According to Anastasia Udaltsova, press secretary for Udaltsov’s Left Front movement, the oppositionist does not believe he is guilty and has announced a hunger strike for the duration of his arrest.

Judge Yelena Abramova convicted Udaltsov on charges of disobeying the lawful demands of a police officer – an administrative offense in Russia.

Udaltsov was first detained on February 12 when approximately 500 protesters gathered on Moscow’s Teatralnaya Square for the Russian opposition’s monthly Day of Wrath protest. It was the first time that city authorities had agreed to sanction the rally, with previous events routinely cracked down on by police. Udaltsov also applied for permission to hold a march following the protest but was denied.

Intended as a venue to voice Russians’ general grievances against their government, the Day of Wrath rally attracted participants from the Left Front, the Solidarity opposition movement, the Russian Federation of Automobile Owners, the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest, defrauded real estate investors, communists, and numerous other causes.

Following the rally, writes Kasparov.ru, law enforcement officials gave Udaltsov permission to march along the sidewalk to the nearby presidential administration building to hand in a list of demands and symbolic “black marks,” with the caveat that the participants could not carry any flags of shout slogans along the way.

About 250 people joined in the march. “There were no flags or slogans,” Udaltsov said. However, upon reaching the Hotel Metropol, the marchers found themselves blocked by OMON riot police, who soon began to detain them. The first to be arrested was Udaltsov himself.

According to Udaltsov, 22 people were arrested during the march. Moscow city police put the figure at 14.

It was unclear exactly what orders police gave to Udaltsov that he supposedly disobeyed, or what else occurred that provoked the OMON to arrest some of the protesters – especially considering that a small group was allowed to go on and carry the list of demands to the presidential administration anyway. “Approximately 15 people went by themselves to Staraya Square and submitted our demands,” explained Udaltsov. “But it’s unclear why they had to stop us from walking. A march along the sidewalk is not a crisis.”

Update 02/01/11: Details added regarding a raid on the Strategy 31 organizational committee office.

Rallies under the Strategy 31 campaign were held in 70 Russian cities on Monday, continuing the Russian opposition’s call for the government to obey the right to free assembly as guaranteed under the 31st article of the Russian constitution. Some of the rallies were sanctioned by the government and others were not, but none of this seemed to make an impression on police who assaulted and arrested dozens of demonstrators and accidental bystanders – without regard, necessarily, to the legal status of the event they were attending.

In Moscow, per recent tradition, two rallies were held simultaneously on Triumfalnaya Square. A sanctioned one was coordinated by longtime human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who until recently organized the rallies together with Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov. Limonov, who is routinely arrested for holding unsanctioned Strategy 31 rallies, was the organizer of Monday’s unsanctioned event. Both had applied for permits with the Moscow mayor’s office, but only Alexeyeva’s was granted, with a cap on the number of participants set at 1000 people – lower than her request of 1500. Limonov reported earlier that his application requested a cap of 2500 ralliers.

The city government planned ahead to prevent any possible unsanctioned activities on the square. By 1:00 pm Moscow time, the entrance to Triumfalnaya Square from Tverskaya Ulitsa was surrounded by two dozen Ural trucks (normally used for transporting soldiers), with another three police buses parked on the square itself. Metal detectors were set up to separate ralliers attending the sanctioned or unsanctioned events.

As usual, estimates of the number of rally participants varied. Interfax claims 700, Gazeta.ru – 1500, Lev Ponomarev – 2500, and the Moscow city police claim there were 500 ralliers and 100 journalists present at the square.

The rally kicked off at 6:00 pm with a speech by human rights leader Lev Ponomarev, followed by Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Solidarity co-leader Boris Nemtsov. Provocators attempted to unfurl a banner during Nemtsov’s address but were prevented by the ralliers. Among cries of “Russia without Putin” and “down with the government of thieves,” satirist Viktor Shenderovich and leading environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova gave their own speeches. Chirikova called on participants not to be afraid and to bring their friends to the next Strategy 31 rally on March 31. She closed her presentation with a cry of “freedom to political prisoners,” which the square took up as a whole. Politician Vladimir Ryzhkov and Solidarity member Ilya Yashin also spoke and the rally concluded with a general call: “Vova, get out!”

