Court fines "Novaya Gazeta' for Milashina's article about coronavirus in Chechnya

The Tver District Court of Moscow recognized as a "fake" the Elena Milashina's article about the spread of the coronavirus infection in Chechnya posited by the newspaper "Novaya Gazeta". The court also obliged the newspaper to pay a fine for the publication of the above article.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the Elena Milashina's article on the situation with COVID-19 in Chechnya and another publication of the "Novaya Gazeta" gave rise to administrative protocols against the newspaper and Dmitry Muratov, its editor-in-chief.

In her article entitled "Death from coronavirus is the lesser evil", posted in the "Novaya Gazeta" on April 12, Elena Milashina criticized the measures taken by the authorities of Chechnya in connection with the fight against the coronavirus infection.

The Tver District Court of Moscow considered a complaint filed by the "Novaya Gazeta" against a request of the General Prosecutor's Office to remove the article prepared by Elena Milashina from the newspaper's website. The court dismissed the complaint and fined the newspaper 200,000 roubles and Dmitry Muratov, its editor-in-chief, – 60,000 roubles under the article on disseminating "fake" information, the "Novaya Gazeta" reports today.

When considering the case, officials from the General Prosecutor's Office and the "Roskomnadzor" (Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media) referred to their "inner conviction about the presence of socially dangerous information in the article," and not to any normative acts or regulations which could contain the description of signs of such information, Ekaterina Sedova, a lawyer of the "Novaya Gazeta", reports today. "We will challenge the decisions made concerning the article prepared by Elena Milashina, and then we are going to transfer them to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), since we believe that it will be an interesting case for the Strasbourg Court," said Ekaterina Sedova as quoted by the "Interfax" today.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on September 29, 2020 at 05:36 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.