Media watchdog gives news website warning after publishing religious cartoon

Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor has issued a warning to news website Respublika after it posted a cartoon of a religious nature, Roskomnadzor spokesperson Vadim Ampelonsky told Russian newswire TASS.

“The media published caricatures of religious shrines of one of the religions,” Ampelonsky said. “From the point of the view of the law against extremist activities, such publication is regarded as incitement of racial, national, social and religious hatred. By law this refers to extremist acts. Last week, we put a lot of effort into clarifying to the media the inadmissibility of such acts.”

Ampelonsky stated that Roskomnadzor considers this to be a deliberate provocation, adding that by law, two warnings issued in one year would be sufficient grounds for Roskomandzor to appeal to the courts to have the publication’s media registration revoked.

The warning comes a week after Roskomandzor issued an appeal to media organisations around the country warning them that they will be blacklisted if they publish Charlie Hebdo cartoons depicting religious figures.