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The St. Petersburg Times, Issue #1606 (67), Friday, September 3, 2010
Dozens Arrested at Latest Strategy 31 Demos
By Sergey Chernov
Staff Writer
Sergey Chernov / The St. Petersburg Times
A police officer climbs onto a kiosk by Gostiny Dvor on Tuesday to detain a protester using a megaphone to proclaim his constitutional right to assembly.
Despite Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s warning, hundreds more people than ever before took part in the banned pro-constitution demos in Moscow and St. Petersburg that are part of the Strategy 31 campaign started on July 31, 2009. Attempting to disperse the meetings, the police arrested scores of people in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but there was no repeat of the beatings that marred the July 31 demo in St. Petersburg.
Despite the police’s efforts, the protests in Russia’s two main cities lasted longer than before. In St. Petersburg, where last month’s rally was dispersed within 40 minutes, the Tuesday event lasted over two hours. Many ordinary people joined the activists this time, Strategy 31 leaders said.
In St. Petersburg, the OMON riot police in bulletproof vests and black helmets charged into the crowd pushing and detaining people, but another group of protesters quickly formed up on the site near Gostiny Dvor metro to carry on shouting slogans such “Russia Will Be Free,” “Constitution” and “You Won’t Intimidate Us.”
The police officers shouted into megaphones declaring the rally “illegal” and ordering people to disperse, but at one point a protester with a megaphone retorted that it was the police’s actions that were illegal, as they were violating Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to assembly, and the law on the police.
One protester climbed on a kiosk and addressed the public using a megaphone, citing Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees “citizens the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons,” and shouting slogans such as “We Want a Russia Without Putin” and inviting the police to join the demonstrators. It took some time and effort for the police to drag him down from the kiosk and carry him to a police bus.
In a bizarre twist, a firefighter truck, an OMON anti-bomb unit and an ambulance arrived at the scene some 80 minutes into the event, while the police blocked a large part of the site on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street, announcing that the metro was closed “on technical grounds.” Later, it was announced that the metro had been closed because of a terrorist threat.
Activists estimate the number of participants of the Gostiny Dvor demo at around 1,000, 72 of whom were detained at various points during the event and taken in six buses to six different police precincts in the city’s outskirts. Most of them were charged with violation of the law on public events and failing to obey police orders, although they were released several hours later, some after midnight.
Two to three hundred took part in a separate pro-constitution event held by Solidarity, the United Civil Front and the St. Petersburg Civil Rights Council on the Palace Square, just over a kilometer from the Gostiny Dvor site.
Local Solidarity leader Olga Kurnosova, who was detained on Palace Square, said 300 to 400 people took part, bearing posters and shouting slogans. Twelve were detained there. They face the same charges as the demonstrators detained near Gostiny Dvor.
The St. Petersburg police’s spokesman said he was “not ready” to comment on Tuesday’s demos when called Thursday.
Matvei Krylov, an activist with Strategy 31 in Moscow who was on the movement’s hotline Thursday, said 2,000 to 3,000 took part in the Moscow rally, 103 were detained, including author and oppositional politician Eduard Limonov and Solidarity leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov.
The Moscow police said that there were only 400 people at the demo, most of them journalists. The Russian police are known for routinely underestimating the number of participants in protest rallies.
Smaller rallies were held in 50 Russian cities. Events demonstrating solidarity with Strategy 31 were held in New York, London, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Helsinki and Kiev. For related article, see page 2.
Police in Moscow were instructed to take Putin’s words in a Kommersant interview on Monday that the demonstrators should be beaten on their heads with truncheons if they dare to rally without a permit as a “figure of speech,” Ekho Moskvy editor Alexei Venediktov told Kommersant Thursday. Venediktov is a member of Moscow City Police Public Council.
Nevertheless, four members of the European Parliament who were present at the rally in Moscow were shocked by the spectacle of how the Russian authorities treated the demonstrators.
“This is an amazing way of dealing with democracy, shocking,” Thijs Berman, a Dutch member of the European Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, a previously unidentified police officer on video hitting a young man across his face with a truncheon for no apparent reason during last month’s demo has been identified by the victim, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement Wednesday. A criminal case has been opened against the officer.
The officer was identified as Vadim Boiko, 35, a patrol officer. The statement said Boiko had no sufficient grounds to beat Dmitry Semyonov with a truncheon and was declared a suspect officially. Boiko was asked to give a written promise not to leave the city and behave properly.
However, an internal investigation launched by the St. Petersburg Department for Internal Affairs (GUVD) early last month yielded no results when completed on Thursday.
