Is Lydia Bainova an “Extremist”?

Lydia Bainova. Photo courtesy of Newsru.com and Tayga.info

FSB Files Charges against Khakassia Woman for Social Media Post Defending the Republic’s Indigenous Population
Newsru.com
July 24, 2018

The secret services have opened a criminal investigation into Lydia Bainova, a 30-year-old Abakan resident, after she published a post on the VK social media network. The mother of a young child, Ms. Bainova promotes Khakas culture. Tayga.info reports she has been accused of inciting ethnic hatred. According to the website, the FSB’s Khakassia office has charged the young woman with violating Article 280 Part 2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code, which forbids public calls for “extremism” through the media or interent.

Tayga.info quotes the FSB’s indictment, which alleges Bainova “realized her criminal intentions using an Asus brand laptop with access to the internet.”

She posted a text containing the following passage: “At such moments, one feels like organizing a revolution, a coup, giving back power and land to our people, winning them back.”

FSB Investigator Marov decided the passage was a public call for “extremism,” Tayga.info reports.

However, the indictment does not quote Bainova’s entire post, which largely deals with cases of harassment suffered by Khakassia’s indigenous inhabitants. Bainova, for example, told her readers that children were told that only ethnic Russians were allowed in the playroom of an Abakan establishment.

“Some have been lucky not to encounter nationalism. During the twenty-nine years of my life in Abakan, I have encountered it constantly. My mother and father have constantly been the target of trenchant comments, like, ‘You’re Khakas and you got a three-room flat in the center of town,” or, ‘You’re a Khakas woman, but you dress so well,’ and so on,” Ms. Bainova wrote  on VK.

Ms. Bainova has denied her guilt. She believes it was her public outreach work that attracted the FSB’s attention. She popularizes Khakas culture, has been involved in an ethnic music festival, and advocates the preservation of Khakas traditions and the Khakas language.

Investigators commissioned a psycho-linguistic forensic examination of Ms. Bainova’s post. The examiners reached the same conclusion as the FSB. Ms. Bainova’s defense counsel said the forensic examination was performed “extremely unprofessionally.”

The maximum penalty for violating Article 280 Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code is five years in prison. In early June, a court in Tver Region sentenced a local electrician to a two-year suspended sentence for publishing a post against Vladimir Putin. Earlier this year, a resident of Sevastopol was sentenced to two years in prison, while a Petersburg resident was sentenced to ten months in a penal colony on the same charges.

Translated by the Russian Reader