After this weekend’s arrests of hundreds of peaceful oppositional activists in Moscow and St Petersburg, among them members of Yabloko Youth, we get yet another reminder of the lack of freedom in Russia. President Putin is tightening his grip firmly. An estimated 220 peaceful activist were arrested during the weekend. The police are reported to have been violent and beaten people with batons.
Yesterday, I attended a seminar analysing the state of the Russian democracy for the upcoming elections for the State Duma in December and the presidency in March 2008. The name of the seminar was “Russia previous elections – return of Kremlinology?”and was arranged by SILC. A rather dark picture of the situation in the country was presented. At the same time, the speakers agreed that ordinary Russians are quite satisfied.
Gunilla Davidsson, Secretary General of SILC, who has worked with the Russian opposition for several years, was the opening speaker. Then followed Torgny Hinnemo, a former newspaper correspondent in Moscow, now working at Sweden’s state department. He spoke about different periods of repression in Russian history and noticeably that the repression started increasing at the end of Jeltsin’s term. Amanda Lövkvist, SILC’s coordinator for Russia, analysed the status of the opposition in Russia. She argued that although Yabloko have a hard time getting their candidates into the municipal, regional and national assemblies they are confident since they represent one of the few oppositional forces that has existed since 1993. The final speaker was Johanna Lärken, Swedish Amnesty’s coordinator for Russia, that spoke about repression and police brutality.
Although many Russians might be satisfied due to the present relative economic welfare, this weekends arrests and police brutality towards peaceful demonstrators is yet another reminder of the increasingly poor state of Russia. Another reminder is the new election laws that were passed last year, which made it even more difficult for parties not enjoying support of the Kreml to run. In last years new election laws the threshold for holding a seat in a political assembly was increased to 7% and candidates can be banned from running at any time if they are considered extremist by the Kreml. In this years municipal elections in St Petersburg, false claims of falsifying signatures for their party registration made it illegal for Yabloko to run in the municipal elections.
It is crucial for the international community to react to the repression of the opposition in Russia and for us to show our outmost support to our liberal friends in Yabloko.
/ Daniel Wennick
Some photos of the demonstrations:
Local internet-newspaper:
http://zaks.ru/a0/ru/archive/view.thtml?i=28923
http://zaks.ru/a0/ru/archive/view.thtml?i=28924
http://www.fontanka.ru/2007/04/15/040/
From blogs of photographers
http://smolyak.livejournal.com/495781.html
http://blogik.livejournal.com/218779.html#cutid1
http://oles-ru.livejournal.com/5375.html