The brilliance of revanchism in its early twenty-first century incarnation is its universal ambition to terrify the populace into self-discipline and compliance. But it does not do so equally or evenly. Some are targets of bombs and bombers, while others use security systems to fortify their houses and airports against them. Some are permanently subject to arrest, torture and rape even while innocent, while others inveigh with ontological spleen against Muslims, Jews, strikers, workers, immigrants, women. Those carrying out the bombings, rapes and torture in the name of anti-terrorism are generally the ones who get to fortify themselves, or at least they fall on the same side of the political equation, while those bombed are the ones most likely to be attacked in their homes. Whether one is revanchist or recipient has everything to do with existing power structures including especially, but by no means exclusively, class. I emphasize class here because although the contours of the revanchist city are fairly well discussed, the class aspects of more global conflicts are not, and need to be revealed. The war on terrorism is, like the revanchist city, a war of the rich against the poor, in which the poor often dies.

— Neil Smith, “Revanchist Planet: Regeneration and the Axis of Co-Evilism”

United Russia promises to hold thousands-strong demonstrations against terror in both capitals

On Wednesday, December 2, United Russia will hold thousands-strong demonstrations in Moscow and Petersburg under the slogan “Russian against terror!” the party’s press service has informed Zaks.Ru.

The events will begin at 3:00 p.m. In Moscow, the United Russians will assemble on Poklonnaya Gora, while in Petersburg they will gather on Sennaya Ploshchad. Participants in both capitals will be connected by a direct video link.

“We are profoundly outraged by the barbarous act of violence whose victims were civilians. Society has been challenged once again. Russian citizens have been victims of terror on more than one occasion. And there is no doubt that such inhuman actions should not go unpunished. Today all of Russian society must unite in the struggle with terrorism,” reads the text on the website of the party’s Moscow branch.

Smolny orders residence checks for children traveling in the metro

The Petersburg administration has amended its decree on “On the Travel Regime of Children and Young People on Municipal Public Transportation.” According to the amendment, ticket inspectors in the metro and ground transport have the right to demand documents from children and accompanying adult verifying the child’s age and place of residence.

Moscow Fans Hit by Mass Arrests on Way to Stadium

Hundreds of football fans were arrested and many reportedly beaten by the OMON special-task police in St. Petersburg on Sunday.

A large group of supporters of Spartak Football Club fans who came to St. Petersburg to see the Moscow football club play against the local team, Zenit Football Club, on the final day of the Russian Premier League season was on its way to Petrovsky stadium on the Petrograd Side when the OMON police started making large-scale arrests. The fans were detained just before the stadium, on the Tuchkov Bridge that connects Vasilyevsky Island to the Petrograd Side.

One Moscow politician protested what he called “illegal mass detentions” in an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev, while the Russian Football Fans Association (VOB) said it would gather evidence and pass it to the Interior Ministry for investigation.

YouTube video footage shows helmet-wearing camouflaged officers dragging young men and women, many of whom appear to be teenagers, out of the crowd. An officer dragging a young man is shown to knee him in the stomach, while another officer passing by hits the same young man with his baton across the chest. A girl who was carrying a drum is shown lying on the ground with policemen dragging and kicking her.

From 400 to 600 people were detained on the spot, according to various estimates. The police said 400 fans were detained and charged with disorderly conduct and the violation of public events regulations, while 24 more, including seven Zenit fans, were detained inside the stadium during and after the game and charged with disorderly conduct. The police said pepper sprays, brass knuckles, sharpened metal bars and flares were confiscated, Interfax reported.

Anton Orekh: “Our Work Is Dangerous and Harmful”

I believe that it will come to war. Until now it was an occupation, but now there will be war. If you had a look only at certain newspapers and websites for just the past week, you would have found out  the details of [lawyer Sergei] Magnitsky’s death; how three drunken cops beat a guy to death in Moscow; how in Petersburg the cops also killed a passerby and beat up a well-known artist. Also, a cop who got tired of waiting in line at a health clinic just took out his pistol and opened fire!

I didn’t read all the papers from cover to cover. I didn’t study the Internet from end to end or sit in front of the TV or radio following all the news bulletins. All these cases are just the ones that surfaced. How many people suffered from police ugliness only over the past week? And how many have suffered during the previous weeks, months, and years? Only an army occupying enemy territory would behave this way.

