According to Agora, Russia was home to 730 rallies, demonstrations, and pickets attended by a total of more than 400 thousand people during 2011. Of those participants, more than four thousand were detained before, during, or immediately after the event.

The group found that 117 civil activists, made up mostly of bloggers, anarchist or antifascists, and members of the banned National Bolshevik Party, were subjected to criminal prosecution in the past year. They were mostly incriminated under Russia’s controversial “extremism” laws, which critics denounce for their broad, vague wording, and also under laws against slandering or insulting government figures. Among the persecuted activists was music critic Artemy Troitsky, Novosibirsk artist Artem Loskutov, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaev of the art group Voina, and Tyumen State University professor Andrei Kutuzov.

Three activists were killed in 2011: in May, editor Yakhya Magomedov of the Avar-language Islamic newspaper As-Salam; in June, Rector Maksud Sadikov of the Institute of Theology and International Relations was shot along with his nephew in Makhachkala; in December, Gadzhimurad Kamalov, a journalist and founder of the independent newspaper Chernovik, was murdered in Dagestan.

Agora also recorded 45 incidents of beatings and other attacks.

The most at-risk groups were ecologists (primarily members of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest and opponents of environmental damage due to Olympic construction in Sochi), LGBT activists, and activists and participants of protests in the North Caucasus.

There were also 42 arrests, most commonly of members of the National Bolsheviks, Khimki Forest activists, and members of the electoral watchdog Golos. Irina Teplinskaya, a vocal critic of Russia’s treatment of drug addicts, was arrested in a Kaliningrad airport in August, and Golos head Liliya Shibanova was arrested in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in December. Noting the arrests of blogger Aleksei Navalny, oppositionist Ilya Yashin, and pianist Fedor Amirov, analysts at Agora said that from December 5-7, Russia for the first time began detaining people en masse and sentencing them to the maximum term of administrative arrest, with more than 100 people turning up in Moscow holding facilities during that time.

Additionally, 2011 saw 25 police searches of NGO offices and activists’ apartments.

The searches included a firm owned by Khimki Forest activist Yevgenia Chirikova and her husband, the office of the opposition movement Solidarity, and the Ulyanovsk branch of the Memorial human rights center.

The 850 cases of persecution recorded by Agora in 2011 followed 603 such cases in 2010, 308 in 2009, and 144 in 2008.

According to the human rights association Agora, lawyer Dmitri Dinze was prohibited from entering St. Petersburg’s 78th police precinct on the night of March 31, where the activists were placed after being detained at a rally in defense of free assembly.

Having been told that the artists had been beaten, Dinze called Russia’s emergency police number five times during the course of the night. At first, Dinze was promised that officers would be dispatched to resolve the situation, but during the fifth phone call he was told that there was nothing they could do and the lawyer would have to speak with the head of the Central Regional Department of Internal Affairs.

“The St. Petersburg Main Department of Internal Affairs openly admitted that they were incapable of bringing pressure onto officers in the 78th police precinct to not violate the rights of detainees to the defense by and access to a lawyer,” Dinze explained.

He said the doctor who arrived in an ambulance did not actually enter the precinct, which resonated with screams and music associated with the criminal underworld.

Dinze had returned to the 78th precinct after securing the release of Voina activist Oleg Vorotnikov from the 28th precinct. The activist was admitted to the Dzhanelidze Institute of Emergency Medical Care, where wounds all over his body and bruises left from handcuffs were recorded.

Vorotnikov said fellow Voina activists Natalia Sokol and Leonid Nikolaev were also beaten in the police station.

Earlier in the evening, police had taken away Vorotnikov’s young son Kasper and placed him in the surgical unit of the Raukhas Hospital as an “unidentified child,” since Natalia Sokol had his documents with her in police custody.

Vorotnikov was able to bring his son home at 10:35 pm.

Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin has asked Dinze to file an official complaint about the actions of the police. According to Agora, the situation is also being followed by the Federal Chamber of Lawyers.

Between 1000-2000 people took part in a march in St. Petersburg as part of the Strategy 31 campaign in defense of free assembly on March 31, 2011. Approximately 100 of them were arrested.

Last year, 41 civil activists were injured in attacks.

In Krasnodarsky Krai, human rights activist Vadim Karastelev was attacked and injured so severely that he nearly died. Police in Dagestan cruelly beat lawyer Sapiyat Magomedov, well-known for his principle role defending the rights and interests of citizens in the area. In Yaroslavl, activist Aleksandr Sugurov of the Army of the People’s Will was abducted by operatives from the Russian Internal Ministry’s notorious Center “E”, shoved into a car, and beaten. The activist was told they were upset with his opposition activities and threatened to “bury you in the forest” or “to stick you in a cell with the jailbirds.”

Thirty representatives of NGOs experienced various forms of persecution in 2010, including three instances of kidnapping. This included Left Front coordinators Konstantin Kosyakin and Sergei Udaltsov and Dosh independent magazine editors Israpil Shovkhalov and Abdul Duduev.

Agora had records of 20 raids carried out on activists’ apartments and the offices of public organizations, as well as the confiscation of documents and technical equipment.

More than 3160 civil activists were arrested following public events in Russia in 2010.

