Human rights defenders assess degree of Internet control in Caucasus

The international human rights group "Agora" and the public organization "RosKomSvoboda" prepared a report entitled "Freedom on the Internet 2019: The Fortress Plan". The report, posted on February 4 on the "Agora" website, is dedicated to a review of cases of interference with Internet freedom in Russia in 2019. The report is based on the data from ongoing monitoring of the situation that the "Agora" has been conducting since 2008.

Four out of the six regions of the Southern Federal District (SFD), including the Volgograd and Rostov Regions, the Krasnodar Territory, and Adygea, are in the "red" area, the report suggests. This means that 30 or more facts of restriction of digital freedom were registered in the region or at least one case of violence as a result of online activity of citizens. In the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD), the "red" area included Ingushetia, Chechnya, and the Stavropol Territory.

According to the report, in the NCFD, Karachay-Cherkessia, where analysts registered only one case of restriction of digital freedom per year, is almost free of Internet control from the authorities, like Kabardino-Balkaria, where there were no such cases at all.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 5, 2020 at 06:22 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.