Tag: russia opposition parties

Police in Moscow detained about 200 individuals collaborating in a discussion board of unbiased members of municipal councils on Saturday, an motion that got here amid a multi-pronged crackdown on dissent by Russian authorities.
Police confirmed up on the gathering shortly after it opened at a Moscow lodge, saying all these current can be detained for collaborating in an occasion organized by an “undesirable” group. A police officer main the raid mentioned the detained people can be taken to police precincts and charged with administrative violations.
Moscow police mentioned in an announcement that they moved to cease the assembly as a result of it violated coronavirus restrictions since many members did not put on masks. They mentioned about 200 members had been detained, a few of them allegedly members of an unspecified “undesirable” group.
OVD-Info, an unbiased group monitoring arrests and political repression, posted a listing of greater than 180 individuals who had been detained. They included Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician who leads one among Moscow’s municipal districts; former Yekaterinburg mayor Yevgeny Roizman; and Moscow municipal council member Yulia Galyamina.
Police began releasing the detainees after handing them courtroom summons for collaborating within the actions of an “undesirable” group, which is an offense punishable by a effective. It was unclear what number of remained in police custody on Saturday evening.
“Their goal was to scare people away from engaging in politics,” Andrei Pivovarov, a politician who helped set up the discussion board, mentioned in a video recorded whereas he was in a police van.
Pivovarov has performed a number one function in Open Russia, a gaggle funded by self-exiled Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky moved to London after spending 10 years in jail in Russia on prices broadly seen as political revenge for difficult President Vladimir Putin’s rule.
A 2015 regulation launched legal punishment for membership in “undesirable” organizations. The authorities has used the regulation to ban about 30 teams, together with Open Russia.
An earlier regulation obliged non-governmental organizations that obtain overseas funding and have interaction in actions loosely described as political to register as “foreign agents.”
The legal guidelines have been broadly criticized as a part of the Kremlin’s efforts to stifle dissent, however Russian authorities have described them as a match response to alleged Western efforts to undermine the nation.
The police crackdown on Saturday’s discussion board follows the arrest and imprisonment of Russian opposition chief, Alexei Navalny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most decided political foe was arrested on Jan. 17 upon getting back from Germany, the place he spent 5 months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.
Last month, Navalny was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail for violating the phrases of his probation whereas convalescing in Germany — prices he dismissed as a Kremlin vendetta. His arrest and imprisonment triggered a wave of protests throughout Russia, to which the authorities responded with an enormous crackdown.
The authorities has intensified its crackdown on the opposition forward of parliamentary elections set for September as the recognition of the primary Kremlin-backed occasion, United Russia, has dwindled.