As had been planned, Limonov’s followers in the Other Russia party set off on a march towards the Kremlin after the sanctioned rally was over. According to a Kasparov.ru correspondent, between 30 and 40 people marched along the sidewalk of Tverskaya Ulitsa chanting “Russia without Putin” and, when passing the mayor’s office, “Sobyanin, resign” and “give us mayoral elections.” Upon reaching the Kremlin, the protesters dispersed into the metro. Police videotaped the event but made no arrests.

The first reports of detentions and other unlawful police behavior at the rally, however, came in early in the evening. One Gazeta.ru correspondent witnessed OMON riot police dragging several young people headed towards the sanctioned rally into a bus. Through the glass, one could see police kicking the protesters and beating them with truncheon.

Among the detainees was Solidarity activist Anastasia Rybachenko, who was recently detained in Minsk in an opposition demonstration following presidential elections in Belarus. She confirmed by telephone that Moscow police were beating detainees in the buses, and she herself had an injured hand and was bleeding. The other detained activists hailed from Solidarity and Oborona, she said.

According to Kasparov.ru, Eduard Limonov was detained directly upon arriving at Triumfalnaya Square. Earlier, Other Russia party member Aleksandr Averin reported that police had raided the offices of the Strategy 31 organizational committee. The apartments of two Other Russia party members were also raided the same day. The raids, said Averin, was carried out in connection a criminal suit had been filed for “issuing calls to participate in massive disorders” in connection with the December 11 ultranationalist riots on Manezhnaya Square. Since Limonov was detained outside his home on his way to the last Strategy 31 rally, he invited the press to his apartment on Monday evening so that there would be evidence if this happened again.

Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov was detained on the metro at 5:30 pm, apparently on his way to the rally, under suspicion of having used a counterfeit ticket. He was released an hour later.

Pyotr Shkumatov, an activist with the Blue Bucket Society, was also among those detained. He reported that accidental bystanders had also been arrested.

All in all, a total of 54 people were detained at the Moscow rally, by Kasparov.ru’s estimate. Moscow city police put the number at 20.

The day before the rally, Svoboda News spoke with Vladimir Ryzhkov about his participation in Strategy 31:

“I’m taking part in the rally organized by Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Lev Ponomarev and other human rights advocates. But I am absolutely outraged that Eduard Limonov time and again is refused sanction for peaceful, nonviolent actions. This is a blatant and rude violation of the constitution and of Russian legislation. In this case, the government is trampling on human rights. It is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable.

The action on January 31 has special meaning. It is being held soon after Boris Nemtsov, Eduard Limonov and other unlawfully detained and prosecuted figures were released from jail. We are obligated to express our outrage and dissent with the actions of the authorities.”

According to the Associated Press, Boris Nemtsov compared Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is being called on to resign by a relentless surge of protesters.

“Please, someone tell me how our leadership differs from his,” Nemtsov shouted to the ralliers. “Russia has to get rid of Putin.”

However, National Public Radio erroneously reported that Monday’s Strategy 31 protests were sparked by the unrest in Egypt.

There were far more arrests at a much smaller Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg. At Gostiny Dvor, police detained 100 of the 500 protesters taking part in an unsanctioned rally organized by the local branch of the Other Russia party. Activist Ravil Bashirov began the event by enumerating a series of basic freedoms and calling on the government to observe them. Among these, he said, were the freedoms of speech, assembly, and the right to hold elections. He was detained immediately after his speech.

Witnesses said police were brutal when detaining ralliers. “The OMON were definitely brutal this time around,” said one Other Russia party member. “They rounded people up, dragged them into paddy wagons, beat some of them. And at the end they began detaining passersby and members of the media.”

Despite a heavy police presence, no one was detained at a second unsanctioned Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg, this one organized by Solidarity and the United Civil Front. About 100 people came out to the rally, which was held on Dvorotsovaya Square.

Strategy 31 rallies were also held across Russia in the cities of Omsk, Kurgan, Kirov, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Blagoveshchensk, Voronezh, Sergiyev Posad, Murmansk, Kemerovo, and others. Several of them reported unlawful detentions.

Click here for photographs of the rally in Moscow.
More photographs of the Moscow rally.
Click here for photographs of the march to the Kremlin.

