Dozens Detained In Anti-Kremlin Rallies
Police detained more than 100 people including prominent opponents of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at anti-Kremlin protests on Tuesday, after Putin said demonstrators without permits could expect harsh treatment. In Moscow, police detained opposition...
In Moscow, police detained opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and dozens of other protesters who gathered on a central square declared off-limits last week, shouting "Shame!" and "Russia without Putin!"Police dragged protesters through the crowd and shoved them into buses, carrying some who tried to resist or twisting their arms behind their backs.About 70 people were detained in Moscow, police spokesman Viktor Biryukov said at the square. Some 50 people were detained on St. Petersburg's main street, Nevsky Prospekt.
Opposition leaders and rights activists have converged on Moscow's Triumph Square on the 31st of each month, a date symbolizing the right to free assembly guaranteed in Article 31 of Russia's constitution.The protests have become a major focus of opposition, and the police response is seen as a barometer of the Kremlin's willingness to tolerate dissent. Police have detained protesters each time, with varying degrees of force.Putin robustly defended police crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in an interview published on Monday."Go without permission, and you will be hit on the head with batons. That's all there is to it," he said.IT'S MY COUNTRY
In Moscow, where police vastly outnumbered what police said were about 400 protesters, officers in bulletproof vests dragged Nemtsov away after he started handing out copies of a report criticizing Putin at the edge of the square.The police presence on Tuesday appeared to be bigger than at previous demonstrations, with dozens of military-style troop carrier trucks and other vehicles blocking open areas of the square. The crowds of demonstrators were of a similar size, and police were as aggressive as in the past.Police told Reuters opposition politician Eduard Limonov was also detained. Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin told Ekho Moskvy radio he and Limonov were on a police bus with seven other detainees.
A 64-year-old woman raised a banner reading "Free the Constitution, Save Russia" on the steps of a concert hall and held it defiantly near a line of riot police. An officer seized it after a tug of war in which the woman lost her crutch."I'm not afraid. Why should I be afraid? It's my country," the woman, pensioner Lyudmila Lyubomudrova, told Reuters.President Dmitry Medvedev has said the development of civil society and the rule of law is crucial for Russia's future, but activists say police conduct and restrictions on protests show the Kremlin is determined to silence critics.Moscow authorities declared Triumph Square off-limits for demonstrations and closed off its center last week to make way for construction of an underground parking garage . Opposition groups said the abrupt closure was a pretext to stop protests.
Authorities have justified crackdowns on previous protests on the square by saying the demonstrators lacked official permission. Activists say the constitutional protection of free assembly means prior permission is not required.Detentions at the freedom of assembly demonstrations have drawn criticism from the United States and European governments."There are hundreds of police and to us it looks disproportionate," Thijs Berman, a Dutch member of the European Parliament's human rights subcommittee, said at Triumph Square on Tuesday before the rally began. "It begs the question: what is such a big country as Russia afraid of?"(Additional reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow and Denis Pinchuk in St. Petersburg; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Peter Graff)http://www.postchronicle.com/news/brea
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