Eduard Limonov of the Other Russia party and Konstantin Kosyakin of the Left Front movement were both sentenced on Thursday in Moscow’s Tverskoy Regional Court. According to Judge Sergei Komlev’s verdict, the two were guilty of violating rally regulations by holding an unsanctioned protest on July 31, 2012, as part of the Strategy 31 campaign for free assembly. Limonov was fined 12 thousand rubles, while Kosyakin’s fine was 15 thousand rubles (about 380 USD and 470 USD, respectively).

Neither of the oppositionists pled guilty to the charges and insist that they did nothing unlawful. They also do not plan to pay the fines, saying that they simply cannot afford to. The fines are newly increased because of a new law passed in June that came in the wake of an unprecedented surge in anti-government protests during the previous winter.

More than 40 people were arrested at the July Strategy 31 rally in Moscow, including participants of a sit-in who held a flag displaying the campaign’s logo. A Strategy 31 rally on the same day in St. Petersburg also began with a sit-in; eight people were arrested.

Protests under the Strategy 31 campaign have been held across the country by Russian oppositionists every month with a 31st day for the past few years, dedicated to the 31st article of the Russian constitution for freedom of assembly. Almost without exception, they have all ended with numerous arrests.

Approximately 200 people participated in the rally, which is held regularly on the 12th of every month to provide a forum for Russians to express their collective discontent with government authorities. The protesters hailed from a variety of opposition and civil rights movements, including the Moscow Council, the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, For Human Rights, the Left Front, the Moscow Workers Council, groups of automobile owners, environmental activists, and others.

Gathered near the Kremlin on Teatralnaya Square, the group chanted anti-government slogans such as “it’s time to change the government,” “Russia without Putin,” “it’s time to change course,” and “fictional elections are illegal,” the latter representing protesters’ current main grievance. Several leading activists, including Sergei Udaltsov, Lev Ponomarev, and Konstantin Kosyakin, gave speeches calling for a boycott of December parliamentary elections and telling people to go out into the streets in a sign of protest.

Police had thoroughly cordoned off Teatralnaya Square, with rows of officers lining the path from the square to the nearby metro in order to prevent participants from moving outside of their designated area of protest. The event had been sanctioned by Moscow city authorities, but an application to hold a subsequent march to the presidential administration building was turned down on the basis that it would cause traffic jams. However, Kosyakin proposed that the group march anyway, in spite of the ban.

The would-be marchers were immediately halted by police, with four arrested in total. As of Wednesday night, the activists were still in police holding.

A total of nine Day of Wrath protests have been declared unlawful by Moscow city authorities and cracked down upon between 2010 and 2011. Today’s was the first to be granted sanction in a long time, the ban on the march notwithstanding.

Following a Day of Wrath protest this past August, organizers announced that they were giving government authorities a month to organize a meeting between members of the country’s top leadership and themselves to discuss the demands of participants in detail. The meeting, however, never took place.

On Thursday, St. Petersburg Other Russia party branch leader Andrei Dmitriev said that city administrators had related the news to him by telephone the day before. The city is required by law to provide an alternative location to hold rallies that it refuses to sanction in the originally requested one, but, as often happens in the case of opposition rallies, the alternative would effectively hide the protesters from public view.

“They proposed Pionerskaya Square, but no Pionerskaya Square is going to suit us,” Dmitriev retorted. “It’s going to be at Gostiny Dvor.”

The Moscow mayor’s office also refused to sanction the upcoming rally.

Left Front co-leader and Strategy 31 co-organizer Konstantin Kosyakin told Kasparov.ru that he was told by city officials that the application was denied due to ongoing construction on Triumfalnaya Square.

“There can’t possibly be any work going on there. They just lie brazenly,” said Kosyakin.

Indeed, although a construction barrier was erected around Triumfalnaya Square nearly a year ago, there is no actual construction anywhere to be found.