Russian police detained as many as 170 protesters on Monday evening in Moscow, as more than 1000 opposition activists gathered for the ninth iteration of the Strategy 31 rallies, a series of protests in defense of the constitutional right to the freedom of assembly. Activists and observers present at the rally say that the violence used by the police against protesters was even more brutal than it has been in previous Strategy 31 events, resulting in dozens of injuries and at least two hospitalizations.

Despite repeated appeals by opposition organizers, the Moscow city government refused to sanction the May 31 rally – an ongoing trend that has been criticized by human rights groups and governmental bodies in Russia, Europe, and the United States. Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, which the organizers have made their traditional meeting place, had been occupied since earlier in the day by a group of pro-Kremlin youth organizations holding a rally in support of blood drives. Additionally, the entrance to the square from the adjacent metro station had been cordoned off by police.

Such was the scene when Strategy 31 protesters began to arrive for the 6:00 pm rally. According to the Kasparov.ru news site, a young man wearing a shirt indicating that he was involved with the blood drive rally grabbed a poster reading “down with the illegal government” out of the hands of one of the protesters. At that point, the crowd began loudly chanting, and police then began to make detentions.

Eyewitnesses noted that particularly harsh measures were used against participants of the rally. Police dragged protesters, including young women, along the ground and shoved them into buses waiting nearby. They also broke journalists’ cameras and fired pepper spray into the crowd, regardless of the fact that pregnant women and children were present.

Police went about the detentions and general brutality despite the presence of observers from the European Parliament, Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, reappointed by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2009, and Moscow Human Rights Ombudsman Aleksandr Muzykantsky. The police, in fact, attempted to detain Lukin before realizing who he was.

Editor-in-Chief of the New Times magazine, Yevgeniya Albats, was also detained, but was quickly released after she began reporting live from the scene, presumably by cell phone or through other reporters present.

Two of the three Strategy 31 organizers, former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva and writer Eduard Limonov (both of whom have been detained at previous rallies), were surrounded a ring of personal guards and reporters during Monday’s event. The police, however, violently detained the guards for no apparent reason. At the same time, people in the same blood drive rally shirts as the previously mentioned young man attempted to provoke fights with those surrounding the organizers.

Kasparov.ru reports that police detained at least 140 people in all, while Interfax reports the figure as closer to 170. Among those detained were Solidarity bureau member Ilya Yashin, Oborona coordinator Oleg Kozlovsky, Forum.msk news site Editor-in-Chief Anatoly Baranov, Sergei Aksenov of the Other Russia coalition, and Konstantin Kosyakin, the third Strategy 31 organizer. Numerous other journalists were also arrested. Reporting from one of the police buses, Solidarity member Nadezhda Mityushkin said that activists were being severely beaten, Kozlovsky in particular.

The detainees were split up and taken to several different police stations, where the situation for many began to deteriorate. Writing on their microblogs, a number of the detained activists said that OMON riot police held them in hot buses for more than an hour and refused to give them water. An ambulance was eventually called for one Solidarity member who became sick after being kept in one for “several hours.”

The most scandalous case appears to be that of Solidarity activist and Gazeta.ru journalist Aleksandr Artemev, who was hospitalized after police allegedly crushed his shoulder to pieces. The incident allegedly occurred when police ordered detainees off of one of the police buses, before following to violently shoved them back in.

Kasparov.ru reports that doctors have diagnosed Artemev with a comminuted shoulder fracture; as a result, he will have to spend ten days in the hospital.

Artemev noted that he came to the Strategy 31 rally as a civil activist, not as a journalist, and that he did not present his journalist credentials to police upon being detained.

The activist also said that he plans to file suit against the police, and that he has several witnesses as well as video footage of the incident.

Mikhail Mikhailov, editor-in-chief of Gazeta.ru, told Kasparov.ru that the incident was “monstrous.”

“The horror of it is that the police officers used violence against a person who possesses a passport as a citizen of the Russian Federation, and at that did it openly, fearing nothing,” said Mikhailov.

Colonel Aleksandr Khavkin, head of the Zamoskvoreche police station where Artemev was injured, denied that his officers were at fault.

Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk of RIA Novosti, who also heads the Public Council of the Moscow City Police, told Gazeta.ru that what happened to Artemev was “outrageous” and promised that the council would invite him to give his side of the story.

Solidarity Executive Director Denis Bilunov said that once inside one of the police stations, the detained activists were held for five hours before being interrogated by men presumed to be Federal Security Service (FSB) officials.