But now I expect a war. I don’t known whether it will be a civil war or a guerilla war. What else can you expect after the country’s head policeman gave citizens permission to hit the police? Up until now police officers were absolutely untouchable. They could do whatever they liked. Drunk or sober, acting lawfully or abusing their powers, they always turned out right. Even Yevsyukov’s situation is not so hopeless. You just wait and see: he will get out of prison while still a young man. The essentially bandit-like existence of the police is based precisely on this impunity, on the freedom to do what one wants with someone else’s life. It’s like a joke: here is a pistol, sink or swim. It is terrifying to imagine what will happen if citizens are even given the hypothetical right to give as good as they get.

[...] After Andrei Makarov proposed “liquidating” the Interior Ministry, I was on the air the following morning discussing the [State Duma] deputy’s speech with my colleagues. Listeners sent us SMSes. You cannot imagine what they were like! We couldn’t quote 90% of them [on air]: they were a steady stream of foul language and loathing! Makarov proposed reducing police personnel by half, and we asked [listeners] what to do with the other half. The most tempting proposal was to send them to the Far East to work in casinos. In the main, listeners [proposed giving laid-off police officers] the most dirty and humiliating jobs — as janitors, ditch diggers, and male prostitutes.

Fear and loathing: such are the emotions that the police arouses amongst the vast majority of our fellow citizens. I say “vast” because 96% of our listeners voted on air for the liquidation of the Interior Ministry. People believe that it would be better to have no police than to have the police we have now or a reformed police. That is, the police are a public enemy. How has it come to this, that society’s principal defenders have become its principal enemies?

[...]

We live in a country where the authorities formally have the absolute support of the populace. The country is not threatened with territorial collapse. And yet all the preconditions for a war are present: a war of the people against the police.

Alexander Cherkasov, Memorial:

Kidnappings, torture, murders, concealment of the bodies of kidnap victims: this system has been functioning in Chechnya for almost ten years now. At first, federal security forces engaged in such things. Then the authority to commit unlawful violence was transferred to the local security forces.

According to our data, from three to five thousand people fell victim to this system. Practically no one has been punished for this. There was a single, widely publicized case when a person who was guilty of kidnapping and torture (and, most likely, was also involved in the murder and disappearance of Chechens) was judged for his crimes. This was the so-called Cadet Case, in which Sergei Lapin, a police officer from Nizhnevartovsk, was sentenced to eleven years in prison.

The Cadet Case was made possible by three people: Natasha Estemirova, who worked in Grozny; Anna Politkovskaya, who published articles about it; and Stanislav Markelov, the lawyer who managed the trial in such a way that Lapin was unable to appeal the verdict. All three of them are no longer among the living. Think about it! Against thousands of kidnappings and disappearances (which in fact also involved torture and murders) one or, well, a handful of sentenced criminals. This is a system of organized impunity.

Penza civil rights advocates and politicians are disturbed by how an arson at the local office of the United Russia party is being investigated: nearly two hundred members of opposition organizations have been subjected to pressure tactics by the FSB and police.

The building where the United Russian party office is located was torched during the night of November 8. Persons unknown broke a window and tossed in a plastic bottle filled with a flammable liquid and a canister of cooking gas. The windows in several rooms were blown out, and walls and office equipment were damaged. According to Alexei Bulin, secretary of the regional committee of the CPRF, a “witch hunt” has been unleashed in the region. Civil rights advocate Yuri Boblikov told Radio Svoboda how law enforcement officials are searching for the arsonists in Penza.

- After the incident happened, the first person to be detained was the leader of the local Left Front branch, who that day was supposed to be running a previously announced demonstration against worsening social conditions. An hour before the demonstration was to begin, two FSB officers came to his house and led him straight away to the local FSB directorate. Then they detained another colleague of his in the organization, someone that the FSB apparently decided to frighten a bit. [According to this man], one Chekist said to the other, “Well, should we give him an injection?” The other [Chekist] nodded and said, “Let’s do it.” They put on [rubber] gloves, took out a syringe and an ampule, filled the syringe with the liquid in the ampule, and laid it on the desk next to them. Then they said [to the detainee], “Tell us the truth.” Later, I called the FSB and they confirmed that they had talked to Left Front leader Sergei Padalkin, but they denied that there had been anyone else. Moreover, they claimed that their conversation with Padalkin allegedly was about maintaining order at the [planned] demonstration. Everyone knows, however, that such issues are the brief of the police, not the FSB. Padalkin was then released and arrived late for the demonstration. He was again approached by law enforcement officials and hauled away — this time to the Center for Extremism Prevention [Center “E”]. There he was forced to answer questions about what he knew about the arson, whether he knew who did it, where he was during that night. Padalkin was again released, but later that same day he was taken to the criminal investigations department, where he had another conversation about the same topics. This time he was accompanied by one of our lawyers, Dmitry Belyaev.

