Pokémon Go in church

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Now that’s a crime you don’t see every day:

A Russian blogger has been found guilty of inciting religious hatred and insulting believers for playing Pokémon Go in church.

Seems like a stretch. Being disruptive during a religious service would be bad manners, certainly, but a crime? And anyway it’s not clear that he was disruptive or that a service was happening at the time.

Ruslan Sokolovsky was given a three-and-a-half year suspended sentence after he posted a video of him playing the game in an Orthodox church supposedly built on the spot where the last Russian tsar Nicholas II and his family were killed.

It is the same offence that sent two women from the Pussy Riot punk collective to prison for two years in 2012.

Except that it’s not much of an “offence.” The BBC doesn’t have to take the Russian theocrats’ point of view on this.

Judge Yekaterina Shoponyak said earlier Sokolovsky’s behaviour and his anti-religious videos manifested his “disrespect for society” and he “intended to offend religious sentiments”.

But that shouldn’t be a crime.

His video is pretty amusing.

https://youtu.be/PfMn1yahGYk

Comments

4 responses to “Pokémon Go in church”

  1. latsot Avatar
    latsot

    Yeah, but Pokemon Go is a gateway game… http://explosm.net/comics/4619/

  2. latsot Avatar
    latsot

    The BBC doesn’t have to take the Russian theocrats’ point of view on this.

    But it always seems to anyway, doesn’t it? It just can’t bring itself to say wrong is wrong. Maddening. There seems as much chance of changing the BBC’s stance on this kind of thing as there is Russia’s.

  3. John the Drunkard Avatar
    John the Drunkard

    Hindering the rehabilitation of the Romanovs is probably the bigger ‘crime’ in Vladland.

  4. Latverian Diplomat Avatar
    Latverian Diplomat

    Offence (offense) in context just means “a breach of law or rule; an illegal act” I don’t think It endorses the rule or law in question as fair or worthwhile. This use of “offence” is pretty much just journalistic boilerplate, IMHO.

    Here’s a similar usage of offense from the cold war era:

    Mr. Sakharov’s critique of Soviet policy, said this week that no citizen, no matter how prominent, was beyond the law. Statements interpreted by the Government as “defaming the Soviet state and social system” may be considered anti‐Soviet propaganda, which is a criminal offense.

    from:

    http://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/09/archives/sakharou-accuses-soviet-of-distorting-his-views-takes-some-credit.html

    I think it would be a mistake to consider the use of offense there as the Times taking the Soviet’s side on that one.

    Offence has another meaning,”a thing that constitutes a violation of what is judged to be right or natural.” Conflating the two is, IMHO, looking for “offence” where none is intended. :)

More posts