NBC News reports that a Russian man faces up to one year in prison for saying “there is no God” during an argument on social media:

Viktor Krasnov also wrote the “Bible is a collection of Jewish fairy tales” during the discussion on European social networking site Vk.com in 2014, lawyer and human-rights activist Pavel Chikov posted on his Facebook page.

Krasnov, whose offending posts have been deleted, is on trial in his native city of Stavropol in southern Russia, according to the local magistrate’s website. Charges were filed in the fall of 2015 and the trial began on Monday, according to his lawyer.

Russia’s Investigative Committee — the equivalent of the FBI — charged Krasnov with “offending believers’ feelings,” which was criminalized in Russia after a notorious performance by punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February 2012. Two band members were jailed in 2012 for performing an anti-Vladimir Putin song at the cathedral.

You can read more about this story here.

Human Rights Watch reports that last month, a Russian court found a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights activist guilty of violating the country’s “gay propaganda” law:

Alekseenko was the director of Maximum, a Murmansk LGBT rights group that provided legal and psychosocial support. The Leninsky District Court in Murmansk, in northwestern Russia, found certain items posted on the Maximum’s website violated the law banning the dissemination of positive information about LGBT relationships to children and, as the director, Alekseenko was found responsible and fined 100,000 rubles (about US$1,300) for the alleged “propaganda.”

HRW is calling on Russian prosecutors to support an appeal, which the activist, Sergei Alekseenko, plans to file in the coming days.

You can read more here.