MOSCOW — A Russian dissident was sentenced yesterday to two-and-a-half years in a high-security penal colony for “distributing pornography” after a co-worker denounced him last September for uploading to a social media platform six years ago a sexually explicit video by German industrial metal band Rammstein.
As XBIZ reported yesterday, the sentence comes only months after President Vladimir Putin signed a series of sweeping anti-porn laws giving the Russian State discretionary power to regulate sexual material on the internet.
According to Russian government-controlled news site RT (formerly Russia Today), Andrey Borovikov, the former coordinator for jailed dissident Alexey Navalny’s Arkhangelsk headquarters, was found guilty “to have distributed pornographic materials on the internet.”
“There are strong laws against illegal production and sharing of pornography in Russia,” the Russian state news site proclaimed, “and those who fall foul of the law can face up to six years in prison, unless it is deemed that it has ‘cultural value.’”
According to RT, “State experts decided that this designation doesn’t apply to the Rammstein clip.”
Russian censorship laws regarding sexual material are similar to the proposals demanded by anti-porn groups and their political and journalist allies in the United States. Free speech and sex worker activists have warned about a similarly arbitrary use of "anti-porn" laws and absurdist government evaluations of sexual content if the legislation proposed by War on Porn crusaders were to be enacted.
Main Image: The Kremlin and a still from the Rammstein video for "Pussy" (Source: Shutterstock/Rammstein)
