MOSCOW, February 21 (RAPSI) – Around 3,700 websites containing pro-suicide information have been closed in Russia since November 2012, according to the website of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor).

According to Rospotrebnadzor, information on methods to commit suicide and calls for suicide have been posted mostly on such social networks as VKontante (853 closed pages), LiveJournal (175), Mail.ru (171) and video hosting sites.

Russia ranks top in Europe for the number of suicides among children and adolescents, according to state consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor data from March. Around 800,000 people are estimated to have committed suicide over the past two decades.

The website blacklist was started on November 1, 2012, and lists websites which contain prohibited information, such child pornography, ways of committing suicide and drug making instructions. Websites hosting this kind of information can be closed without a court decision.

A Russian law aimed at protecting children from “information harmful to their health and development,” which became effective in September 2012, stipulates that an automated register of domain names should be kept for purposes of identifying websites that contain prohibited information, in particular, child pornography, ways of committing suicide, and instruction on making drugs.