First Protesters Get Fined Under New Rally Law

By Sergey Chernov

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: August 8, 2012 (Issue # 1721)

The court, which resumed after a one-month holiday last week, wrapped up its viewing of the video evidence presented by the prosecution in the trial of the 12 The Other Russia opposition party activists accused of continuing the activities of the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP).

The Other Russia was formed by opposition leader and author Eduard Limonov after his former organization, the NBP, was banned by a Moscow court for being extremist in 2007.

The recordings made during the party’s weekly meetings in an apartment equipped with a hidden video camera and microphone were supposed to prove that the activists continued the “extremist activities of a banned organization.”

The video footage however showed nothing extremist. The recordings documented people gathering at an empty apartment and discussing current political issues and peaceful protests that they had held or were planning.

“The prosecution has resorted to legal casuistry and has not even tried to prove [the presence of] ‘extremism,’” said Andrei Dmitriyev, the local chair of The Other Russia and one of the main defendants.

“They think it will be enough to prove that our meetings were held not by the pro-democracy party The Other Russia, but by the scary, horrible, bloodthirsty NBP.”

Dmitriyev, Andrei Pesotsky and Alexei Marochkin face up to four years in prison for being “organizers” of the extremist activities of a banned organization while the rest face up to two years as “participants.”

The indictment and criminal case abound in mistakes such as calling the Okhta Center [the unpopular Gazprom skyscraper project that the opposition protested against until it was terminated] an “auto center,”and what many believe to be deliberate distortions of the facts. Most of these distortions are based on the video footage of the meetings and the testimonies of two secret witnesses, who are suspected to be undercover police agents.

The case was criticized by rights activists and lawyers as “political” and “unlawful,” while Andrei Pesotsky’s lawyer Olga Tseitlina described it as a “gift for the European Court of Human Rights.”

Having finished viewing the video evidence, the prosecution is expected to present further evidence, including flyers, posters, buttons, newspapers and books seized during the searches of the activists’ apartments.

According to Dmitriyev, the criminal proceedings against the activists were launched in September of 2010 — after a period of covert surveillance in 2009 — in order to curb their Strategy 31 campaign of peaceful rallies in defense of the right of assembly.

However, the party’s eight other activists were arrested on July 31 for taking part in the most recent Strategy 31 protest.

So far, three of the detained activists have been fined 10,000 rubles ($320), becoming the city’s first protesters to be fined under the new, harsher law on public assemblies, which has been in effect since June 9.

Dmitriyev said the fines would be appealed in higher courts and, if necessary, in the European Court of Human Rights. “We won’t pay, because we don’t have that kind of money; let the bailiffs come and seize our property,” Dmitriyev said.