Moscow’s Strategy 31 organizers and participants plan to hold their protest regardless of official sanction – for the first time in two years, as a sit-in instead of a rally.

Per tradition, Strategy 31 rallies are held on the 31st date of the month in dozens of cities throughout Russia in honor of the 31st article of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly. Solidarity rallies are also held around the world in New York, London, Rome, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and other cities.

On Tuesday, the two groups handed in their applications for permits to hold rallies in defense of free assembly on Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square on January 31. The city government has begun to grant permission for some of these rallies in the past few months, but not without complications.

Former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva was one such applicant, asking for a permit to allow 1500 people to attend her rally. Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov and Left Front coordinator Konstantin Kosyakin, along with the recent addition of former dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, applied for a separate 2500-person permit as well as permission to hold a march after the rally. According to Other Russia member Sergei Aksenov, the larger figure was based on police estimates of attendance at previous rallies.

Until last October, Alexeyeva, Limonov and Kosyakin had worked together to organize all of Moscow’s Strategy 31 rallies. The group split apart after Alexeyeva obtained city permission to hold the October 31 rally with an 800-person cap. Feeling that this limit was illegal, Limonov and Kosyakin broke off and chose to hold their own, unsanctioned event concurrently with their former compatriot’s.

Alexeyeva spoke out against the idea of a march, stipulating that this was her “personal opinion.” Limonov and Kosyakin plan to have their ralliers march down Tverskaya Street towards the Kremlin following the rally on Triumfalnaya Square.

“It could have been done, but – first of all, this is harder to do in the winter, and secondly, after these events [the detention of participants of the rally on December 31 – ed.], I don’t know in general what’s going to happen,” said Alexeyeva.

“We need to clarify what happened at the rallies, and not announce a march,” she went on, noting that there had been no talk of a march at a meeting between all of the organizers on January 14.

“While the sanctioned rally in October went well, outrageous things have happened since then; people went to a sanctioned rally and they were detained. And I’m not just talking here about Nemtsov; about 50 people were detained in all,” she said. “It’s true that they were released afterwards, but who wants to be driven around Moscow and wind up in the slammer on New Year’s Eve night?”

Aksenov told Kasparov.ru that the idea behind the march was to “raise the level of challenges to the government,” since the 31st article of the constitution – which guarantees freedom of assembly, providing Strategy 31 with its name – also provides for the right to hold marches. In his words, “the authorities, in their turn, will have the opportunity to prove that freedom of assembly and marches exists in this country or to show the opposite.”

Still, he did not expect the application to be approved. “I’m optimistic. I hope that the government has the sense to grant us sanction, but I think that now, since it’s the first time, there won’t be any sanction,” Aksenov said.

Meanwhile, the pro-Kremlin youth group Young Russia has set about to derail both rallies by holding one of their own. Organizers of “Donor Day,” a diversionary tactic that the group has used multiple times to take up space on Triumfalnaya Square that would otherwise go to the oppositionists, are demanding priority consideration for their rally on the basis that they supposedly handed it their application first.

On a statement posted on their website, Young Russia stipulated that they would allow Alexeyeva to take up part of the square to hold her rally and falsely implied that her followers had been the cause of violence that broke out at previous events. “We are officially declaring that we are prepared to give up a part of our time for Lyudmila Alexeyeva to hold her own event under the conditions that it is peaceful and that it’s participants do not violate public order or provoke the police,” said the statement. “But we are not giving up a minute of the 31st or a meter of Triumfalnaya Square to Eduard Limonov, leader of the National Bolshevik Party, which is banned by the Russian court.”

It is worth noting that Young Russia members have previously demanded that Lyudmila Alexeyeva be removed from the Russian Presidential Council on Human Rights. In an October 26, 2010 letter to council representative Mikhail Fedotov, the group alleged that the Strategy 31 rallies she had organized constituted “extremism.”