Kasparov.ru reported Tuesday morning that most of the detainees were held by police overnight, and that by this afternoon some had still not been released. The majority are being charged with participating in an unsanctioned event (punishable by up to a 1000 ruble/$32 fine) and resisting a police officer (up to 15 days in detention).

Opposition activists also held a Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg. Police detained between 50 and 100 of the 500 gathered on Gostiny Dvor after the crowd began to shout “We need a different Russia” and “Russia will be free.”

Elsewhere in the city, 1500 oppositionists gathered for a “March of Dissent,” also dedicated to defending the constitutional right to free assembly. According to United Civil Front’s St. Petersburg branch leader Olga Kurnosova, OMON riot police initially attempted to block the march before backing down in the face of the insistent protesters.

Yury Shevchuk, leader of the rock band DDT and outspoken Kremlin critic, had asked Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday whether or not the march would be allowed. The prime minister then responded that it would be allowed if participants acted legally and did not, for example, hold the march near a hospital. The media followed to take his words as an official sanction of the march, although Putin’s press secretary refuted this the next day.

Additionally, in an interview with Gazeta.ru published on Sunday, Shevchuk said that he had received a call from the Russian White House before the meeting and was asked not to pose any “harsh questions of a political character” to the prime minister, because “the prime minister is very tired and you don’t need to irritate and upset him.”

Solidarity bureau member and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov took part in the March of Dissent in St. Petersburg, and commented on the situation in Moscow on his blog:

The situation in Moscow is markedly worse. More than 100 people have been detained, including our colleagues Ilya Yashin and Oleg Kozlovsky. Yashin was holding a Russian flag, Kozlovsky was holding nothing in general. They were held in a scorching hot bus, and are now waiting in the stations. This is a question of the dialogue between Shevchuk and Putin the other day. There are no hospitals on Triumfalnaya Square or Gostiny Dvor, nobody besides the OMON officers themselves blocked traffic. Nobody held banners or used megaphones. Nevertheless, there are more than 100 detainees. A classic example of hypocrisy and lies. Say one thing, think another, do something else.

Of course, having met with Putin, Shevchuk held his March of Dissent spectacularly. And decent people are grateful to him for that. But with Putin, like always – spite, an attempt to deride a distinguished rock musician, and a pathological fear of his own people.

In addition to the events in Moscow and St. Petersburg, several other Strategy 31 rallies were held on Monday all across Russia, including in the cities of Tomsk, Voronezh, Vladivostok, Omsk, and Krasnoyarsk.

A video of the proceedings in Moscow can be seen by clicking here (note: the music that comes on halfway through was from the blood drive rally organizers).

Correction – June 9, 2010:  This story originally reported that the event held by pro-Kremlin youth groups was a blood drive. It was, in fact, a rally in support of the idea of a blood drive; no blood was donated at the event. The article has been corrected to reflect as much.

The majority of the rallies took place on Saturday, and came in the wake of two explosions in the Raspadskaya coal mine in Russia’s Kuznetsk Basin on May 8 that left 67 miners dead. In one protest, about 150 opposition activists gathered on Moscow’s Chistie Prudy to stand in solidarity with the miners and demand a governmental response to their grievances. They asked for an objective investigation of the May 8 explosions, punishment for those guilty for the tragedy, and monetary compensation to miners for lost work time.

The Moscow protesters also demanded a stop to the persecution of miners and residents of Mezhdurechensk, a town close to the Raspadskaya mine where riot police arrested approximately 28 people in on May 14 during a protest made up of relatives of miners killed in the accident and their supporters. Criminal charges have been filed against some of those protesters for blocking off a railroad, a move they took out of desperation to draw attention to their grievances.

A rally meant to take place in Mezhdurechensk on Saturday, however, fell apart after an increased police presence intimidated miners into staying off the streets. Former police Major Aleksei Dymovsky, famous in Russia for his work exposing corruption in the country’s police forces, had arrived in the city to support the miners. At the designated time on Saturday, he told the Kasparov.ru online news site, approximately 70 journalists came to the local government building where the rally was supposed to take place. Only an hour later, however, did ten miners arrive and tell Dymovsky that the rest of them had been frightened away from coming to the protest. The police presence, which included officers brought in from other nearby towns, dispersed the ten miners after half an hour.

