Maxim Ali has commented on the provisions of the Law on Information governing the publication of information about suicide

The Moscow City Court confirmed the legality of the requirement to restrict access to the publication of the Mediazona publication on the suicide of a suspect after torture by the police. The court agreed with the arguments of Roskomnadzor about the presence in the text describing the method of committing suicide. The editors of Mediazona plan to appeal the decision, arguing that the publication is of a socially significant nature and narrates facts recorded in official sources.

Head of IP/IT Practice at Maxima Legal, Maxim Ali, explained to Advokatskya Gazeta that, due to the brevity of the wording of the Law on Information, the courts can interpret any mention of methods of committing suicide as prohibited information. “Of course, this approach of the courts brings the situation to absurdity. A lot of worthy fiction, textbooks, and just news reports can be banned, which in principle allows us to raise the question of the constitutionality of the grounds for blocking. The court’s ban looks especially strange in the situation with this article: despite the removal of controversial phrases from the material Mediazona, you can still work out how the person committed suicide”, the lawyer noted.

“Probably, many people already understand that if they come into contact with fire, fall from a high height or use dangerous objects, they may lose their lives. The goal of the law, apparently, is to protect individuals from committing suicide. Therefore, those materials where there is an excessive detailing of the suicide process or something that prompts a person to commit suicide should be forbidden”, concluded Maxim Ali.

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