Violence Flares at Gazprom Tower Hearing
By Sergey Chernov
Staff Writer
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Audience members react during the proceedings at a public hearing for Gazprom's planned Okhta Center on Tuesday.
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Violence broke out Tuesday at a third and final public hearing devoted to the Okhta Center, or “Gazprom tower” — the 400-meter skyscraper that Gazprom, Russia’s largest energy company, is planning to build in St. Petersburg. The city’s preservationists and many residents are worried that the tower will destroy St. Petersburg’s protected skyline and spoil the views of some of the city’s most famous sights — a concern shared by world heritage body UNESCO. Photographs and videos taken during the hearing showed one opponent of the tower being choked, another lying on the floor with his sweater and shirt askew, apparently having been thrown to the ground, and a third being beaten by plain-clothes men. Yevgeny Polonsky, a 38-year-old doctor and activist with Eduard Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP), was severely beaten and had to go to hospital. “He was kicked in the head by the thugs, and when they took him over to nearby policemen, the police refused to detain him,” Andrei Dmitriyev, the leader of NBP’s local branch, said by phone on Tuesday. “They said, ‘Get yourself to a hospital.’” Dmitriyev was himself detained after he and his fellow party activists raised the NBP’s black hammer-and-sickle flag and threw leaflets while shouting “Your Hearing Is a Farce!” He was then taken to a nearby police precinct and charged with “disorderly conduct” (specifically, with “using profane language in public.”) “There were plain-clothes men in the room, and they attacked everybody they didn’t like, very actively, very roughly,” said Denis Vasilyev, an activist with Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF), who was detained at the hearing and charged with the same offence as Dmitriyev. “I interfered when they pushed Zhenya [Yevgeny Polonsky], a Natsbol [NBP activist], on the floor and were kicking him in the face.” Seven people, including a preservationist, three Natsbols, one OGF activist and two anarchist punks were arrested during Tuesday’s hearings. Having been taken to Police Precinct 66, five were charged with “using profane language” while the two punks were charged with violating the law on assembly. “They were having a cigarette outside before the hearing even started, one of them holding a rolled-up [anti-Gazprom] placard under his arm [when they were arrested],” Dmitriyev said. Dmitriyev said that Polonsky, who had a cut on his forehead caused by being kicked in the face, is preparing a letter to the Prosecutor. “That’s when we’ll have a chance to find out who these plain-clothes men were — were they plain-clothes policemen or private security agents?” he said. The Ladoga hall of the Karelia Hotel, where the hearing was held, was surrounded by dozens of OMON special-task policemen before the start of the hearing. Some were armed with truncheons, and there were at least three police dogs inside the building. To get in, people had to pass through three security checks and two metal detectors. Water, apples, chocolate bars and small bottles of what could have been medicine were confiscated. An old man fainted and fell to the ground outside during the hearing, which lasted for four hours without intervals, and was put on a stretcher and taken to an ambulance by several OMON officers. The room provided by the organizers had a total capacity of 350, and proved far too small for the number of people who turned up. As a result, many members of the public had to stand in the aisles, while many more could not enter the room or even the building. Speakers on behalf of Okhta Center, including Pyotr Luchin of ODTs Okhta (a subsidiary of Gazprom responsible for the tower’s construction) and Filipp Nikandrov of the British architectural firm RMJM that is responsible for the project, frequently changed the subject of the hearing away from issues raised — that the tower would exceed the height restrictions set by the regulations for the district — and at times, even appeared to be mocking the project's opponents. In response to the question of why such a small room had been chosen for the hearing, Luchin said that it was the only appropriate, air-conditioned room available in the district. “When we build Okhta Center, we will have plenty of room in which you can attend hearings,” he said with a smile, ignoring the ensuing protests, cries and whistles. Opponents of the tower say that at least two thirds of the room was filled with people brought in by the organizers. After the hearing, several members of the Yabloko Democratic Party saw what they thought was a man distributing payment to the tower’s supporters around the Karelia Hotel. When Yabloko activist Ksenia Vakhrusheva took a photograph of the situation, the man rushed over to her, tried to take away her camera and in the struggle that followed injured another Yabloko activist, Alexander Shurshev, but the activists managed to report him to nearby policemen. The man turned out to be Alexander Kaganovich, 38, a private security firm employee, Shurshev said on Thursday. Unlike many preservationists who tried to engage in a debate with ODTs Okhta’s management and officials, providing detailed arguments against the construction, the NBP chose the tactic of direct protest because no other means work, representatives said. “The hearings are just a matter of ticking boxes, they do not affect anything, no matter what happens during them,” Dmitriyev said. “In any case, the objective of the opposition is to try to ruin their criminal plans and not to let them build anything. To bite, scratch, dig their teeth into this Gazprom beast.” Having held the hearing on Tuesday, ODTs Okhta now only has to get the project approved by the Land Use and Development Commission and then by City Hall. Governor Valentina Matviyenko has repeatedly expressed her support for the skyscraper’s construction.
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