On Monday, opposition leader Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front issued a press release saying that another rally in support of the Kuznetsk Basin miners would be held in Moscow on May 25. “To this day,” reads the statement, “virtually none of the miners’ demands have been satisfied. Despite the fact that the participants of the demonstration [in Mezhdurechensk on May 14] have been released, the criminal suits against them have not been dropped.”

The organization commented on Saturday’s failed Mezhdurechensk rally by noting that local police and police brought in from other areas scared the population into submission, and referred to an apparent plan by the police dubbed “The Fortress” to intentionally stifle protests.

For more on the Raspadskaya mine explosions and their aftermath:

• Who to Blame in Russia Mine Deaths? – The Wall Street Journal
• Mine Director Replaced After Rebuke From Putin – The New York Times
• Russia’s mine accident relatives ‘targeted by gangs’ – BBC News

Nikolai Alexeyev, founder of the Gayrussia.ru rights project and one of the event’s organizers, told Interfax on that he was told over the phone by the mayor’s office that the application for Moscow Pride had been turned down. Parades, protests, rallies, and other similar events require government sanction to be legally held in Russia; organizing an unsanctioned rally can lead to jail time.

The city did not appear to attempt to hide its flagrant violation of Russian law in banning Moscow Pride. “Contrary to the demands of acting legislation, the Moscow government did not propose any kind of alternative [locations] for holding the planned event to organizers of the march,” reads a statement on Gayrussia.ru.

Alexeyev said that he and his fellow organizers intend to file a complaint about the city’s decision with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. More immediately, he said they would appeal the decision in Moscow’s Tverskoy Court after receiving written confirmation that the parade has been banned.

“We’re going to try to get the case considered by the court before the date of the event – May 29,” Alexeyev said.

The Strasbourg Court is set to rule this year on three cases filed by Moscow Pride organizers against the city for banning their parades in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Their event was also prohibited in 2009, but 30 participants attempted to march in defiance of the ban. Five minutes after the beginning of the march, all 30 activists were arrested by OMON riot police.

Earlier, Alexeyev stated that if the Moscow city authorities refuse to sanction this year’s Moscow Pride parade, they would try to gain permission to hold it on the territory of an embassy of a Western country.

Moscow Mayor Luzhkov is famous for his vocal homophobia, routinely denouncing gay pride parades a “satanic activity.” In January, he vowed to ban what he called “the display of blasphemy under the guise of creativity and protected by the principle of freedom of speech” in Moscow on a permanent basis.

Russian gay rights advocates have suffered from strong public and governmental opposition dating back to Soviet times. In accordance with a Stalinist decree, homosexuality carried a sentence of up to five years in prison until 1993, when legislators legalized it at the urging of the Council of Europe. It remained on the list of Russian mental illnesses until 1999. While there are no laws explicitly banning homosexuality, government authorities have failed to recognize the need for anti-discrimination legislation. Public opinion remains strongly opposed to such reforms – as of 2005, 43.5 percent of Russians supported the re-criminalization of adult homosexual acts.

While the daytime protest outside of a cultural center proceeded largely without incident, the second rally in the evening was brutally dispersed by OMON riot police. In a move reminiscent of last summer’s protests in the stricken industrial town of Pikalevo, relatives of deceased miners blocked off a railroad and demanded a meeting with the local mayor, the leadership of the Raspadskaya mine, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In response, OMON officers violently broke up the rally, beating dozens of protesters and detaining 28 individuals.

While some reports say that protesters throwing rocks at police during the fight injured more than a dozen officers, all 28 detainees were released on Monday and Kemerovo Regional Police Chief Aleksandr Yelin said that the charges they might face are for having blocked transportation.

The opposition movement Solidarity has released a statement in response to the incident.

Statement in support of Kuznetsk Basin miners
May 16, 2010

The Solidarity movement is outraged by the cruel and cynical actions of the authorities who used OMON to beat and detain grieving and despairing miners and their relatives on the evening of May 14.

The Putin-Goebbels propaganda machine maintains that the spontaneous rally was organized by criminals, and that neither miners nor their relatives were noticed at the rally. This time, they won’t get away with this brazen and impudent official propaganda lie. The entire country has seen the videos of the beatings.

We welcome the initiative by residents of the Kuznetsk Basin to organize protest rallies in defense of their legitimate demands, including the immediate release of all those arrested in Mezhdurechensk, increased wages in commercial mines in the region, and an end to the persecution of the activities of independent trade unions.