As a group of Russian oppositionists continue to sit out jail sentences received in connection with an unsanctioned rally in defense of free assembly, opposition leader Garry Kasparov warns that the state officials involved in such corrupt and unlawful arrests and convictions will, at some point, have to answer for their crimes.

A Criminal Government
Civil servants will answer to the law for their crimes
By Garry Kasparov
January 3, 2011
Kasparov.ru

Nemtsov – 15 days of administrative arrest. Limonov – 15 days. Kosyakin – 10 days. Yashin – 5 days.

On New Year’s Eve, so-called law enforcement representatives committed criminal offenses against these four citizens of Russia, who were publically expressing their deeply negative attitude towards Putin’s regime. The unlawful arrests on the street, the falsification of charges in the police station, the rubber-stamped court decisions – it’s the entire standard arsenal used by the stooges in the police and the courts, who were installed by the Don and his accomplices to keep order in the “zone.” In this most primitive fashion, these punks, who bust their way into the government, settled scores with their political enemies.

Terrible-looking OMON commanders dutifully fulfill the role of the regime’s cur, ordering their subordinates first to beat defenseless people and then to give false testimony in court. Petty hooliganism, obscene expressions, resistance to police officers, violations of public order – for sure, not one opposition event calling for the observance of the constitution could be held without that. The police know very well that they have nothing to worry about – all the “Judge Danilkins” always guarantee a conviction. To that end, any piece of nonsense from men in uniform is accepted as proof, while any evidence from the defense, including photo and video materials, is rejected.

By the way, judging by the police reaction, everything that happened during the unsanctioned march of football fanatics down Leningradka on December 8 was just peachy. That is to say, there were no hooliganistic antics, violations of public order, or, God forbid, obscene expressions. Yes, and the events of December 11 on Manezhnaya, proceeding from the police’s same logic, did not pose a serious threat to law-abiding citizens – as opposed to the opposition’s provocative gatherings on the 31st.

The criminalization of the state apparatus has reached the highest levels of centralization, in which the thieving government distorts the law and strives to hold onto their loot. Only the “loot,” in this case, is the Russian budget and the natural resources of our country.

And one more thing. On his blog, Ilya Yashin colorfully describes how Officer Dima falsified a police report under pressure from his superiors – that is to say, committed a serious act of professional misconduct without a moment’s thought. It’s interesting to ponder whether all of these Officer “Dimas,” Judge “Danilkins,” and Prosecutor “Lakhtins” think that, one wonderful day, the government of tyrants will ever come to an end in Russia, and a normal judicial system will begin to work, so that they will all have to answer to the law for their crimes. Or are they certain that, even if that time comes, nobody will remember them anyway? Like in 1991…

Boris Nemtsov, co-leader of the Solidarity opposition movement, and Eduard Limonov, head of the banned National Bolshevik party and the Other Russia party, were both sentenced to 15 days in jail – Nemtsov for insubordination to the police and Limonov for hooliganism. Left Front coordinator Konstantin Kosyakin received a 10-day sentence for insubordination to the police and Solidarity member Ilya Yashin was sentenced to 5 days in jail, presumably for the same offense.

In the cases of Kosyakin, Nemtsov, and Yashin, a Moscow court refused to admit testimony from 13 witnesses who asserted that the police had acted unlawfully during the rally.

According to Other Russia party member Andrei Gorin, Limonov had been arrested directly outside of his home on his way to the rally. He was sentenced that very evening.

The nationwide rallies were held as part of the Russian opposition’s ongoing Strategy 31 campaign, which is dedicated to the defense of the 31st article of the Russian constitution, guaranteeing the freedom to peacefully hold gatherings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.

In Moscow, organizers held two separate rallies, both at 6 pm on Triumfalnaya Square. Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a former Soviet dissident and highly regarded rights activist, received approval from the city to hold one of the rallies. Limonov and Kosyakin organized the second, unsanctioned rally.

As Gazeta.ru reports, the police presence at Triumfalnaya Square that night was strong even compared to previous Strategy 31 events.

