Chinese social media giant TikTok announced on Sunday (6) the suspension of video postings in Russia due to a recent law that provides up to 15 years in prison for those who spread what the government considers fake news about the war in Ukraine.
The company said the suspension will last until the implications of the law are analyzed, but that the app’s messaging service will not be affected. “The safety of our employees and users remains our highest priority,” reads a statement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law the law, which in practice works as a military censorship of the press, on Friday (4). Also that day, Facebook and Twitter were blocked in Russia, after days of limited access.
The press siege norm has already affected the work of professional media, with networks such as the British BBC, the Canadian CBC and the American Bloomberg suspending the performance of their teams in Russian territory.
Spain’s Efe and Italian broadcaster RAI followed suit, while CNN International announced that it had stopped broadcasting in the country. The independent newspaper Novaia Gazeta (new newspaper), edited by the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Dmitri Muratov, published on its networks that it would remove all content related to Putin’s action.
The measure was criticized by the international community and described as another step by the Kremlin to stifle press freedom, already limited in the country.
Putin is a recurring figure on the lists of “predators of press freedom” compiled by the NGO Reporters Without Borders. The Russian has been seen as a predator since he took office in 2000 – since then, he has served four presidential terms, in addition to the period as prime minister of Dmitri Medvedev, from 2008 to 2012.
The Russian leader uses the method of authoritarian nationalism against his main target: the independent media. In its latest report, from July last year, the NGO highlighted that at least eight Russian journalists who were detained at that time and one of them, Aleksandr Tolmashev, had died in prison in 2020 for lack of medical care.
This is an unprecedented situation in the age of instant and interconnected news, but far from unusual for a country at war. All conflicts since the press began to cover them, from the Crimean War lost by the Russians in 1856, have been the subject of censorship by national authorities.
Moscow is also advancing in the siege of freedom of expression, with massive arrests of civilians who take to the streets to protest against the invasion of Ukraine. So far, almost 13,000 people had been detained for this reason, according to monitoring by the NGO OVD-info, which works in the area of ​​human rights. This Sunday alone (6), 4,300 were detained, according to information from the Ministry of the Interior.