- Aside from Sergei Padalkin, who else was interrogated?

- When he was at Center “E” he ran into members of the Communist Youth League, the city and regional committee secretaries, who for all practical purposes had been nabbed right at the central office of the Communist Party’s regional organization. The following day their offices [or flats?] were searched; the city committee secretary was searched twice. Members of the Yabloko Party youth organization were searched seven times. [The police] confiscated everything they could get their hands on, but especially hard disks and Yabloko literature. All in all, around two hundred people were brought in for questioning and to make statements or subjected to searches.

- Do you believe the fire was an excuse to clamp down on the opposition of whatever stripe, to shake down everyone involved in politics?

- Yes, a “purge” of all dissenters, opposition activists, and merely active citizens is under way. Events are unfolding according to a scheme reminiscent of the burning of the Reichstag in 1933.

- There had already been an attempt to torch the United Russia office in June.

- Yes, but it was unsuccessful. Then, a mythical organization calling itself New World had allegedly claimed responsibility. We were also asked then what we knew about them. We said we knew absolutely nothing, that we had no information about this organization. It is entirely possible that Penza is just being used as a test site to develop techniques for political purges. Our guess is that [the authorities] want to use our city to try out methods for flushing out and suppressing oppositionists and just-plain socially active citizens and forces. Once they have tried them out here, they can then be applied throughout Russia.

- You’re not sure that opponents of the United Russia party are behind the arson?

- In our opinion, these incidents are beneficial to the ruling party itself: it enables them to extinguish the activities of all other organizations and movements. Opposition forces have nothing to gain from such excesses. We believe that this is all a provocation.

- But Viktor Dolotov, the secretary of the political council of United Russia’s Penza branch, said that this was a carefully planned political crime against the party of power.

- If that is what he claims, does that mean he knows who organized all this? Then he should be the first one they interrogate!

Beria’s Heirs Have Become Active

This morning (November 12) Alexander Lashmankin, founder and correspondent of the Samara Civil Rights Information Agency Svoboda, was stopped by FSB (Federal Security Service) officers near the entrance to his building. They presented him with a summons to report to Investigator A.N. Vospinnikov at the Samara Region FSB Directorate at 3:00 p.m. on November 12.

The same thing happened to Liudmila Kuzmina, a well-known civil rights activist and chair of Golos, a public organization for the defense of voter’s rights. Kuzmina likewise received an invitation to the FSB Directorate. In the invitation she was handed it was stated that she was being asked to give testimony in connection with an investigation into whether Lashmankin’s LiveJournal blog contained calls to commit extremist activity. Kuzmina was invited by Investigator A.S. Polstyanov of the 1st Department of the Samara Region FSB Directorate. Maxim Kalach, a journalist with the newspaper Samarskaya Gazeta, also received a summons. The civil rights activists have decided not to talk to FSB investigators.

The persecution of civil rights advocates and journalists in Samara Region began when two former officials from Rosoboroneksport (the state company for defense exports) came to power — Governor Vladimir Artyakov and I.K. Mironov, head of the Samara Region government’s department of public safety. Mironov had once been in charge of the Party organization in the Fifth Directorate of the Soviet KGB, which engaged in the persecution of dissidents. During the Yeltsin era, he was head of the investigative department of the agency for the defense of the Constitution.

The Samara Civil Rights Information Agency Svoboda has in the past published reports about Governor Artyakov’s misdeeds. For example, the agency published information about an appeal made by Valery Karlov, chair of the Civic Initiative movement, demanding that Governor Artyakov be dismissed and brought up on criminal charges for his misuse of the region’s budget. [Specifically, Karlov accused the governor of using large amounts of money from the budget to pay for weekly charter flights to Moscow, where he resides.]

