was accused of repeatedly discrediting the army because of his anti-military statements, he was previously found guilty in an administrative case of discrediting. We are talking about a less serious article than the article about so-called fakes, however, Roizman can face up to three years in prison for it.