Boris Stomakhin

Boris Vladimirovich Stomakhin (Russian: Борис Владимирович Стомахин) (born August 24, 1974, Moscow) is a Russian radical political activist, and editor of "Radical politics" periodical. He was convicted to five years in prison on charges of inciting ethnic hatred and making public appeals for extremist activity. The conviction is questioned by human rights protection organizations ARTICLE 19, Committee to Protect Journalists, and Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.

Journalism and political activism

Stomakhin was a member of maoist Revolutionary Workers Party. Later he became a leader of a radical political group "Revolutionary Contact Association" (RCA). Other members of this organization are Pavel Kantor, Dmitry Tarasov, Ludmila Evstifeeva, and Pavel Luzakov. They organized a number of pickets against Russian foreign policy in Ukraine, Estonia, Belarus, Chechnya.

Since 2000, Boris Stomakhin was an editor of the monthly newspaper "Radical Politics". In addition, he contributed numerous materials to Kavkaz Center, the radical Islamic internet agency that promotes the independence of Chechnya and is maintained by Chechen separatists.

Boris Stomakhin's statements were interpreted as public calls for mass murdering of Russians.

The Russian court established that Stomakhin called for the violent overthrow of government and claimed that Russian troops in Chechnya are "occupiers" and compared President Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević. According to his court sentence, Stomakhin also stated that modern Russia is an Evil empire and therefore must be destroyed, and considered Shamil Basaev and Salman Raduev as heroes of the Chechen resistance whose terrorist activities are legitimate. However, some human rights activists like Valeria Novodvorskaya and Yakov Krotov did not believe that he actually promoted any terrorist activities.

Opening of a criminal case against Stomakhin

Attempts to prosecute Stomakhin for hate speech were made unsuccessfully in 2000.

Successful application to prosecute Stomakhin was made by opposition Communist Party State Duma member Viktor Zorkalcev at the request of another Communist party member Valentina Lavrova. Valentina Lavrova has acquired a copy of Stomakhin Radical Politics periodical, while being on rally in Mayakovsky Square, Moscow, in September 2002. Being insulted by the text of periodicals she hasn't rushed immediately to authorities, and began to collect the evidence by visiting public actions of Stomakhin and acquiring new numbers of his periodical. After collecting the evidence she referred not to police or security authorities, but to the member of parliament, Viktor Zorkalcev.

Stomakhin's home was searched in April 2004 and his computers and books were confiscated. Stomakhin fled to Ukraine seeking political asylum, which was eventually denied.

Arrest and trial

Having returned to Moscow, Stomakhin was arrested on March 21, 2006. Stomakhin tried to escape during his arrest and fell down from fourth floor of his building, according to his lawyer Alexei Golubev and news reports. His spine and bones were broken as a result.

Stomakhin was subsequently interrogated. Psychiatry experts at the Moscow Serbsky Institute found that Stomakhin was competent to stand trial.

He was sentenced to five years of prison for inciting hatred and defamatory statements aimed at groups and persons of particular religious and ethnic background and for promoting violent change of constitutional regime and violation of territorial integrity of Russian Federation (articles 280 and 282 of the Russian Criminal Code).

Below are some excerpts from Stomakhin's articles cited as incriminating evidence in the court sentence:

• "Let tens of new Chechen snipers take their positions in the mountain ridges and the city ruins and let hundreds, thousands of aggressors fall under righteous bullets! No mercy! Death to the Russian occupiers!" (the article was written in response to rape and murder of Chechen women Elza Kungaeva by Yuri Budanov)
• "We, 'Revolutionary Contact Association' and 'Radical Politics' are united with the Committee 2008 and are ready to cooperate with it. However we [are] a lot more radical. We are for not waiting until 2008 and bothering ourselves particularly with the Constitution, but we are for calling people to overthrow the Putin's regime as soon as possible. And we do not see any possibility of preserving Russian Federation as a single state. But we are ready to unite with all allies, even those that are more moderate".
• "Bombing in Moscow subway was justified, natural and legal... The Chechens have full moral right to blow up anything they want in Russia after all that Russia and Russians did to them, none objections on humanism and philanthropy could be accepted."
• "All Chechnya is currently filled up with the same Budanovs, maniacs, blood lusting sadists, murderers and degenerates with epaulets . The entire Russian occupation army consists of such Budanovs".
• "In Chechnya Russian army ceased to exist as a military structure of state, being transformed into a devilish gang of marauders and killers, the gang intoxicated from narcotics".
• "Precisely the bloody, cannibalistic ferocity of this state against a small and defenceless mountain nation was the first to inspire our mind with this thought: Russia must be destroyed forever, a state that allows itself to do such things to entire nations must not exist at all!"
• "The Chechen heroes are going. Dudayev, Atteriyev, Khattab, and today - Raduyev. It is as if they are being devoured, swallowed by a terrible, black malodorous abyss. The name of that abyss is Russia. Russia's immeasurable baseness and perfidy, her pathological dishonesty and criminality as a country, a civilization, a historical agent."

Stomakhin pleaded not guilty. Stomakhin was periodically laughing when the judge was reading his sentence.

Commentaries

Support

Alexander Litvinenko said that "people like Boris are the most dangerous for the Putin's regime that deceived millions of Russians, brought them to their knees and transformed them to slaves". According to priest Yakov Krotov, "Stomakin made a picture of Putin with swastika? Well, I believe that not only Putin and his generals deserve to wear swastika, but also all Russian civilians who pretend that they know nothing about the genocide of Chechens and discrimination of Georgians in Russia"

Stomakhin was qualified as a prisoner of conscience" [1] by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and as a political prisoner in an open letter send to G7 leaders by Russia's human rights activists Sergei Kovalev, Yelena Bonner. [2]

A group of Russian citizens including Vladimir Bukovsky condemned the conviction of Stomakhin as prosecution of free speech.

Widow of Andrei Sakharov Elena Bonner compared Stomakhin with Soviet dissidents who were prosecuted for their writings by Yuri Andropov. Human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina and politician Valeria Novodvorskaya argued that Stomakhin's writings while being "absolutely outrageous" and "inciting national hatred" had not been a public threat: they were very unlikely to incite anybody

Journalist Vladimir Abarinov criticized court proceedings as an example of kangaroo court He claimed that the criminal case against Stomakhin was opened based on solely an article about Russian Orthodox Church that was not written by Stomakhin. It was decided by the court that Stomakhin actually copied this article from a Live Journal entry, as well as other publications of numerous news agencies. The authors of the original work disagree to share their responsibility with Stomakhin citing that he had reproduced their works without permission and distorted the original meaning.

Criticism

Some journalists like M. Smolin from Komsomolskaya Pravda described his views as extremely Russophobic..

Critics of the court decision were denounced by Russian publicist Maxim Sokolov. In his article published in Izvestia newspaper after the conviction of Stomakhin he remarked that Stomakhin's writings were worse than Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler and that the hate speech must be prosecuted according to the article 282 of the Russian criminal code. He cited in support a text written by Boris Stomakhin, that "Russian Federation and Russians must be exterminated" by all available means including Nuclear bomb, because all Russians are collectively responsible for actions of their government with respect to Chechen people. According to Sokolov, the cited passage made application of the article 282 completely appropriate.

External links

• Template:Ru icon Official Court Sentence, dated November 20, 2006
• Web site in support of Boris Stomakhin
• Articles by Boris Stomakhin
• The article 'Death to Russia' by Boris Stomkahin in Google cache
• Revolutionary Contact Association website
• Revolutionary Contact Association website
• Another website of Revolutionary Contact Association