Dozens Arrested During Anti-Putin Demo
By Galina Stolyarova
Staff Writer
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Alexander Demianchuk / Reuters
Riot police detain a protestor during an opposition march by the Hermitage on Sunday. Police detained dozens of protestors, along with opposition party leaders.
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European politicians have criticized the actions taken by Russian police in response to last weekend’s Dissenters’ Marches in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Riot police detained dozens of opposition activists and citizens during peaceful rallies organized by The Other Russia coalition and supported by the liberal opposition parties. “I am seriously concerned by the information about the persecution and arrests of opposition politicians and participants in peaceful demonstrations in Russia,” reads a statement by Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, presented in Brussels on Monday by EC spokesperson Johannes Laitenberger. The demonstrations were the latest in this year’s series of rallies aimed at challenging the Kremlin and its policies. This time the focus of the demonstrations was electoral corruption in Russia. “Under President [Vladimir] Putin, Russia has adopted the shameful practice of witch-hunting that is sending the country back into the 1930s and Stalin’s totalitarian rule,” said Maxim Reznik, leader of the St. Petersburg branch of the democratic party, Yabloko. “The rhetoric which Putin and the United Russia party have used during the current election campaign openly threatens the voters. Essentially they have branded anyone who is not with the ruling party as enemies of the state seeking to undermine the stability of Russia.” Barroso said the policing of the opposition protests in Moscow and St Petersburg had been “heavy-handed.” “The right to peaceful free speech and assembly are basic fundamental human rights and I very much regret that the authorities found it necessary to take such heavy-handed action,” the statement said. Earlier this year politicians from Europe and the United States condemned police brutality in dispersing Dissenters’ Marches. Following a series of rallies in April, Rene van der Linden, the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said that it was indefensible for a Council of Europe member country to use excessive force in such situations, and added that he condemned suppression of such demonstrations anywhere. In Russia, pro-Kremlin politicians have defended the tough line taken by police. Although criminal proceedings were launched against some policemen over excessive use of force, none has yet resulted in a conviction or even reached court. Human rights lawyers representing demonstrators have accused public prosecutors and the courts of deliberately delaying the proceedings in an effort to discourage ordinary people from challenging the authorities. Representatives of The Other Russia said more than 300 people were detained at Sunday’s rally, while police said they had detained around 100 protesters. The opposition rally in St. Petersburg started chaotically just after 11 a.m. on Ulitsa Mayakovskogo in the city center. Within minutes police intervened and detained a group of opposition leaders, including Reznik, and fellow politicians from Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (SPS), including SPS leader Nikita Belykh. With the leaders in custody and no definite route confirmed, the event continued uncertainly until about 2:30 p.m. The fragmented crowd headed to Palace Square, with more and more people being detained along the way. The event’s organizers had failed to reach agreement with City Hall regarding the route of the rally. The organizers had requested to march along Nevsky Prospekt and hold a subsequent meeting on Palace Square. But the authorities turned down the plan on the grounds that it would disturb the traffic in the historic center, a standard argument used to ban rallies at the heart of the city that are not organized by City Hall itself or organizations sympathetic to it. The St. Petersburg administration has been criticized internationally for placing the freedom of road traffic above freedom of expression. The opposition groups refused to accept an alternative offer from the city authorities to hold the rally on a side street and a meeting in the Chernyshevsky Gardens, an area with limited capacity near Moskovsky Train Station. The police presence was massive, with dozens of police vehicles ranged along Nevsky Prospekt, on side streets, and outside the State Hermitage Museum. Detachments of riot police were placed along streets, and officers were seen inside cafes and shops around the Palace Square and along Nevsky. The police vigorously seized both activists and peaceful pedestrians who were neither holding signs, shouting slogans or trying to break through police cordons. Those detained were pushed into police vehicles. Among those detained were frail-looking pensioners staring in shock at the chaotic events around them. Officers also stopped the people for what initially looked like routine document checks. But their documents were perfunctorily scrutinized and a number were thrown into vans. Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of the Union of Right Forces, attempted to talk to reporters outside the Hermitage, next to the Palace Bridge, at around 1 p.m. But, amid flashing cameras, he was quickly grabbed by police before he could speak, and led into a police van. “The level of brutality and the huge police presence mounted against a peaceful civil demonstration reflects the increasing level of fear among the authorities,” Nemtsov said. “Governors are scared to look their people in the eye and answer any challenging questions. The authorities are cowards.” Nemtsov was taken to a police station, but was released a few hours later. Nemtsov was echoed by other democratic politicians who attended the demonstration. “One wonders why, considering president Putin’s staggering 70-percent approval rating, the authorities are so frightened by a modest demonstration like this,” said Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the political council of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko. “The answer is simple — the high approval rating is based on ordinary people’s ignorance about how corrupt the authorities are. And those who do take to the streets want to spread that knowledge.” Critics of the demonstration argued it had failed, since a proper meeting was never held and the event itself ended up in chaos. But Yevgeny Kozlov, head of the Movement for Civil Initiatives, a St. Petersburg-based NGO, denounced the criticism. “What matters is that people did come despite knowing that police act offensively, as it did during all the previous events like this,” he said. “Their presence has shown that it is impossible to beat self-respect out of a person with a police truncheon. It is easier to beat the life out of them, however depressing that may sound.”
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