Germany: person sentenced to 3 years in prison for ‘pro-Russian rhetoric’
In Germany, a man was sentenced to three years in prison for taking a political stance on the war in Ukraine. He allegedly called Ukraine a “terrorist state” and prominently displayed the Russian military symbol “Z” in some online posts.
The Ukrainian media picked up on the story and promoted it, apparently with enthusiastic approval. For example, Ukrainska Pravda said he was arrested for supporting "Russian aggression". The case was first reported by the German newspaper Die Welt based on a judgment from the Hamburg court.
The indictment reads : “The defendant justified Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine on social media and ran a Telegram channel whose name and logo were based on the Russian ultranationalist Drugaya Rossiya (Other Russia) party.”
The ruling carries a severe penalty for the crime, as the charge of "supporting Russian aggression" was reportedly added to a charge of illegal possession of weapons, and the man already had a criminal record.
Beginning in March and April of last year, as the Russian invasion was in full swing, several German states began announcing that they would prosecute "pro-Russian propagandists" and outlaw the display of the "Z" symbol.
From there legislation took hold at the federal level to ban expressions related to the war between Russia and Ukraine as “hate speech”:
“ The Russian attack on Ukraine is a crime and anyone who publicly approves of this war can become criminally responsible ,” Marek Wede, spokesman for the German Interior Ministry, said at the time. A thought that would not be out of place, changing its references, in CCP China.
In the opening months of the war, the Ukrainian government specifically pressured European governments to limit their citizens' speech in relation to the conflict.
In the first months of the war, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter: “ I call on all states to criminalize the use of the symbol 'Z' as a way of publicly supporting Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine . 'Z' means Russian war crimes, bombed cities, thousands of Ukrainians killed. Public support for this barbarism must be banned ."
Some pro-Russian symbols are even banned in street demonstrations and rallies in German cities. This has created yet another slippery slope regarding the question of whether the authorities can interpret anti-NATO placards as " justification for Russian aggression".
Dissent to Germany's anti-free speech laws has been limited, but Sabine Beppler-Spahl, president of Germany's liberal think tank Freiblickinstitut, responded to Spiked saying " pro-Russia protesters can now accuse Germany of hypocrisy . After all, the same German politicians who often attack the crackdown on dissent in Russia are now cracking down on dissent in Germany.
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The article Germany: person sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment for “Pro-Russian rhetoric” comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/germania-persona-condannata-a-3-anni-di-reclusione-per-retorica-pro-russa/ on Fri, 26 May 2023 09:29:45 +0000.