Oleg Kozlovsky’s English Weblog

Another protest rally was dispersed Saturday night by Moscow police. The action was a part of the so called Strategy 31–a campaign in support of freedom of assembly guaranteed by paragraph 31 of the Russian Constitution. This basic right to hold peaceful demonstrations is routinely violated by the authorities: major opposition rallies are banned, often without any legal grounds, their participants get arrested and beaten by the police. The situation is particularly bad in Moscow where all government institutions are located and authorities are especially rigid (although legislation is the same in all regions).

As a part of this Strategy 31, several human rights and political activists (as different as prominent Soviet dissident and human rights defender Lyudmila Alexeeva and radical left-wing opposition leader Eduard Limonov, for example) decided to hold a demonstration at Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow downtown on October 31. The action was, as usually, banned; the authorities explained that some kind of a “military-patriotic celebration” was planned for the same time at the same place. In order not to provoke arrests, organizers called participants not to bring any flags or banners or chant slogans. “How long will the police stay there?” they asked, and suggested that people should wait until the police leave the square.

The government had different plans, however. In order to find a pretext to arrest participants of the action, members of Rossiya Molodaya (Young Russia), a Kremlin-aligned youth group (a part of the so-called Putinyouth), were used as provocateurs. They began lighting flares, chanting slogans and throwing leaflets (mocking the opposition) in the middle of the crowd. The police were ready: they arrested the Putinyouth and many regular participants around as well as Limonov. The provocateurs were soon released without any charge while Limonov himself may face up to 15 days imprisonment for “disobeying police orders.”

This provocation was also a signal to start a crackdown on the protesters, most of whom were standing steadily and silently according to the general plan. About 70 people were arrested. Police officers simply pointed at certain activists and they were immediately dragged into police vans. Many others were arrested for just being too close to the scene. Although no resistance was offered, policemen and soldiers beat people while dragging them. According to Russian bloggers, the police even went so far as to try to arrest an American diplomat, Vice-Consul Robert Bond who was observing the rally. Photos of Mr Bond surrounded by the police and showing them his ID card have been posted in many blogs.

I was arrested while trying to tweet what I saw. Apparently, one of the officers recognized me. Along with some 20 more people in the bus I was taken to a police station where we were charged with… lighting flares, chanting slogans and throwing leaflets–the ones that Putinyouth were throwing. As the police officers were filling in the papers with these fake charges, we looked at the walls of the police station’s lecture hall. Portraits of proud police officers as well as of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev hung there next to Yagoda, Ezhov and Beriya, the three heads of Stalin’s NKVD and Gulag.

As democracy and civil rights in Russia are diminishing with every year, the country is becoming more and more a police state. The voice of dissent is silenced by cynical and cruel country’s leadership. At the same time, Western public opinion and governments generally turn a blind eye to this trend in hope to buy Kremlin’s favour.

PS: Two days before the event, police SWAT had a drill in Moscow-nearby city of Balashikha. They were trained, according to the script, to disperse “a group of senior citizens who demanded social support and blocked a federal highway.” In order to do this, the whole arsenal was used by the police: water cannons, stun grenades and tear gas. The “pensioners” were blocked, many arrested. Bloggers called it ironically a “Russian welfare service.”

Yesterday, myself and two other activists of Oborona were arrested at a small action at the Moscow State University, my alma mater. We called students to participate in the Dissenters’ Day, which is planned for today. We had leaflets, a loudspeaker and a flag. The police arrested three of us and brought to the custody. Initially, they charged us with “a violation of the rules for conducting a public action,” which meant that we could be held in the custody for up to three hours and then be fined up to 1000 roubles (about $30).

While we were waiting for the police to prepare the documents, the maximum detention term expired. The police, however, didn’t want to let us go. One activist, Ilya Mischenko, managed to leave the police HQ unnoticed. They were upset and angry, blamed each other for this escape and feared sanctions from their bosses. By the way, leaving the police HQ before you are convicted by the court is not prohibited in Russian legislation.

I heard a phone call and s conversation of police officers that they’d received an order from somebody who they referred to as a “general”. They were told to detain my by any means for two days, so that I wouldn’t participate in the Dissenters’ Day (which I am an organizer of). After a short discussion, they decided to falsely charge me with “petty hooliganism,” an offence that allows them to hold a person for up to 48 hours before a trial and then to convict her to up to 15 days in jail. The police officers Mikhail Kotikov and Gennadiy Lemeshko wrote false reports that I had been swearing while conducting the action and a new charge was brought against me.

However, I was lucky enough to escape from the custody to the underground technical floor of the University and then outside and set myself free. I’ve been told later that the police were panicking, tried to search the huge building, failed to find me and were discussing who was going to be fired for the escape.

