FINNISH CITIZEN TRIES TO BRING FORBIDDEN LITERATURE INTO KARELIA
Karelian Magazine, 25 July 2016
As customs reported, the incident occurred on 21 July.
"In the course of a customs check of a citizen of Finland, who was entering into Russia from Finland in a passenger vehicle, printed publications and audio productions were discovered. In the citizen's car were about 100 books and brochures in Russian, Finnish, Arabic, and other foreign languages with text and pictures of religious contents, as well as several compact disks with recordings of religious contents in Finnish," the report of the agency states.
According to customs' information, the literature was published by the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses and it is included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials, and thus it is prohibited to import it into the customs territory of the Union [sic].
"For clarification of all circumstances of the violation of law and because of the necessity of conducting an investigation and expert analysis, officials of the customs post MAPP Vyartsilia opened a case of administrative violation of law on the basis of part 1 of article 16.2 of the Code of Administrative Violations of Law of Russia," customs concluded. (tr. by PDS, posted 27 July 2016)
TAKE AWAY AND BAN
On 21 July, during a customs check of a
citizen of
Finland who was entering Russia from Finland in a passenger car,
printed publications
were discovered. According to customs' information, the
literature had been
published by the religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
In the
citizen's automobile was literature mainly in Finnish, Arabic,
and other
foreign languages, with text and pictures of religious contents
and also
several compact disks with recordings of religious contents in
Finnish.
According to the claim of the customs
service, the
literature is included in the list of extremist materials.
However everyone
knows that the so-called list of extremist materials includes
Jehovah's
Witnesses' publications only in the Russian language. On what
basis the customs
service included publications of Jehovah's Witnesses in Finnish,
Arabic, and
other languages in the list of forbidden publications is
unknown. To be sure,
during the search a publication also was discovered in Russian
under the title:
"The Bible. How it came to our days." But no publication under
such a
title is in the list of forbidden materials.
A case of administrative violation of
law on the basis
of part 1 of article 16.2 of the Code of Administrative
Violations of Law of
Russia was opened by the customs service against the citizen of
Finland. For a
clarification of all circumstances, customs intends to conduct
an investigation
and expert analysis of the discovered literature.
It remains unclear how and by whom the
expert analysis
of the literature in Arabic, Finnish, and other languages will
be conducted.
Again, if the publications are already recognized as forbidden,
then why
conduct a second expert analysis of them? On the other hand, if
customs intends
to conduct an expert analysis of forbidden Jehovah's Witnesses
publications,
that means these publication still have not been included in the
list of forbidden
materials. Then on what basis did customs open an administrative
case against
the Finnish citizen without having any legal grounds?
At the present time, when the customs
service is
successfully using computers and other modern equipment,
ascertaining whether
any publication under a certain title is included in the
prohibited list takes
only a few minutes. Therefore in order to determine whether the
citizen of
Finland is carrying forbidden literature, it is not necessary to
conduct a long
and tedious investigation, to say nothing of sending the
literature for expert
analysis. It takes only a few minutes to check the titles of
publication with
the list of extremist materials.
One gets the impression that the publications discovered by customs most likely are not in the list of extremist materials. But since they are published by Jehovah's Witnesses, the customs service evidently conceived a string desire to include them in it. (tr. by PDS, posted 27 July 2016)
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