Press Release, 21.10.2022

Photo: Emilia Slabunova / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Emilia Slabunova, a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia from the Yabloko party, was able to find out which posts on her personal page on the VKontakte social media caused  blocking of her page by the decision of the Public Prosecutor General’s Office. The first post was the  official data on the death in Ukraine of the first serviceman from Karelia with a quote from President Putin. The second was a repost of an interview with Valentina Melnikova, Executive Secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers.

To find out why her page was blocked on a popular social media Emilia Slabunova appealed to the Petrozavodsk City Court with a complaint about the inaction of Roskomnadzor, the media watchdog. Also, after the Public Prosecutor General’s Office, Roskomnadzor and the administration of the social network did not respond in substance to Slabunova’s requests about the reasons for the blocking, she removed from her page all materials that could raise any questions. Roskomnadzor, having received a notification about the removal of materials, should have canceled the blocking of the page, but did not do this, which contradicts Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection”.

The representative of the VKontakte social media did not appear at the last hearing of the court, but Roskomnadzor provided screenshots of the posts, due to which the page of Emilia Slabunova was blocked. It is noteworthy that the information contained in the posts had been published in many other sources, including government’s ones. For example, the death of a soldier from Karelia on the territory of Ukraine was reported by the head of the Republic of Karelia and the state news agency “Republic of Karelia”. In addition, Slabunova quoted President Putin in her post, who assured that “only professional military personnel take part in this operation: officers and contractors” (quoted from RIA Novosti). Which of the above was recognised by Roskomnadzor or the Public Prosecutor General’s Office as unreliable information was unclear: representatives of the state departments refused to answer this question in court.

“There is nothing even to comment on, except that they simply found a reason to block an MP a possibility to communicate with voters. On the eve of the elections of the Head of the Republic of Karelia, this was especially important. Certainly, I am preparing to appeal the decision to the court of appeal,” Emilia Slabunova wrote in her Telegram channel.

It should be noted that after the start of the so-called “special operation”, Public Prosecutor General’s Office blocked eight popular pages of Yabloko politicians on the VKontakte social network: the pages of Boris Vishnevsky, MP of the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Emilia Slabunova, MP of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia, the personal pages of the leaders of the Yabloko regional branches Lev Shlosberg (the Pskov region) , Anna Cherepanova (the Novgorod region) and Ruslan Zinatullin (Tatarstan), as well as party members Zhanna Shlosberg (the Pskov region), Alexei Manannikov (the Novosibirsk region), and Zufar Garipov (Tatarstan). None of those who sent requests to the supervisory authorities and the administration of the social network managed to find out the reasons for the blockings.

EMILIA SLABUNOVA

is member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, Chair of Yabloko in 2015-2019.

Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia.

Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Honoured Teacher of Russia.