And so now Svodoba editor Lashmankin has been summoned to the FSB.

Contacts:  alex.lashman@gmail.com, +7 9198075417

http://izhevsk.avtonom.org/2009/11/09/stop-repression-against-izhevsk-avtonomists/

No to police persecution of activists from the Autonomous Action movement in Izhevsk!

In Izhevsk, law enforcement officials – specifically, officers from the Republic of Udmurtia Interior Ministry’s Center for Extremism Prevention (formerly, the Organized Crime Prevention Squad) [or Center “E”] – have fabricated a case against members of the Autonomous Action movement. According to Galina Shutova, who for the time being has been identified as a witness in the case, the authorities want to turn her into a terrorist: “Center ‘E’ officer Artem Akhmetzyanov told me outright that he would do everything in his power to put me away.”

A criminal investigation has been opened into whether Article 207 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code (“Providing knowingly false information about an act of terrorism”) was violated. At present, three people have been implicated as witnesses in the case: Galina Shutova, Anton Sobolev, and Kirill Shumikhin. The police believe that on November 4, 2009, at approximately 12:20 p.m. these three young people called the Republic of Udmurtia Interior Ministry and informed them that a bomb had been planted at the Medical College by participants of the Russian March, and that Galina was the person who “organized” the telephone call. All three witnesses have alibis for the time when the alleged crime was committed. According to investigators, the call was made from a public phone located near the Turist Café (Communards Street, 291). At the moment the call was made, however, the three young people were more than two kilometers away from the Turist Café. According to the activists, at approximately the same time that the alleged call about the bomb threat was made, all three of them were detained by a group of policemen in the center of Izhevsk, who subjected them to an illegal search and videotaping. Among the detaining officers they recognized Artem Akhmetzyanov, an  investigator with Center “E.”

On November 6 at approximately 8 a.m., Center “E” operatives Artem Akhmetzyanov and Konstantin Polcherednikov illegally arrested Kirill Shumikhin in his apartment in front of his confused mother; the officers presented neither their own documents nor an arrest warrant. (NB. Illegal arrest is a violation of Article 301 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code and carries a maximum punishment of two years in prison.) The young man was taken to Izhevsk Police Precinct No. 2, where he was interrogated, verbally abused, and intimidated over the course of nine hours. The arrest warrant for Kirill was drawn up after the fact – that is, during the interrogation. That same morning Galina Shutova’s parents were awoken by the sound of people kicking the door to their apartment: in an attempt to ascertain Galina’s location, police officers were trying to bust into the apartment by kicking the door. Galina was not home at the time: she and Anton were visiting acquaintances. According to Galina, a bit later she got a phone call from a police officer who refused to identify himself; he said only that he was a “police detective.” The anonymous caller demanded that Galina report for questioning, although he did not specify what the case was and in what capacity Galina would be interrogated. When Galina informed him that she would not go anywhere without a summons, the anonymous caller replied that he would immediately send her a summons. Since Galina and Anton were at the house of friends, she agreed to meet the anonymous caller on the street. Literally ten minutes later, Akhmetzyanov arrived at the meeting place. In the police car, Galina was handed a summons that did not contain the case file number or indicate in what capacity she would be interrogated. The summons contained only the carelessly scribbled surname of a certain Lieutenant Khuzyakhmetov, who would be conducting the interrogation.

At around 9 a.m. Galina and Anton were delivered to Izhevsk Police Precinct No. 2. There they learned that they had been summoned for interrogation as witnesses in the case of the telephone call made to the Udmurtia Interior Ministry about the bomb allegedly planted in the Medical College on November 4. They were both asked to take a lie detector test. Galina refused and told police that she wanted to call civil rights defenders she knew and to find herself a lawyer. For about half an hour the police officers did not allow her to call: they had already confiscated her mobile phone during the drive to the precinct. According to Galina, the police officers subjected her to crude “psychological coercion.” Center “E” officers, including Artem Akhmetzyanov, swore at her and shouted, “What do you have to be afraid if it wasn’t you who made the call?” and “Prove to us that you’re not afraid.” They accused the young woman of “interfering” with their work. These unscrupulous Center “E” officers attempted to force Galina to write a statement that she was “delaying” their investigation, while at the same they photographed and fingerprinted her without properly documenting these procedures. They also attempted to coerce Galina into giving up her request to have lawyers present. In the end, Galina agreed to take a lie detector test. The questions, which had been prepared by Center “E” officers in advance, were vague, inappropriate, and had no direct bearing on the case.

