Navalny’s surname was not and cannot be banned

Courts in four regions of Russia equated the name of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny with “extremist” symbols. This is reported by the human rights project “First Department”.

Human rights defenders refer to three decisions in cases of administrative violations. We are talking about actions in memory of Alexei Navalny in Chelyabinsk, Krasnodar and Murmansk.

The courts imposed administrative arrests on the “violators” because the name of Alexei Navalny was written on their posters. In their rulings, the courts referred to the fact that FBK, included in the Russian Federation’s list of “extremist organizations”, repeatedly used the name “Alexei Navalny”.

“Pervyy Otdel” notes that “when describing the circumstances of the “violation”, the “expertise” of the whistleblower Danyla Mikheev was used (his conclusions were repeatedly used by the courts in cases involving the demonstration of prohibited symbols).

The project’s lawyers are confident that the courts are wrong. “Navalny’s surname was not prohibited by any court decision and cannot be prohibited.” Lawyers warn: “punishment for the family name” can become a practice, not “local excesses”.

In 2021, the Alexei Navalny Anti-Corruption Fund was called an “extremist organization” by the Russian authorities. A period of increasingly active opening of administrative cases for “demonstration of prohibited symbols” has come.

So, in September 2021, in Krasnoyarsk, Natalya Peterimova, a former activist of Navalny’s local headquarters, was accused of spreading extremist symbols for using the letter “N” and red exclamation marks in old Instagram posts. In November of the same year, the court acquitted Peterymov.