The ECHR will hear an appeal from a Russian activist who says he was prosecuted for social media ‘reposts’ to keep him from politics

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has agreed to hear a lawsuit by Dmitry Semenov, a Russian opposition activist from Chuvashia who was twice fined for reposting “extremist content” on social media — once for reposting an image of State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov and then again for reposting a news story about his first conviction. Both the original photo and the article contained a militant Russian Orthodox slogan that the courts say constitutes illegal extremism.

Semenov argues that the two criminal cases infringe on his right to free expression, as well as his right to run for public office and organize public demonstrations. Yes, the extremism convictions mean he cannot stand in elections or file a protest permit. Semenov says the authorities’ real motivation for putting him on trial in the first place was to limit his right to participate in local politics.

In recent years, Russian law enforcement officials have fallen in love with prosecuting Internet users for disseminating supposedly extremist materials and “propagating Nazi or extremist symbols.” According to the Supreme Court's records, Russia issued a little more than 650 such criminal convictions in 2013. Three years later, this number had skyrocketed to almost 3,500.