“More than one thousand people have gathered at the sanctioned rally,” the correspondent reported. “Police are inspecting everyone very closely; there are a thousand of them as well… Several hundred members of the Other Russia coalition are gathered near the metro.”

An estimated 1500 ralliers came out to Triumfalnaya Square in total.

Moscow city police had cordoned off the square earlier in the day, particularly around the sidewalk between the square and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, where participants of unsanctioned Strategy 31 rallies usually gather. Anyone who attempted to join that rally from the neighboring Mayakovsky metro station was detained directly at the exit.

Other Russia member Sergei Aksenov was detained after announcing over a megaphone that Limonov had been arrested.

According to Kasparov.ru, OMON riot police periodically squeezed together the participants on Alexeyeva’s side of the square – a tactic commonly used by police during Strategy 31 rallies that often makes it difficult for those present to move or even breathe.

Following up from last year, Alexeyeva came to the rally dressed as a festive snowmaiden. Other oppositionists dressed up as well: environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova came in a Little Red Riding Hood costume. Rights activist Lev Ponomarev said he wanted to dress as Father Christmas, but couldn’t get ahold of a suitable cap.

After the sanctioned rally had officially ended, some participants – including Nemtsov and Yashin – attempted to cross over to the unsanctioned rally and were promptly arrested. According to Interfax, about 70 people were detained on Triumfalnaya Square in total.

Prior to the rallies, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin had warned that the city would not allow large, unsanctioned events to be held on New Year’s Eve, and that “those who plan to violate the law” could find themselves face-to-face with some unpleasant consequences.

Viktor Biryukov, head of public relations for the Moscow city police, said that they would not allow provocateurs and participants of any possible unsanctioned rallies to ruin New Year’s Eve night for people in the city.

In St. Petersburg, police arrested about 60 people in one of two Strategy 31 rallies held in the city that night. City authorities had refused to grant sanction to either rally.

As Fontanka.ru reports, all the arrests occurred at Gostiny Dvor, where between 100 and 300 people had gathered to rally. Nine girls were detained after unfurling a poster reading “freedom is more important than Olivier salad.”

No arrests were made at the second rally, which had about 100 participants from the United Civil Front, Solidarity, Yabloko, and other opposition groups. Many ralliers wore shirts picturing Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil oligarch who was convicted for a second time last week. He will now continue to sit in prison until 2017. The conviction is widely seen as the personal vendetta of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Photographs of the Moscow rallies can be found by clicking here and here.

On Wednesday, rally co-organizer Eduard Limonov said that the mayor’s office had agreed to allow a Strategy 31 rally to take place on December 31 from 10 to 11 in the morning on Triumfalnaya Square. Traditionally, such rallies are held on the 31st of each month with that date at 6 pm.

The switch to morning hours likely resulted from an application by a separate group of oppositionists and rights activists operating under the Strategy 31 campaign and approved the day before to hold a rally on the same day and location but at 6 pm.

In addition to the time change, Limonov said that the city proposed cutting the number of participants allowed into the rally from 2500 to 1000. Given these circumstances, he said, they plan to reject the agreement.

“Tomorrow [co-organizer] Konstantin Yurevich Kosyakin will give our response to the Moscow government. It’s short, this response: “Your proposal is unacceptable to us,” said Limonov.

Until the last rally on October 31, Strategy 31 rallies, held in defense of free assembly as guaranteed under the 31st article of the Russian constitution, were organized jointly by Limonov, Kosyakin, and former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva. The group split up after Alexeyeva came to an agreement with city authorities that allowed 800 people to legally rally on October 31, up from the unacceptably low 200 that had been originally sanctioned.

Until October, the Moscow government had never agreed to sanction any Strategy 31 event. Defiant oppositionists routinely gathered anyway, but despite the peaceful displays were violently dispersed by riot police on a regular basis.