We also feel that it is necessary to prosecute the sadistic OMON who cruelly beat the demonstrators.

We are prepared to offer legal and informational support to the Union of Kuznetsk Basin Residents and are convinced that our combined actions will bring about a result.

Our contact information: solidarnost.info@gmail.com, tel. 625-48-14

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

In a press released posted Tuesday on the agency’s official website, Lieutenant General Vladimir Gorshukov said that an article published Monday in the New Times magazine accusing an elite subdivision of the OMON of using slave labor was “a complete fabrication.”

“I would call it an intentional campaign against the OMON detachments of the Russian Internal Ministry, and against the Zubr detachment in particular,” said Gorshukov.

The lieutenant asserted that the article was based on “the private statements of a former member of the division who had disciplinary problems and did not follow demands from above that were given to members of the special subdivisions; in consequence of this, she was fired.”

Monday’s article by the New Times consisted largely of the transcript of an interview with former Zubr OMON officer Larisa Krepkova, who claims to have witnessed migrant workers brought to the OMON base and forced to work without pay. The article asserts that her reason for leaving the force was related to illness.

Major General Aleksandr Ivanin, who commands the Zubr unit of the OMON, said that while Krepkova was sufficiently qualified for her job as a canine handler, she had repeatedly come to work intoxicated and was seen consuming alcohol on the job. “We conducted a service check on the matter and have all the supporting documentation,” he added.

Ivanin claimed that Krepkova was given the opportunity to resign, but that the reason for her dismissal was changed to the condition of her health after a medical commission was completed. What exactly the commission concluded was unclear.

Internal Ministry spokesman Oleg Yelnikov accused the media of failing to fact check their articles. “Some journalists, clearly, have forgotten that in accordance with article 49 of the law regarding the media, a journalist is required to check the reliability of the information presented to him,” blaming the New Times for relying solely on Krepkova’s testimony.

The agency announced Monday morning that they plan to sue the magazine for libel.

The article, which was published on Monday by the New Times magazine, is based on allegations made by former police officer Larisa Krepkova, who left the elite Zubr subdivision of the Russian Internal Ministry’s OMON security forces a year and a half ago due to illness. According to Krepkova, officers from the unit would travel to Moscow’s Yaroslavskoye Highway to recruit migrant workers, who were then brought to the Zubr base in the nearby region of Shchelkovo. There, they were forced to dig ditches, set up fences, and clean toilets without pay, even though Official invoices included tallies of the cost of labor.

Krepkova said that the workers, who she labeled as “slaves,” even wound up working in the dacha of Deputy Interior Minister Colonel General Mikhail Sukhodolsky. In addition to not being paid the workers were beaten and poorly treated in general. After Internal Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev undertook a survey of the base, the workers were assigned more specific tasks, she said.

The former officer explained that funding for labor was previously determined by the Zubr officers themselves, and that today the funds are specifically allocated by the Internal Ministry. As such, she was unaware if Zubr was continuing such practices today.

The New Times article adds that the Zubr OMON subdivision is under the direct jurisdiction of Internal Minister Nurgaliyev, and is commonly known as “the minister’s personal security.”

A spokesperson from the Internal Ministry said on Monday that they plan to sue the magazine for libel.

Monday’s article is the second in less than a month by the New Times to address problems with the OMON, which are notorious for their brutal suppression of activist rallies and other protests. On February 1, the magazine published an open letter from a number of former Moscow OMON to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, describing poor working conditions, mistreatment by their superiors, orders to break up opposition rallies, and rampant corruption.

The next day, members of the Moscow city OMON announced their decision to sue the New Times for libel. City Police Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev later stated that an internal investigation found the charges to be false. Additionally, the agency sent invitations to a number of journalists and rights activists to join the OMON for Russia’s traditional Maslenitsa festival celebrations. The OMON said that the event was a chance to show that the agency had nothing to hide, but the online newspaper Gazeta.ru described the proceedings as obviously staged.

The New Times noted that in response to the February 1 article, it has received a record number of letters from police officers with similar experiences. Its editors said on Monday that while they have yet to receive notification of any lawsuits regarding the articles, they are prepared to defend them in court.

Monday’s article can be read in its entirety in Russian by clicking here.