The second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev started on Tuesday. Putin’s goal is apparent: Khodorkovsky must stay in prison forever… given that Putin himself stays in power forever, of course.

The court of law was surrounded by riot police and plainclothes operatives since early morning, you couldn’t even freely enter the block where the court is located. Of course, it had nothing to do with terrorism. What the police was afraid of is just a small peaceful demonstration of Khodorkovsky’s supporters. They brought flowers for him, chanted “Freedom!”—and were arrested for that.

Two activists of Oborona managed to put a 10-meter-long banner “Free Khodorkovsky!” on a roof of Bohdan Khmelnitsky bridge opposite to the court. They were arrested minutes later.

Saturday was marked by new protests in Moscow and in other cities. Oborona together with other movements organized a march in the center of Moscow. It was banned by the administration but the police failed to stop it. But some 20 mobsters attacked the participants, both men and women. The protesters offered resistance but several participants of the rally were wounded seriously. The police refused to investigate the incident.

The witnesses and victims of the attack speak out (English subtitles):

Oborona held a field training for its activists in Moscow yesterday. It looked like a game, a city quest, the very popular genre of youth activity in modern Moscow. The participants were split into several teams and had to complete certain tasks in different parts of the city. The difference from such regular games was the nature of those tasks. One of them was, for instance, to hand a banner on a bridge. The banner read “31 January Dissenters’ Day”. This is how it was performed by the trainees:

Oborona with several other youth organizations held a protest action yesterday. Before it begun, an OMON (riot police) policeman tried to confiscate Oborona’s leaflets from our activist Alexey Kazakov. Eyewitnesses quote their remarkable dialogue:

Cop: You are going to tell with these leaflets that you don’t like the government of Russian Federation.

Alexey: Yes, I don’t like the government of Russian Federation.

Cop: This is a direct anticonstitutional act!

Alexey: You mean, I’m obliged to like the government?!

Music by Rannee Slaboumie, video by myself

Yesterday citizens of Vladivostok organized an action against Putin’s decision to raise customs duty for used imported cars as well as against the government’s social policy in general. The action was peaceful to say the least: participants formed a ring around the Christmas tree at the central square, danced and chanted “Happy New Year!” Suddenly, they were attacked by several OMON units. Policemen beat people randomly, dragged them into autozaks and “cleansed” the square. When the cleansing was over and everybody was either arrested or escaped, the policemen didn’t stop and captured the remaining journalists including those who worked for the state propaganda media.

This is how it was happening:

By the way, it’s been said that Vladivostok police refused to disperse the action. So they had to bring OMON all the way from Moscow, which is 9300 km far from Vladivostok.

Sorry, I’ve been quite busy last week and had little time to blog. Some interesting things are happening these days in Russia. They may (or may not, who knows) have a serious effect on the political situation in Russia.

1. Solidarity is finally here and the Poles have nothing to do with it. At last, Russian democratic opposition managed to unite in its struggle against the authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. The new organization, whose 13 strong Bureau includes people like Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, Ivan Starikov, Ilya Yashin, and myself, unites nearly all democratic forces in the country.

The creation of Solidarity was taken very seiously by the authorities judging by the scale of counteraction. On the first day of the movement’s convention about 50 of its organizers and leaders had their phones overwhelmed with endless robocalls (this technology has already been used against some SPS officers on the election day last year). Several fake buses were used to confuse the delegates and bring them to different locations. The real buses with the delegates were stopped by the police on their way to the venue. Right after they arrived at the Olimpiyskiy hotel in sub-Moscow Himki, a disgusting provocation was organized, allegedly, by Youth Guard, United Russia’s youth branch:

There were more provocations on the day two. More Kremlin-sponsored activists tried to disrupt the convention: they dressed like monkeys, shouted, threw leaflets etc. When the event already finished and its participants went to Moscow (some had train or airplane tickets to go home), their bus was blocked by several trucks and police cars. Armed riot police surrounded the bus and forbade to proceed. No legal reasons were provided, of course.

So, the government appears more than worried by appearence of the new movement. The question is whether we’ll be able to fulfill Putin’s fears and people’s hopes. I’m sure we’ll do our best.

2. On Sunday, the very next day after Solidarity was created, many of its members participated in Dissenters’ Marches in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Moscow march had been illegally banned by the authorities. They said that somebody else had applied for the same place and time before we did. It was lies since our people brought the application to the mayor’s office on the first day and first minute when it was possible by the law. We had the official stamp and video of how it was done. But as usually, the government didn’t give a damn. They’ve got the police, so why worry about the laws?

