The ex-teacher of kindergarten #203 Alyona Blinova was sentenced to pay one thousand rubles by the Leninsky City Court of Cheboksary for her Facebook post of news article with an extremist slogan about Orthodoxy, as reported on April 13, by the lawyer of the Open Russia Yury Sidorov.
Alyona Blinova was convicted under Article 20.29 of the Administrative Offences Code for the "dissemination of extremist materials". The court accused her of the repost of the news article on the trial of the Chuvash "Open Russia" coordinator Dmitry Semenov for distributing the same forbidden slogan. The activist herself is going to challenge the court's decision.
The tipstaff did not let the channel Dozhd [Rain] freelance reporter attend the court, and the Moscovsky Komsomolets journalist was not allowed to videotape.
Before the trial began, an activist Vyacheslav Rybakov stood up with a single-man protest in front of the court building. He was carrying a poster saying "We are power here".
On April 12, an opposition politician Aleksey Navalny drew attention in his video blog to the case of the ex-teacher as being persecuted for taking part in anti-corruption rallies on March 26.
On March 26, Alyona Blinova participated in a picketing for justice in Yoshkar-Ola and joined the environmental event organized by the Young Guard of United Russia in Cheboksary with anti-corruption slogans. On April 3, the head mistress of the kindergarten #203 Veronika Hayalutdinova dismissed Blinova for a single labour misconduct. According to the activist, that was the case when she asked and got left to feed her children, but she believes that the true reason for her dismissal was her participation in the rallies.