The Year In Review: Whispering, We’ll Survive
December 27th, 2007
Natella Boltyanskaya
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

If we speak about feelings on the departing 2007 year, then for me they are such. Authority that’s shameful. Shameful for cynicism and pettiness, impudence and lies. Further still, the tendency to take revenge upon everyone deemed persona non grata is, in my opinion, categorical. Just don’t try to sing a song of “Oh, what a bad person … is.” There could be any name there. Bukovsky… Kasparov… Storchak… Khodorkovsky… Chervochkin… Gozman… Litvinenko… Arap… Anyone can compose this list at their own discretion; this list could be of any length.

I’ll recall the principle of lawfulness once more – you must be judged and condemned not based on who is extremely unsympathetic toward you, but for what you’ve done and only what you’ve done. No one doubts that the government is stronger than each of its citizens. Well, then – it’s indecent when the government demonstrates this to a specific person using the arms of its employees: look what we can do to you. The question isn’t about lawful retaliation for breaking such-and-such a law, but about the decision, taken at the top (where no one will ever say, even though everyone understands, that we’ve built a vertical [chain of command]). And the essence of the decision – we’ll detain, cripple, jail, kill you. Because we can do this. We can send over an instigator to a person, carrying out their civic right to a solitary picket. [Under Russian law, one person can demonstrate anywhere at any time without a permit, but an unregistered group of two or more can be shut down and arrested.] And this instigator will, without hesitation, explain why he’s been sent there.

Shameful for these authorities so much so, that enough about them already. Better yet, let’s talk about the society. About a certain number of people united under one nationality. And not about the mythical numbers of “encouragers” and “approvers”. So then, this certain number of people could be displeased with what’s happening in the country at the present moment. And it completely doesn’t mean that they’re enemies. They simply don’t agree. Like the pensioners, who once went into the streets didn’t agree, being against the monetization of their benefits. Thank God, that then we managed without clubs. Currently, the situation has reached a stalemate. The Russian citizen doesn’t have space to express her disagreement. You cannot vote differently, as everything was counted up long before your vote… Incidentally, this is about the authorities again by now, of which we’re shameful.

So then voting – doesn’t work. And all the other means of expressing disagreement [or dissent] can be equated with extremism or crushed without explanation in any way that’s commanded. An opposition organization doesn’t have space in a city of many millions, where any place with a room and more than 100 seats can be had by just about anyone for money? To what extent must these authorities sh.., excuse me, soil themselves, in front of the opposition, to deal with the dissenters in such a way?

Furthermore, my dear little bears and cubs, including the polar and koalas, help me understand: If the same number of OMON [Special Forces] simply preserved order at such a demonstration, and didn’t suppress it, what would be so terrifying about that? One gets the impression that these guys are instigating bloodshed themselves, considering that in the present day, the steam release valve is being shut time and time again. How much do you need to fear [Natalya] Morar, a journalist, to deport her by secret decree from the country (see above – to take revenge anyone deemed persona non grata). If there are so few of these dissenters [as the authorities claim], they why are they so pressured? Kasparov won’t muster the votes for the presidency? The let him lead an assembly and register his candidacy fairly. And since you won’t give him the chance to do it, does it mean you’re afraid he will gather [the votes]? There has not, is not, and won’t be an answer. It’s not the tsarist practice to give answers. It’s not a tsarist practice to obey the law. To hell with them, I’m talking about you and me! Almost every one of us is given the illusory opportunity to close up in our shells, turn off the damn idiot box and… earn money (as much as they permit), read books, run about the internet, as long as it isn’t fixed…

And if your apartment is robbed, then don’t go looking for justice, because the militsiya is catching dissenters, and it’s not up to catching thieves. And if a civil servant’s son or brother runs down your relative – forget it, there won’t be justice. Your place, citizens, is the state of a hedgehog that’s being threatened. Roll up into a ball, gather up everything you can within yourself, and lie there quietly. Don’t spring up! I personally know many people, who completely don’t like Garry Kimovich [Kasparov], but who go to these Dissenters’ Marches, because there is no such law to “not spring up.”

[…]

It’s time to make sense of the situation and take a constructive decision – all of us. Otherwise, we’ll be crushed one at a time.

