It was 6:30 a.m. on June 16, 2018, when Andrey Shasherin, his wife and 5 year-old son were woken by shouts of “Police, open the door!” coming from outside their apartment in the Siberian city of Barnaul.

When they opened the door, three armed men with face masks pushed their way in, followed by two more in plainclothes. The boy hid under his blanket, crying as he asked what was going on. But no one answered. The men with guns were special forces from Russia’s national guard force. They handcuffed his father and, without any explanation, took him away. Shasherin is now facing up to six years in jail, or compulsory psychiatric treatment.

It sounds like an operation to arrest a violent criminal. In fact, Shasherin — a self-employed builder — had been arrested for posting “memes” on a social media site deemed insulting towards the Orthodox Church and Vladimir Putin.

He is one of thousands of Russians ensnared by the country’s so-called “anti-extremism” laws because of their online activity, and in some cases literally “jailed for a like.” This Orwellian legislation has a special kind of menace because people charged with “extremism” are immediately placed on a government list of “terrorists and extremists” without any judicial process, which leads them to being blacklisted for jobs and even restricted from using their bank accounts.