After Galina was given back her mobile phone, she called civil rights defenders from the Prikamsk Civil Rights Center. Within approximately half an hour, three civil rights advocates arrived at Precinct No. 2. Over the course of several hours, however, police officers refused to admit them into the building where the interrogation was taking place. It was only after lawyer Rustem Valliulin arrived that the situation changed somewhat: police officers became more restrained in their treatment of Galina. In all, Galina was interrogated for over eight hours.

The other “witness” detained that same morning, Anton Sobelev, was brought to the precinct along with Galina, but was immediately taken to a different office. In violation of the law, he was placed in a cell that already held several tattooed common criminals. According to Anton, “The arrestees began accusing me of having a nontraditional sexual orientation and threatening me with physical violence. Then one of them gave me some ‘friendly’ advice. I should ‘come clean, repent, and sign a confession’ – otherwise, I would have a very rough time in prison camp.” Emotional coercion involving other prisoners is a provocation to which police authorities traditionally resort in order to frighten witnesses and obtain from them the necessary testimony. Anton then underwent a lie detector test and was interrogated by Center “E” officers, who made him offers of “friendship and cooperation.” Although these same officers had put him a cell with ordinary criminals, they suddenly showed a touching concern for Anton’s personal life. They suggested that he “get a new girlfriend” insofar as it was precisely Galina who was “getting [him] mixed up” in the wrong kind of business.

Anton was shown a video recording made near the payphone from which the alleged call about the bomb planted in the Medical College had been made. According to Anton, “In the recording you could see a tall young man and young woman. The young man was much taller than I am, and the woman was wearing a jacket. But Galina had been wearing a long coat that day.” Anton believes that this video recording is direct evidence that he and his friends had nothing to do with the “mythical” phone call. In all, Anton spent around nine hours at the precinct.

On November 7, Galina was interrogated at Precinct No. 2 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the presence of her lawyer Rustem Valliulin, a representative of the Prikamsk Civil Rights Center. During the interrogation Galina was given the results of the lie detector test, which allegedly proved that she had “organized” the phone call. According to Valliulin, this was a crude provocation on the part of the police. “This lie detector test is not admissible evidence against my client because the questions were formulated on purpose so as to confuse Galina. They had nothing to do with the essence of the case, and I’m certain that evidence like this will be thrown out [in court.]”

Galina has been shocked by these events. “You never expect that it will happen to you, that the police will pick you to cook up a criminal case against. I am simply shocked by what is going on. I am shocked by the impudence and crudeness of the Center “E” officers – Artem Akhmetzyanov, Konstantin Polcherednikov, and others.”

According to antifascists and members of the Autonomous Action movement, this criminal investigation is the latest stage in a campaign of repression against antifascist and anarchist activists in Izhevsk. This wave of repression began in early 2008: since that time, approximately one hundred people have been illegally detained for various reasons, and six fabricated criminal cases have been initiated. Four of these cases have been subsequently closed after it was found that there was no evidence that crimes had been committed.

During their investigation of these cases, Center “E” officers have engaged in illegal behavior. They have subjected witnesses and suspects to physical and mental coercion, including the torture and threatening of activists. In the vast majority of these cases, the complaints were filed by neo-Nazis who have problems with the law. Nearly all of them have been convicted of serious crimes, including attempted murder, hooliganism, grievous bodily harm, and vandalism.

We, antifascists and members of Autonomous Action, demand the closure of the Udmurtia Interior Ministry’s Center for Extremism Prevention, whose officers are engaged in the fabrication of criminal cases. We demand the dismissal of those Udmurtia law enforcement officials who have been involved in the torture and beating of antifascists and Autonomous Action members: Artem Akhmetzyanov, Konstantin Polcherednikov, and others. (http://ru.indymedia.org/newswire/display/22972/index.php)

We ask everyone to show their solidarity with us and prevent the punitive organs from continuing their campaign of intimidation, fabrication of criminal cases, and the torture and beating of our comrades. Publish information about the situation in Izhevsk. Telephone, write, and fax your appeals to the Administration of the President and Government of Udmurtia and the Udmurtia Interior Ministry (see the contact information below). Demand an end to the criminal prosecution of innocent people! Down with police oppression! We demand that the Udmurtia Interior Ministry’s Center for Extremism Prevention be closed and that all of its officers who are guilty of beatings, torture, and the fabrication of criminal cases be brought to justice!

