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Russian Protest Goes Ahead Despite Volunteer’s Death Russia Protest Rally Draws Thousands on Anniversary
(35 minutes later)
MOSCOW — Organizers of a political protest decided to go ahead with their plans on Monday despite an accident that killed a volunteer who had been helping erect the stage for the rally’s speakers. MOSCOW – Thousands of people turned up on Monday at a protest in Moscow intended to draw attention to what participants called the return of political prosecutions in the Russian court system.
The event, which has been scheduled months, commemorates the date of a clash between protesters and the police a year ago and to call for the release of people arrested during the demonstration. The volunteer died about midday on Monday when a giant speaker toppled and crushed him. The rally, one of the larger protests here in recent months, was timed to commemorate the anniversary of a riot on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, that was followed by a mass arrest and criminal prosecutions of protesters under contentious circumstances. The prosecutions are known as collectively as the Bolotnaya Case.
It was the latest in a series of problems that have troubled the Russian opposition. That event a year ago signaled the end of the winter’s large, peaceful protests. It also precipitated a series of laws enacted under President Vladimir V. Putin constricting rights to assemble and increasing fines for unsanctioned gatherings.
The rally itself was scheduled to protest politically tinged prosecutions. Many of the speakers on the stages of Russia’s protest movement last winter have wound up in prison, under house arrest or on trial, with little public outcry. The rally is intended to change that. Organizers said nearly 30,000 people attended, close to their expectations under a permit they had received. Interfax, a Russian news agency, said the turnout was more like 8,000.
“We want the government to release political prisoners and halt political criminal cases,” Boris Nemtsov, one of the organizers, said in a telephone interview. Regardless, the rally showed that organizers could still draw thousands to a park in the center of Moscow to protest politically hewed arrests and prosecutions.
The rally’s two other demands are a constitutional change to impose term limits on the president — the incumbent, Vladimir V. Putin, is on track to become one of the longest-serving Russian leaders in a century — and an investigation of corruption in construction contracts for the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. Many contracts have gone to acquaintances of Mr. Putin. Police arrested five people for wearing masks, which is illegal, and one person for lighting a flare. But overall the event was peaceful.
Organizers decided to go ahead with the protest in spite of the volunteer’s death at the rally site on Bolotnaya Square and confusion over whether the city authorities would try to cancel the event. “In December 2011 I marched because I personally felt that I was robbed at the election,” Anton Orekh, a commentator on the Echo of Moscow radio station, wrote in an essay on the rationale for continued protest, although President Putin is firmly ensconced in the Kremlin.
Earlier Monday, an unusually large number of police officers were on the streets in Moscow. City officials said 15,000 officers would guard the event y — half the number of the 30,000 demonstrators allowed under the rally permit. “I felt that a decent person couldn’t stay home in this humiliating situation,” Mr. Orekh wrote. “They spit on your face, and you wipe it off and stay silent, sitting on the couch. Now, the idea is the government is telling us, sit and stop chirping. The people detained on the Bolotnaya Case are either wholly innocent, or they are guilty of something far less serious than they are accused.”
When activists unfurled a three-story-high banner with the slogan “Freedom for the Prisoners of May 6” on a high-rise building on New Arbat Street, the police, with little explanation, detained a news agency photographer who had taken a picture of it. Organizers decided to go ahead with their action on Monday despite an accident that had killed a volunteer worker helping to erect the speaking stage, forcing them to improvise by shifting the podium to a flatbed truck.
The May 6 rally last year appeared to signal the beginning of the end of the protest movement. The arrests and fighting on the street that day frightened away many of those who wanted the movement to be peaceful. Gennady Gudkov, a former member of Parliament and opposition leader, said at the rally that the turnout showed Russians these days will not succumb to fear. “Arrests and prosecutions are their means of scaring people. This is their way of saying ‘if you come out, the same will happen to you, too.'”