Lev Ponomarev, head of the movement For Human Rights, said on Monday that the mayor’s office had approved an application he had filed jointly with rights advocates Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Oleg Orlov, Valery Borshchev, Roman Dobrokhotov, Khimki Forest activist Yevgenia Chirikova, and others.

For the past year and a half, opposition and rights advocates have been holding rallies in defense of free assembly on Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square on the 31st of each month with that date under the Strategy 31 campaign. However, the last rally in October was split in two when the three original organizers – Alexeyeva, Eduard Limonov, and Konstantin Kosyakin – fell into irreconcilable disagreement.

A recent meeting between the three organizers ended in similar disagreement. In the end, Alexeyeva and the aforementioned rights advocates have chosen to hold their own rally, while Limonov and Kosyakin will hold another rally at the same time and place in conjunction with former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky.

The oppositionists’ disagreement in October arose over the number of participants that the city gave permission to attend the rally. After conferring with Alexeyeva, the Moscow mayor’s office approved a rally for 800 people – short of the 1500 usually present at Strategy 31 events, leading Limonov to defect.

It was not immediately clear how many people would be allowed to attend the December 31 rally headed by Alexeyeva and Ponomarev or whether permission would be granted to Limonov and Kosyakin for their version of the rally.

With a new mayor and a rift between rally organizers, nobody knew what to expect from Moscow’s Strategy 31 rally. When the three organizers – Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva, National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov, and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin – were told by the mayor’s office that they would be allowed to hold a rally for no more than 200 people on Triumfalnaya Square, it was both the first time ever that such permission had been granted and the first time that the trio had become so split on how to respond. Alexeyeva came to an agreement with the mayor’s office to allow a rally for 800, while Limonov and Kosyakin chose to split off and hold a separate rally – on the same square, at the same time, and still under the banner of Strategy 31 – unsanctioned and thus more liable to a police crackdown, but for as many people as wanted to come.

According to Gazeta.ru, Moscow city police were given an order ahead of the rally to avoid detaining participants and to behave in an appropriate fashion. To ensure this, Police Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev and the new deputy mayor in charge of work with city law enforcement, Vladimir Shukshin, were present at the rally to observe. Presidential rights advisor Mikhail Fedotov and federal Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin also came as observers.  And it showed. Metal detectors were set up at the entrance to the sanctioned part of the rally, and police stopped traffic to allow activists arriving from the metro to cross the street. OMON riot police, who are most often noted in the media for their particularly brutal treatment of opposition protesters, were heard yelling into a microphone: “Go to Alexeyeva, she’s waiting for you.” About 1000 showed up for the sanctioned event.

Protesters who chose to join with Limonov and Kosyakin were forced to squish onto the terrace outside the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, which borders Triumfalnaya Square. At the height of the rally, the crowd was estimated at between 1500-2000 people. Police made several detentions when activists from the unsanctioned rally attempted to saw open the barrier that is currently blocking off the majority of Triumfalnaya Square for construction. Another two were detained for setting off smoke bombs.

A half hour after the rally began, police formed a human chain and began to push the unsanctioned crowd towards Alexeyeva’s event, knocking over the metal detectors in the process. According to Ekho Moskvy radio, Limonov himself was hoisted by his arms and legs over that part of the square. Once inside, ralliers were not allowed back out.

While this was going on, Lyudmila Alexeyeva and singer Katya Gordon were giving speeches to their crowd, with Gordon shaming the police for jamming Limonov’s ralliers together and Alexeyeva hailing the sanctioned event as “our shared achievement.” “I want to thank you for coming to Triumfalnaya Square on every 31st date for the course of a year and a half,” said the elderly rights activist. “We must force the government to treat our rights with respect.”