Omsk Students Face Expulsion for Activism

November 10th, 2009

A campaign has been launched to expel students participating in political activism from Omsk State University, according to a report by Newsru.com. Administrators at the university have drawn up a list of twelve “extremists” and have designated class time to discuss counter measures against them. The report further alleges that the administration is acting under clandestine orders from police.

Included on the list are three students who are members of the youth division of the Yabloko opposition party. Other students listed had been actively complaining about the quality of food in the university cafeteria.

One of the enumerated students is Aleksandr Shurshev, leader of the Omsk regional youth division of Yabloko. Shurshev wrote on his blog that on November 3, an urgent session was called that included the Omsk State University (OmGU) teachers union, the university rector, and two law enforcement officials. At the meeting, Shurshev asserted, the list of “extremist” students was read aloud, and those present were told that association with these students was “undesirable: they are dangerous, connected with extremism” and “need to be expelled.”

Irina Belokon, head of the OmGU teachers union, claimed in a comment to Kasparov.ru that there were no law enforcement representatives at the meeting. She explained pressure on students in the following statement: “They came to the university to study and shouldn’t forget that that’s their basic responsibility.” However, Sergei Kostarev, head of the Omsk regional division of Yabloko and a political science teacher at OmGU, noted that students on the list “do not have problems with studies and none of their teachers expressed complaints about the quality of their knowledge.”

Close relatives and friends of the twelve students say that they periodically receive phone calls from people claiming to be from the police, saying that serious hardships await the students if they don’t stop their political activities.

The campaign in Omsk is not the first time Russian police have pressured universities to expel student protesters. In January, the Moscow Department of Internal Affairs sent a letter to the provost of the Higher School of Economics encouraging him to expel students arrested in the opposition March of Dissent.

We are publishing the following translation of an article that recently appeared on the website of the Institute for Collection Action and was distributed to various activist listservs. We are doing so only out of solidarity with our comrades in Omsk. Although we believe what they tell us, we are aware that the lack of details in this article might leave a reader in the outside world somewhat befuddled. We apologize for the vagueness of the article and promise that we will update this posting as soon as more details become available. Unfortunately, in recent days and weeks, another wave of harassment of Russian leftists, oppositionists, and human rights activists  seems to have begun. With the blows coming fast and furious, not all activists have the means or the time to prepare detailed accounts of the state’s actions against them.

www.ikd.ru/node/11558

Authorities in Omsk have begun a campaign of persecution and coercion directed against members of the Siberian Confederation of Labor (SKT). The SKT, an interregional trade union organization, was founded in 1995 by the Confederation of Anarch0-Syndicalists.  The SKT has a large number of supporters and is involved in defending their labor and social rights. The SKT also has a youth organization, the Union of Autonomous Youth (SAM), and supports a committee for the defense of former orphanage students. The SKT’s active political stance has attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies, who have begun persecuting SKT activists. In this sense, they now practically function as a political police.

The trouble began on August 31, when SKT activists organized a demonstration against the violation of civil rights and liberties on the part of law enforcement officers. The immediate cause for the demonstration was the recent murder of a man by two police officers. A large number of young people gathered for the event and the actions of the activists were widely publicized in the mass media. The authorities tested methods for disrupting the demonstration by using plainclothes provocateurs (who were, naturally, police officers) and the Young Guard of United Russia, who tried to interfere with the demonstration. After this episode, the authorities began in earnest to persecute SKT activists for their convictions.

Subseqently [in October] another policeman committed a double homicide [and then killed himself]. A demonstration was organized by the Yabloko Party youth organization in which SKT activists took part. Despite the fact that the demonstration had official permission, it was attacked by approximately one hundred plainclothes police officers, who used Russian flags as weapons. The site of the demonstration was entirely cordoned off with buses [parked there by police]. Journalists were on hand, however, and Novaya Gazeta published an article about the demonstration. This greatly angered the police and local authorities.