I understand, that’s it’s easy for me to appeal for constructiveness to those, who have probably thought about it on their own. But there isn’t another way out. The direction that the whole country is moving in is abominable. And the society is starting to understand. Late, because a system of repression is already up and running. But it’s starting, as it should. True, you and I may not live to see those days, when this oil and imperial-hubris inflated bubble pops… But the borders are still open… And if you don’t like it, get out… But why does one need to leave from their country – their native land, you say?

Because you have been designated an enemy from the very highest rostrum. But what if they made a mistake at this rostrum? But they couldn’t be mistaken, since oil prices are out of this world. And when they collapse, the dissenters won’t be beaten to death one by one, as was Chervochkin, the National Bolshevik [activist]. By then [the authorities] will be giving the order to shoot them in public gathering sports. Is that what you’re waiting for? You think that there will be enough satiety during your time? You are wrong – it’s for THEIR time that there will be enough satiety, they aren’t thinking about you. You should be thinking of yourself, since the law can (theoretically) protect you – us. But they will now be making whatever laws they need… And here I am, not talking about the authorities again, for whom I’m yet again ashamed. This is about you and I, who likely had our last hurrah when NTV was shut down… And continue to have it every time that someone is killed, and we are quiet, such and such was thrown in the nuthouse, and we have our step-mother’s anniversary… Of course, perhaps those arrested, crippled, killed, and disappeared without a trace don’t worry us… The trouble is that every one of us is next in line. Just by chance walking down the street.

Today we are seeing a systematic and practically daily violation of the fundamental law of the Russian Federation. This law is being broken, as I understand it, with full backing and permission of the guarantor. Because if the guarantee is real, and not phony, it must punish and demonstrate what happens to transgressors at the first violation. But if the punishment and browbeating hasn’t happened even once, then it means that any law relating to you could be broken. Likely, it can be suffered if you take on the attitude of the hero in “The Suicide,” the [Nikolai] Erdman stage play: “God perish the thought. Do you really think we’re doing something against the revolution? We haven’t done a thing since the day it started. All we do is visit one another and talk about how hard life is. Because life is easier when we can say life is hard. For God’s sake, don’t deprive us of our last means of survival. Let us say that life is hard. Let us say it in a whisper, “Life is hard.” Comrades, I implore you on behalf of millions of people: Give us the right to whisper. You’ll be so busy constructing a new life that you’ll never even hear us. I guarantee it. We’ll live out our entire lives in a whisper.” (The play was written at the end of the 1920s.)

Translated by theotherrussia.org.

OMON Special Forces have violently dispersed a sanctioned opposition protest in Moscow, the Sobkor®ru news agency reports. Around 40 people had gathered in Arbat square, coming together to speak out against violations in the December 2nd State Duma elections. The demonstrators also brought signs to show support for Oleg Kozlovsky, a leader of the Oborona youth movement.

On December 20th, Kozlovsky was apprehended near his house by a district militsiya officer, and taken to the local military enlistment office. Young men in Russia are required to serve as conscripts in the Russian army, although exemptions are made for University students, and students may train to become reserve officers instead. Kozlovsky had completed training courses at Moscow State University, and was certified into the officer corps.

The enlistment office claimed to have lost Kozlovsky’s documents, and proceeded to question him. Subsequently, he was illegally enlisted into the army as a common soldier. Kozlovsky was also subjected to a medical examining board, which ignored a medical condition that excludes him from service. He has since been sent to a military base to start his service.

Roman Dobrokhotov, another youth leader who attended the protest, said:

“Oleg Kozlovsky is my friend, and we have organized political actions together many a time. It is apparent to me, that if a person with medical issues, who is studying at University and holds the rank of reserve officer suddenly finds himself at a military enlistment office – that is a political order from above.”

The peaceful demonstration lasted only half an hour. Swinging night sticks, officers charged the demonstrators, hauling some 20 people off onto waiting mini-buses. Their crime is described as changing the subject of the picket from what it was registered as. As yet it remains uncertain whether any of the protestors were seriously injured.

The Other Russia coalition has denounced the arrests, and has said that Kozlovsky’s detention was politically motivated. “We take note that the Oleg Kozlovsky’s forcible dispatch to the army represents yet another method in the campaign against political activists. It stands side by side with murders, beatings, forced psychiatric hospitalization, threats, arrests, shake-downs, and other,” the coalition’s press-release stated.