Ruslan Sokolovsky Gets 3 And A Half Years Suspended Sentence And A Conviction For Playing Pokemon In A Church

Free Speech

from the pokemon-go-to-jail dept

Update: After doing some hunting around, we were able to dig up additional reliable source material that indicates that Sokolovsky’s conviction, troubling on its own, carries a suspended sentence that will keep him out of jail. We are updating the title of the post to reflect that, but will keep the original post in full below this update. While Solokovksy is obviously pleased to not be behind bars, it remains troubling that he has been convicted, forced to delete his videos, and spent months between house arrest and a detention center throughout this ordeal.

The better part of a year ago we discussed the story of atheist activist Ruslan Sokolovsky. Sokolovsky became something of the sequel story to the now infamous Pussy Riot debacle. Russian police detained Sokolovsky and put him on house arrest for the crime of playing Pokemon Go in a Russian church and uploading a mildly snarky video about it to YouTube. The Russian Orthodox Church was fully on board with his being detained, stating in true Christ-like fashion that the real crime was his not respecting the Church and being an atheist blogger.

Now, these stories out of Russia are taking a back seat to some of the grander geopolitical games currently being played, but it’s worth your notice that the Russian government isn’t dicking around when it comes to suppressing the speech of its own citizens. As evidence of that, we can point out that Sokolovsky has received three and a half years in prison, simply for producing a video the Russian Church didn’t like.

Sokolovsky posted a video of himself playing the augmented reality game late last year in a way that Russian authorities said showed “disrespect for society.” Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 3.5 years in prison. The judge in the case, Yekaterina Shoponyak, granted the prosecutors their wish and gave the blogger a 3.5-year suspended sentence.

“In accordance with the expert evaluation, the court found blogger Sokolovsky guilty of inciting hatred, violating religious feelings and illegal possession of special technical means – a pen with a video camera,” the judge said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

We’ll get to the weird bit about the spy-pen in a moment, but we must first note that nobody reporting on this seems to understand how Sokolovsky’s previous detainment on house arrest will be factored in to his multi-year sentence. Regardless, given the timeline of events, it seems clear that he will spend a fair amount of time behind Russian bars, simply for engaging in speech that wouldn’t cause an American to blink twice. Put into the context of the overall discussion with some of the new American leadership’s affinity for overseas dictatorial regimes, Western citizens need to start paying attention to the actions of those regimes. After all, it’s not as though the American government hasn’t recently engaged in its own play to bow at multiple altars in the name of decency and respect for faith. There’s no equivalence to any of this…yet. But attention needs to be paid to the consequences of starting down that pious road.

As for the spy-pen with the camera built in, it looks somewhat like the Russian police or government decided to build in a bit of fictitious intrigue to paint Sokolovsky as a sneaky, sneaky guy.

Strangely, there’s some confusion about the charge that Sokolovsky possessed an illegal camera that was disguised as a pen. During the trial he reportedly said that not only was the pen not his, but that it wasn’t a camera at all, but instead just a light bulb. Today’s news of his sentencing didn’t clarify any of the questions surrounding this strange aspect of an already bizarre trial.

Regardless, it seems a trivial thing, given that it changes nothing about the “crimes” he was actually charged with, which were essentially upsetting the state church. A three and a half year sentence will certainly produce a chilling effect on speech. These are not the kind of values we want to be consorting with.

Filed Under: blasphemy, free speech, pokemon go, ruslan sokolovsky, russia, russian orthodox church, satire