In order to have an official excuse to summon SKT members and demonstration participants for questioning, the police have begun fabricating a case against an activist from another organization, the Left Front, which, in the opinion of law enforcement officials, is influenced by the SKT. The reason a criminal case has been opened against him is that the police allegedly found Nazi leaflets in his possession. In reality, SKT members themselves have always publicly taken a consistently internationalist and antifascist stance.

Nevertheless, at a subsequent demonstration police provocateurs handed out a leaflet in which Elena and Vasily Starostin, two founders of the SKT, were accused of ties with the Nazi movement. In addition, the authors of the text alleged that the SKT manipulates former orphanage students by promising to solve their problems. In reality, the SKT has initiated more than 120 successful lawsuits and approximately fifty young people have been granted housing as a result of these court rulings.

After this incident, the police began interrogating activists whom they had been able to identify during demonstrations. The Starostins were among those summoned. They were told by their interrogators that they were a bad influence on young people and they should cease their activities. The authorities have begun to pressure Elena Starostin’s employer by conducting various inspections: the goal is to coerce him to fire her.

The authorities have also begun to pressure young people who participate in SKT actions through the university. They are summoned to the rector’s office for discussions of their “extremist” activity and they are threatened with expulsion. As if that were not enough, the police have begun summoning their parents in order to pressure them to stop the activities of their children. In one case, an activist’s mother has been threatened with being fired from her job, and other parents can expect the same fate.

During their interrogation, police announced outright to the Starostins that the young people who go to protests and participate in the SKT will be unable to find employment in the city. In addition, police have begun to hint that they are physically threatened, saying things like “Aren’t you afraid that skinheads will break your arms and legs?” 

It is clear that the primary purpose of the actions of the police is to intimidate activists and make it impossible for them to organize new protests. Police officials do not want this story to go public beyond Omsk, and so SKT activists request that this information be distributed as widely as possible.

2+2/Practicing Godard (Part I)

I was inspired to make this film after the police forced me to delete video footage of the OMON raid on our seminar in Nizhny Novgorod. I was struck by their brazen confidence that they could erase things from people’s memory as easily as you can delete a video image.

This film is meant as a response to their challenge. It shows that we can not only document the crimes of the authorities for posterity, but also shape our own space of interpretation. We can recreate our own histories, in which the deeds of the police will be remembered as shameful acts against society.
—Dmitry Vilensky

You can read the working version of the screenplay here.

Journalists Protest Following Arrests on Nevsky for Use of Foul Language
By Sergey Chernov
St. Petersburg Times
June 23, 2009

On Thursday, two journalists who were detained by the police in the city center last week and charged with using obscene language in public wrote to the City Prosecutor asking for action to be taken against both arresting officers and their colleagues who wrote up the reports at the police station. They suspect the arrests were made to obstruct their professional activities.

Dmitry Zhvaniya, a journalist and the director at the Media SPb news agency, responsible for web sites including Zaks.ru and Lenizdat.ru, and the agency’s reporter Alisa Kustikova were on their way to a coffee house near Kazan Cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street. They were due to have coffee with a colleague and two other men including architecture preservation activist Alexei Yarema when they were stopped by plainclothes policemen at 9.15 a.m. on Wednesday.

According to the journalists, all six present — two reporters, a photographer, two architectural preservationists and a woman who happened to be passing the scene on her bicycle — were bundled into a police van without any explanation and taken to the Precinct 27 police station, where the reports were written.

According to the police report, Zhvaniya and the other detainees were using “obscene language in public,” thus “expressing sheer disrespect for society.” Copies of the Zhvaniya report and the journalists’ letters to the Prosecutor’s Office are available on Lenizdat.ru, a web site specializing in local media issues.

Two hours later, the detainees were taken to a court, but were released when the judge ordered the cases to be sent to their respective local courts for a later hearing.

Speaking on Monday, Zhvaniya claimed that the detentions were related to his and Kustikova’s professional activities, as they were meeting Yarema, an activist with the architectural preservation group ERA, to photograph materials set to be used for a campaign to protect historic St. Petersburg at Media SPb’s nearby offices at 11 Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa.