“The clash on Bolotnaya became the finale of the snow revolution,” according to Lenta.ru, a Russian online news portal. Some participants were motivated by the prosecution under way against Aleksei A. Navalny, an opposition leader on trial on an old and questionable embezzlement accusation that was reinstated when he became a prominent leader of street protests last year.
Tens of thousands of people walking down a broad street, Bolshaya Yakimanka, that day were directed toward riot police officers who formed a funnel that led to the Bolotnaya Square entrance, where there were an inadequate number of metal detectors. Protesters wore buttons that read “The Case Against Navalny is the Case Against Me!”
Fights broke out as the protesters crowded into the space and were pressed against the police. People tore helmets off some of the officers and threw them into a canal. Maria Kedrina, a hotel employee, said she came because “any one of us could be a political prisoner.”
When the police waded into the crowd to make arrests, marchers caught in the crush were pushed back toward a narrow stone bridge, and it seemed that many of them would topple into the water. Igor M. Bunin, the director of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow, said protest leaders were hoping to send a message that would give the Kremlin pause before sentencing Mr. Navalny to prison.
That unruly scene benefited Mr. Putin politically by justifying the subsequent arrests and prosecution of opposition leaders, political analysts say. The Bolotnaya Case was a confusing, galvanizing incident for the Russian opposition. A year ago, police were herding a crowd of tens of thousands of people from a broad street, Bolshaya Yakimanka, into a bottleneck formed by rows of riot policemen in a funnel toward an inadequate number of metal detectors at the entrance to the Bolotnaya square.
The Russian police detained about 400 people, and arrests in the so-called Bolotnaya case are continuing. The authorities have prosecuted 28 people for assaulting police officers and for participating in and organizing a mass disturbance. So far, two of the defendants have been sentenced to prison terms and one has been acquitted, Lenta.ru reported. As the crowd compressed in this space, fights broke out. People tore helmets off the police and threw them into a canal. Several police officers were hospitalized. When the police struck with batons and made arrests, a crush pushed marchers back toward a narrow bridge and for a time it seemed masses of people might be pushed into the water.
It was not long after the May 6 events that the Russian television channel NTV broadcast a documentary asserting that members of the opposition had organized the violence. The scene was politically serendipitous for President Putin by justifying the subsequent arrests and prosecution of opposition leaders, political analysts say.
It said that three protest leaders — Sergei Udaltsov, Konstantin Lebedev and Leonid Razvozzhayev — had taken money from a Georgian politician to provoke a street fight. The trio became the best known of the prisoners in the Bolotnaya case. The police detained about 400 people on that day and arrests followed in three waves over the next year. The Bolotnaya Case continues today. Authorities have prosecuted 28 people for assaulting policemen, taking part in and organizing a mass disturbance.
Mr. Udaltsov has denied the charges and is under house arrest in Moscow. Mr. Razvozhayev, who had fled to Ukraine, said he was kidnapped on a street in Kiev and tortured by unknown men into signing a confession, which he recanted. He faces 10 years in prison. Mr. Lebedev confessed and was sentenced to a term of two years and six months. More ominously for the protest movement, soon after the May 6 events, the Russian television channel NTV broadcast a documentary asserting that more than an unruly crowd was to blame. Members of the opposition had organized the violence, the documentary asserted, and the police soon took up this theme.
Igor M. Bunin, the director of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow, said the protest leaders on Monday were hoping to draw a large enough crowd to give the Kremlin pause before arresting or imprisoning other opposition leaders. Authorities say three protest leaders – Sergei Udaltsov, Konstantin Lebedev and Leonid Razvozhayev – took money from a Georgian politician to provoke the street fight. These three became the best known of the Bolotnaya Case prisoners that were the cause of Monday’s rally.
Mr. Udaltsov denied the charges and is under house arrest in Moscow. Mr. Razvozhayev, who had fled to Ukraine, said he was kidnapped on a street in Kiev and then held captive by unknown men in conditions tantamount to torture until he signed a confession, which he later recanted. He faces 10 years in prison. Mr. Lebedev confessed and was sentenced to a term of two years and six months.