These events were held in honor of murdered journalists and human rights activists (such as Anastasia Baburova, Stanislav Markelov, Aslan Zhukov and Natalia Estemirova), police reform, the fight against government tyranny, against highway construction through the Khimki Forest, and in defense of the 31st article of the Russian constitution. In December, numerous events were held in defense of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, who, days before the New Year, were found guilty in a second criminal case filed against them by the government.

Several activists were murdered over the past year.

In Krasnoyarsk, lawyer Aleksei Gryankina was found dead. Investigators say the most likely motive for his murder was Gryankina’s professional activities. The lawyer had worked on several scandalous cases involving well-known construction firms that had defrauded real estate investors. One of the leaders of the Cherkessia Youth, Aslan Zhukov, was killed in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and in Kaliningrad, noted journalist and blogger Maksim Zueva was also killed.

According to Agora, such cases of persecution have risen markedly over the past several years. The organization recorded 118 reports in 2006, 212 in 2007, 308 in 2009, and now, 603 in 2010.

The Russian human rights organization Agora told Kasparov.ru on Friday that the court convicted Russia of violating Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Russia was convicted of the later offense.

The HIV-positive prisoner, who had been held in St. Petersburg’s famous Kresty prison, appealed to the Strasbourg Court in November 2005. His diagnosis came two days after his arrest on May 20, 2004, and the prisoner’s health began to decline that October.

When the prisoner appealed to doctors at Kresty for treatment, he was told to take aspirin, papaverine, and painkillers.

When the man tried to object that this type of treatment was clearly insufficient, he was threatened with solitary confinement, which he was placed in at the end of October.

Conditions in the solitary cell were deplorable: prisoners in neighboring cells confirmed that there was no heat, with temperatures in the winter dropping to 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit, along with no ventilation or hot water. Moreover, medical personnel rarely visited the area.

Medics at Kresty said that they “don’t have medicine for HIV-positive prisoners due to the lack of funding.” When asked for anti-retroviral drugs by the HIV-positive prisoner, they administered painkillers and added some extra sugar and margarine to his daily rations.

The prisoner was twice refused admittance to a hospital on the basis that there wasn’t enough space because of so many HIV patients already there.

The Russian government insisted in court that the prisoner had received adequate medical care. Officials said that he was regularly examined by competent doctors who carried out a series of medical tests on his blood, which, in their opinion, was sufficient to judge the condition of his health.

The Strasbourg Court pointed out that the patient lacks the necessary medical knowledge to know what drugs he would need to treat his condition without a doctor’s prescription.

According to the November study, Russian attitudes towards immigrants became more negative on the whole. 61 percent of Russians feel that the government “should try to limit the stream of migrants,” a 9 percent increase from a year ago. Another 30 percent feel that the authorities “do not need to put administrative barriers in the way of the influx of migrants and try to use them for the good of Russia,” down from 35 percent in 2008 and 44 percent in 2002.

Attitudes towards labor immigration also followed a negative trend. Only 19 percent of Russians held a “definitely” or “probably” positive attitude towards the idea that “one meets workers from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and other nearby foreign countries on construction sites in Russia more often.” This figure was at 30 percent in 2002. Those who held neutral attitudes towards labor immigration fell to 44 percent, down 5 percent from a year ago, and those with a negative attitude rose to 35 percent, up 4 percent from a year ago.

The percentage of Russians who felt negatively towards labor immigrants has fluctuated back and forth over the past decade. In 2000 and 2004, 38 percent of Russians held negative attitudes in this regard, but only 27 percent did so in 2002. Aleksei Grazhdankin, vice director of the Levada Center, told Gazeta.ru that the fluctuations “are connected with the economic crisis and an intensification of competition in the labor market.” Therefore, Grazhdankin continued, “attitudes towards migrants remain in a completely civilized framework, and the level of xenophobia and nationalist enmity is not increasing. People are simply striving to protect their interests in the labor market.”

Attitudes toward the idea of a Russia in which only ethnic Russians resided did not change significantly in the past year.

The number of Russians, however, who support the infamous slogan “Russia for the Russians” and feel that it “has long been time to implement” such an idea has risen to 18 percent from 15 percent a year ago.

At the same time, 36 percent believe that “it would not be bad to implement this idea, but within reasonable limits,” down from 42 percent last year. Additionally, a growing number of Russians believe that “Russia for the Russians” is “genuine fascism,” up to 32 percent from 25 percent last year.

“Such growth is very good,” said Pavel Chikov, representative of the human rights organization Agora. “In the first years of the Putin administration, there was a surge of patriotism that brought with it a growth in neo-Nazi groups.” Chikov explained the change in poll numbers as the result of more frequent public debate on immigration issues in Russia, causing more people to form opinions on the matter. “However,” he continued, “the ratio of the positions remains approximately the same for now.”

“The country is beginning to wake up and develop individual attitudes to various social phenomena, and on the whole this is, unconditionally, positive,” the human rights representative said. At the same time, he noted that the polarization of society indicates increasing degrees of opposition. “It’s good to start public debates, but I fear that it’s also starting knife fights and violence, and the government likewise answers with violence,” Chikov concluded.