In their letters to the prosecutor, Zhvaniya and Kustikova wrote that the policemen who made the detentions violated their freedom of movement and the Law on the Police, and that the officers at the Precinct 27 station had written reports containing “deliberately false accusations.” They described the charges as “outrageous and cynical lies,” “libel” and “criminal insult.”

“First of all, if we were detained because they knew Yarema was going to be there, that means there is a political surveillance problem, and secondly, we were detained for no reason, as if we were wanted criminals. Third, we were slandered; these are the three things that I am not happy about,” Zhvaniya said by phone on Monday.

Anti-Extremist Police Raid Activist’s Apartment

By Sergey Chernov
St. Petersburg Times
June 16, 2009

The apartment of a political and human rights activist was searched by the police on farfetched grounds last week, the activist said at a press conference held on Thursday at the office of Soldiers’ Mothers, a group that defends the rights of Russian soldiers and their families.

Ivantsov, an activist with the Oborona Youth Democratic Movement and the Youth Human Rights Group, said that on June 8 he was visited by three police officers, two of whom were from the “E” (anti-extremism) Center, who searched his apartment and confiscated his computer, a large number of discs and several old notebooks.

“They even took blank discs — everything en masse,” Ivantsov said by phone on Monday.

“They found a disc of Pavel Bardin’s ‘Russia 88’ [a feature film about a Nazi skinhead group] and said it should be examined to determine whether it is extremist.

“They were happy when they found an unlicensed copy of Windows on a CDR, and told me I would be persecuted for having this, even though only the distribution of unlicensed products is punishable under the law they referred to; there is no responsibility involved in the possession of such products. None of the discs had anything to do with the grounds on which the search was made.”

According to the search warrant, Ivantsov was suspected of “keeping objects prohibited for civil circulation” (a term usually referring to weapons or drugs), he said. The warrant also alleged there were grounds to believe that he knew the “whereabouts of a person wanted for an insult to the state flag.”

Ivantsov, who has taken part in many events protesting against police lawlessness and authored multiple complaints about rights violated by the police, said the police had used the cases as a pretext to harass an opposition activist and search his home.

As the Institute for Collective Action reports, yesterday, June 10, the Novosibirsk Regional Court ordered Novosibirsk artist Artem Loskutov released on his own recognizance. A panel of judges ruled that there was no basis for the Dzerzhinsky District Court’s conclusion that Loskutov would continue to engage in criminal activity were he released pending trial. The lower court had also failed to take into account other mitigating circumstances—Loskutov’s lack of a criminal record, his student status, and the fact that his thesis defense had been scheduled for June.

Upon his release from a temporary detention facility, Artem headed straight to the Novosibirsk State Technical University for his thesis defense, where he was awarded a “B.” He talked about this, his time in custody, and his plans for the near future in an interview with Radio Svoboda:

—My major is cinematography, and my area of concentration is TV camera work. My diploma defense went off without a hitch. When I was released from the detention facility, I managed only to say hello to everyone before getting into a car and heading to my defense. My teachers were aware of my situation. They had already seen my work—that is, my thesis film. I submitted the documentation and got a “B.”

—What were conditions like in the detention facility?

—They were fine: I got fed three times a day and they didn’t beat me once. I was constantly getting news from the outside. It really cheered me up.

—How do you respond to the drugs possession charges?

—The charges are fabricated. The drugs were planted. The inquest showed that I’m not an addict and that my fingerprints weren’t on the drugs. A swab of my hands showed no traces of drugs. Aside from the testimony of the arresting officers, there is no evidence.

—What are your plans for the immediate future? Will you be organizing actions on the order of the Monstrations?

—My problems with school were unexpectedly solved today: they passed my thesis. I have to find out what’s going on at work, whether they still want me there. As for public activism, it’s clear that this is dangerous for me while the investigation is ongoing. On the other hand, all my recent art actions were totally legal. All the actions were legal in fact! At the max, they violated the administrative code, but not the criminal code. I’m prepared to take responsibility for my art actions, but I’m not prepared to take responsibility for the drugs they planted on me.

I don’t know what my plans are. I want to see how this case ends. If it ends with my acquittal, that means these actions, civil society, still function in some form. If the case ends with my return to jail, then it will be obvious that these methods don’t work in our country. And that will mean that either that it’s time to move or that we have to change the law enforcement authorities.