A number of notable civic organizations had representatives at Alexeyeva’s rally, including Lev Ponomarev of For Human Rights, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, Solidarity members Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, Sergei Davidis, and Oleg Kozlovsky, Khimki Forest defense activist Yevgeniya Chirkova, and representatives from the Memorial human rights center. Nemtsov decried the conflict between the Strategy 31 organizers, saying that “we mustn’t give the Kremlin such a gift as a schism.” He then proposed that ralliers gather once again on December 31 and end their rally by marching on the Kremlin.

After an hour, the sanctioned rally was over, and both organizers and police began asking people to leave. However, a group of between 300-800 people broke off and began marching south down the Garden Ring towards the Russian White House, blocking traffic and apparently taking Nemtsov’s words as a call to immediate action. Police broke up the crowd amidst cries of “it’s our city!” and “revolution!”

At that point, most of the marchers scattered, but about 30 reformed and continued to march on the White House. Mobile Twitter messages from those present gave some insight into the group’s mentality. “Part of the group has set off for the White House, IMHO in vain: you really need to know when to stop,” tweeted Solidarity member Oleg Kozlovsky.

According to reporter Ilya Azar, “Nobody knows where the White House is. Kozlovsky is asking people not to go and nobody is listening to him.” Eventually, OMON riot police caught up with the marchers, and half ran away. Gazeta.ru reported that seven were detained right outside of the White House entrance, including activist Marina Litvinovich, Kasparov.ru correspondent Pavel Nikulin, and Polit.ru journalist Maria Klimova.

The total 38 detainees were released on Monday morning from holding cells in Moscow, according to Other Russia representative Aleksandr Averin.

Two separate rallies in defense of free assembly were also held in St. Petersburg on Sunday. About 1000 people gathered at Gostiny Dvor, were police immediately began making detentions. Another 300 people rallied at Dvortsovaya Square. Police began detaining those activists after they unfurled a 30-meter-long Russian flag.

Other Strategy 31 events were held in the Russian cities of Vladivostok, Kurgan, Penza, Murmansk, Tver, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Astrakhan, Sochi, Ryazan, Krasnodarsk, and others, largely without incident.

For the second time in a row, about 50 protesters also held a solidarity rally outside of the Russian embassy in London. Participants included exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, and Marina Litvinenko, the widow of murdered ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko.

Video from RIA Novosti on the Moscow protest (in Russian):

The proposal was made late Monday to Strategy 31 co-organizer and prominent rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva. Speaking to Ekho Moskvy radio, Alexeyeva said she “was just at the mayor’s office,” where officials said they were willing to “widen the part” of Triumfalnaya Square that they had proposed last week for the oppositionists to rally. The expansion, said officials, would “block traffic,” but if no more than 800 people took part in the rally, it would not be broken up by police as in each past Strategy 31 rally. “They say that about 800 people plus the press will fit there,” said the rights activist. She did not rule out, however, that more people might try to participate.

“It’s very important that people who definitely want to be at the rally come on time, because when the space fills up, it could be difficult to get there,” noted Alexeyeva. She also expressed hope that the other two Strategy 31 organizers, Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin, would agree with her to accept the proposal, so that the Russian opposition could finally hold a rally in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly without being broken up by police.

The mayor’s office originally agreed to sanction the rally only if no more than 200 people showed up, but then reneged on their offer when rally organizers insisted on letting 1500 people protest.

A source in the mayor’s office told the Interfax news agency that the city was not willing to take down a construction barrier and remove equipment currently taking up the majority of space in the square, as oppositionists requested last week that they do in order to allow the usual 1500 or so protesters to take part in the event.

After talks on Monday night, however, the three Strategy 31 organizers were unable to reach a consensus on whether or not to accept the city’s proposal. According to Ekho Moskvy, Limonov and Kosyakin now plan to write a another letter to the mayor’s office asking for 1500 people to be allowed to come out to the rally. Alexeyeva said she would not be signing the letter.

Limonov had earlier expressed both surprise at the proposal and skepticism in general. “For my part, I can also say that we were told that there was only space for 200 people; where all of a sudden, in the course of a day, did space for another 600 come from?” he said.