Russian police arrested almost 1,400 people as they violently dispersed people rallying in Moscow on Saturday to demand open elections for the city council, a monitor said yesterday, the biggest crackdown on a rally in the city in years.
About 3,500 people took part in the unauthorized protest, which lasted more than seven hours, according to official figures, after authorities blocked prominent opposition candidates from taking part in Sept. 8 elections for the Moscow City Duma.
The meeting came a week after 22,000 took to the streets calling on authorities to reverse their decision ahead of the vote.
Photo: AFP
Police used batons on protesters as they tried to gather outside city hall on Saturday, and reporters at the scene saw demonstrators with injuries.
The protesters shouted slogans including “Russia will be free!” and “Who are you beating?”
The EU in a statement denounced the “disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters,” which it said undermined “the fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly.”
Photo: Reuters
Amnesty International also condemned what it said was the use of excessive force by the police.
After last week’s rally investigators raided the homes and headquarters of a number of disqualified candidates.
Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Wednesday was jailed for 30 days for calling the fresh protest.
Several would-be candidates were detained before or during the meeting on Saturday, including Ilya Yashin, who had called for another protest next weekend, Dmitry Gudkov, Lyubov Sobol and top Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov.
All were released later in the day; Zhdanov and Sobol went to the relocated protest and were detained again.
OVD-Info, an organization that monitors protests, yesterday said that 1,373 people were detained.
It said this was the highest number since mass demonstrations in 2012, when tens of thousands protested Russian President Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin after four years as prime minister.
Helmeted police barged into Navalny’s video studio as it was conducting a YouTube broadcast of the protest and arrested program leader Vladimir Milonov.
Police also searched Dozhd, an Internet TV station that was covering the protest, and its editor-in-chief, Alexandra Perepelova, was ordered to undergo questioning at the Investigative Committee.
The new protests come amid wider public anger over declining living standards that has hit Putin’s approval ratings.
Moscow’s 45-seat Duma is currently controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. All of its seats, which have a five-year-term, are up for grabs in the Sept. 8 vote.
While pro-Kremlin candidates enjoy the support of the state, independent candidates say they have been made to jump through countless hoops in order to get on the ballot for the city polls.
Following pickets last week, including outside the local election commission building, investigators said they were launching a criminal probe into obstructing the work of election officials.
If found guilty, organizers risk up to five years in prison.
In other developments, Putin, who spent the weekend away from Moscow, yesterday led Russia’s first major naval parade in years in St Petersburg, on the Gulf of Finland.
The Navy Day parade, the biggest in years, included 43 ships and submarines and 4,000 troops.
Additional reporting by AP
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