Yes, they’ve got lots of police. Riot police vans, army trucks, special prisoner transports (“autozaks”), heavy vehicles lined up for hundreds of meters through the city’s main shopping street, Tverskaya, more of them hid in sidestreets. 2500 riot police from 11 regions were brought to stop the March, not to count thousands of regular police officers and the army. Hundreds of secret service operatives had to recognize activists and organizers even before they arrive at the scene or do anything. Phones were tapped, leaders tailed from their homes, some were seiged in their flats from the very morning. Sadly, there was no possibility to hold an action.

But it was held. Many people went there knowing that they’d be arrested and beaten. Dozens of retired high officers, from colonels to generals, wering uniform with medals gathered to protest awful government’s attitude to the veterans and degradation of the Russian army. They were all arrested by the riot police, dragged violently into autozaks and held in the custody for hours where the police humiliated them.

Some 90 people were arrested at Triumfalnaya Square, where the March was officially planned. Some of them, like Sergey Aksenov, went fearlessly before the police lines holding Constitution above their heads. Others shouted slogans like “Freedom to politcal prisoners!” or argued with the police. Some were arrested just because they were in the secret lists of opposition activists. Two young protesters already after being arrested, managed to escape from an autozak through a ceil manhole and shouted slogans from the car’s roof. They were immediately assaulted by the riot police, one young man was pushed out of the roof, fell on the ground and broke his leg. The police didn’t even care to call the doctor, they just put the men back into the autozak.

About 30 protesters organized another action right near Kremlin. They brought the Constitution with them and wanted to get inside to present it to Dmitry Medvedev. However, Federal Guard Service met them instead of the president. 18 were arrested, several were severely beaten. More people were arrested at different spots of Moscow. Three Oborona activists got to the police right from a McDonald’s restaurant together with three passersby for “holding an illegal demonstration” (right in McDonald’s?!). An Oborona activist Maksim Kirsanov was arrested for standing in the street and holding a placard demanding that the government obey the Constitution.

Another group of protesters, which I joined, managed to fool the police. As the government’s forces were waiting for the March at North-West of the Moscow center, 100 to 150 people gathered in South-East and marched freely through the city. People shouted “We need other Russia!”, “This is our city!”, “Russia without Putin!”, “Freedom to political prisoners!”, cars beeped in support. We didn’t meet a single policeman on our way, they were all waiting for us in a different place. The march lasted for some 20 minutes, its participants immediately dispersed. Riot police arrived there 10 minutes late. Nobody was arrested.

Moscow authorities appear to be outraged by the Sunday’s events. Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov has already ordered that the police “zero” the protests. He expects more social unrest as the economical crisis deepens in Russia.

3. By the way, the crisis is already beginning to affect the people. Andrei Illarionov (a prominent Russian economist, former Putin’s advisor on economics) publishes the official figures of industrial recession that he calls “disastrous”. Industrial output fell by 6.7% in November alone, which makes 13% in last five months. This is the worst monthly decrease since the beginning of the devastating World War II. It is even worse than in early 1990s (that are considered to be a synonym for nightmare in modern Russia) or during the 1998 crisis.

The gold rivers are dry for the first time since Vladimir Putin came to power and his government doesn’t seem to be prepared. Salaries and pensions are not paid in time anymore. In some regions elderly people only got half of their pension two weeks later and they don’t know when they receive the rest. The government tries to get more money from the people and raises tariffs, taxes and duties. This begins to cause discontent among the citizens. In Vladivostok, several thousands car drivers blocked all the main roads protesting a significant increase of customs duty for foreign cars. They demanded cancellation of the proposed reform and resignation of Vladimir Putin. Their next protest is scheduled for this Sunday.

As reported on Oborona’s website, on May 31, Oborona activists took part in a demonstration in support of political prisoners, timed to the third anniversary of the sentencing of ex-Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky. I’m shown above speaking to reporters at the event. The banner reads: “FREEDOM FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS!”

It was attended by about one hundred people — twice the limit of the permit. Police threatened to arrest all those in excess of the allowed number of 50 participants. We notified the police that this is not a proper basis for arrest as there is no such provision in the criminal code. They maintained the threat but took no action.

Joining in the demonstration were the leader of the movement “For Human Rights” Lev Ponomarev and journalist and poet Marietta Chudakova. Various opposition groups joined Oborona in calling for the immediate release of all political prisoners.

The organizers believe the sentencing of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev constitutes a “link in the chain of attacks on Russian freedom, democracy, and on the principle of independent justice.” The participants expressed support for “all who are persecuted because of their beliefs, and for the right to be a free people in a free country.”