Disciplinary violations on the part of the police officers employed for the protection of public order near Gostiny Dvor on July 31 were not found, the GUVD said in a statement.
http://sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=32360
Dozens Arrested at Latest Strategy 31 Demos
By Sergey Chernov
Staff Writer
Sergey Chernov / The St. Petersburg Times
A police officer climbs onto a kiosk by Gostiny Dvor on Tuesday to detain a protester using a megaphone to proclaim his constitutional right to assembly.
Despite Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s warning, hundreds more people than ever before took part in the banned pro-constitution demos in Moscow and St. Petersburg that are part of the Strategy 31 campaign started on July 31, 2009. Attempting to disperse the meetings, the police arrested scores of people in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but there was no repeat of the beatings that marred the July 31 demo in St. Petersburg.
Despite the police’s efforts, the protests in Russia’s two main cities lasted longer than before. In St. Petersburg, where last month’s rally was dispersed within 40 minutes, the Tuesday event lasted over two hours. Many ordinary people joined the activists this time, Strategy 31 leaders said.
In St. Petersburg, the OMON riot police in bulletproof vests and black helmets charged into the crowd pushing and detaining people, but another group of protesters quickly formed up on the site near Gostiny Dvor metro to carry on shouting slogans such “Russia Will Be Free,” “Constitution” and “You Won’t Intimidate Us.”
The police officers shouted into megaphones declaring the rally “illegal” and ordering people to disperse, but at one point a protester with a megaphone retorted that it was the police’s actions that were illegal, as they were violating Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to assembly, and the law on the police.
One protester climbed on a kiosk and addressed the public using a megaphone, citing Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees “citizens the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons,” and shouting slogans such as “We Want a Russia Without Putin” and inviting the police to join the demonstrators. It took some time and effort for the police to drag him down from the kiosk and carry him to a police bus.
In a bizarre twist, a firefighter truck, an OMON anti-bomb unit and an ambulance arrived at the scene some 80 minutes into the event, while the police blocked a large part of the site on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street, announcing that the metro was closed “on technical grounds.” Later, it was announced that the metro had been closed because of a terrorist threat.
Activists estimate the number of participants of the Gostiny Dvor demo at around 1,000, 72 of whom were detained at various points during the event and taken in six buses to six different police precincts in the city’s outskirts. Most of them were charged with violation of the law on public events and failing to obey police orders, although they were released several hours later, some after midnight.
Two to three hundred took part in a separate pro-constitution event held by Solidarity, the United Civil Front and the St. Petersburg Civil Rights Council on the Palace Square, just over a kilometer from the Gostiny Dvor site.
Local Solidarity leader Olga Kurnosova, who was detained on Palace Square, said 300 to 400 people took part, bearing posters and shouting slogans. Twelve were detained there. They face the same charges as the demonstrators detained near Gostiny Dvor.
The St. Petersburg police’s spokesman said he was “not ready” to comment on Tuesday’s demos when called Thursday.
Matvei Krylov, an activist with Strategy 31 in Moscow who was on the movement’s hotline Thursday, said 2,000 to 3,000 took part in the Moscow rally, 103 were detained, including author and oppositional politician Eduard Limonov and Solidarity leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov.
The Moscow police said that there were only 400 people at the demo, most of them journalists. The Russian police are known for routinely underestimating the number of participants in protest rallies.
Smaller rallies were held in 50 Russian cities. Events demonstrating solidarity with Strategy 31 were held in New York, London, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Helsinki and Kiev. For related article, see page 2.
Police in Moscow were instructed to take Putin’s words in a Kommersant interview on Monday that the demonstrators should be beaten on their heads with truncheons if they dare to rally without a permit as a “figure of speech,” Ekho Moskvy editor Alexei Venediktov told Kommersant Thursday. Venediktov is a member of Moscow City Police Public Council.
Nevertheless, four members of the European Parliament who were present at the rally in Moscow were shocked by the spectacle of how the Russian authorities treated the demonstrators.
“This is an amazing way of dealing with democracy, shocking,” Thijs Berman, a Dutch member of the European Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, a previously unidentified police officer on video hitting a young man across his face with a truncheon for no apparent reason during last month’s demo has been identified by the victim, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement Wednesday. A criminal case has been opened against the officer.
The officer was identified as Vadim Boiko, 35, a patrol officer. The statement said Boiko had no sufficient grounds to beat Dmitry Semyonov with a truncheon and was declared a suspect officially. Boiko was asked to give a written promise not to leave the city and behave properly.
However, an internal investigation launched by the St. Petersburg Department for Internal Affairs (GUVD) early last month yielded no results when completed on Thursday.
Disciplinary violations on the part of the police officers employed for the protection of public order near Gostiny Dvor on July 31 were not found, the GUVD said in a statement.
http://sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=32360