Protest performances. July August

Svetlana Kovaleva, Demos Center

In July-August, not only at "political" actions, but also during protests against various forms of injustice, the protesters began to clearly determine who exactly is to blame for all the troubles ... And they point directly to the head of state or "power" as a collective image (that is, not to the regional one, as before, different from the federal one, which does not yet know about the atrocities of the first, and if it finds out, it will certainly intervene). This happened even when the purpose of the action was originally to "draw the president's attention" to a particular problem.

"Our government is very sick, it needs to see a doctor," Hero of the Soviet Union Valery Burkov said at a press conference. This is the summary of the Heroes of Russia and the Soviet Union on the results of the hunger strike in protest against the new law on the status of Heroes and the events surrounding it in the last few weeks.

movement The Freedom of Choice , which grew out of a single branch of an Internet car forum in just a month in a wave of protest against government plans to ban right-hand drive cars, explained its name in this way: "Freedom of choice" because we want to freely choose everything - from the car to the president."

Ella Kesaeva (Beslan Mother Committee) blamed the Russian president for the Beslan tragedy: “The main culprit of what happened is Putin. This is a man who hides behind his presidency. A man who did not want to meet with us and apologize. This is such a tragedy that we live with such a president who is not responsible for anything!"

By the Public Opinion Foundation , the majority of Russians surveyed (56%) are currently confident that with the help of protests it is possible to achieve a solution to a particular problem.

Moreover, almost half of the Russians (42%) polled in early July by sociologists of the Public Opinion Foundation believe that today there is a reason for mass popular demonstrations in the country, similar to those that took place in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan.

No official confirmation

Several hunger strikes took place in July-August. And although the demands and reasons for this were different, the reaction of the authorities to them was unchanged. Let's follow a few stories.

502 prisoners in the Lgovskaya colony refused to take food, demanding the dismissal of the head of the colony, Yuri Bushin, and the head of the regional penitentiary department, Viktor Fedichev. "As the doctors assure, it did not have any serious consequences for health, because ... no one was going to die of hunger." After reports that the hunger strike was ended after the demands of the protesters were satisfied, "the department for the execution of punishments (UIN) claims that there were no concessions and could not be."

After receiving a message about the start of a hunger strike in a correctional colony in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, the department for the execution of punishment denied the fact of a hunger strike by the convicts. According to the head of the operational department of the Main Directorate of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation , representatives of the department, the prosecutor's office went to the correctional colony the day before and, upon the fact of the check, it was concluded that "the situation in the institution is calm"

In response to information about mass self-mutilation in Omsk colony No. 8 (according to the UIN for the Omsk region, the night before, 25 convicts opened their veins , protesting against the harsh conditions of detention. In particular, the protesters said that the cells were not sufficiently ventilated) in the Omsk department of execution punishments stated that the protests of the prisoners were absolutely unfounded. According to Nikolay Papichev, the head of the Penitentiary Service for the Omsk region, the forensic medical examination of the region confirmed that the prisoners were kept in proper conditions. No violence was used against them, their rights were not violated in any way. The issue of initiating a criminal case against the "rebels" is being decided.

According to the press secretary of the GUIN for the Sverdlovsk region, Maria Golenishcheva, on August 1, “seven juvenile prisoners of the Yekaterinburg SIZO No. 1 , protesting against regime requirements, cut their hands with a disposable razor. “They can’t even explain why they did it. They have no particular claims. They say that they did not want to fulfill the security requirements - to leave the cell in the morning so that the guards would conduct a technical inspection and search," Golenishcheva said.

On July 24, the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Kalinin, refuted the information that the ex-head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, began a hunger strike in protest against the imprisonment of Platon Lebedev in a punishment cell. "The prison administration has no information about Khodorkovsky starting a hunger strike. Some of the lawyers are itching," he added. According to Kalinin, Khodorkovsky receives $1,000 worth of food a month. “With such an attitude to his health, will he starve?

And only in one case the fact of the hunger strike was confirmed and even partially the demands of the protesters were recognized as fair.

On July 6, in Rostov-on-Don, citizens of the countries of Central Asia - illegal immigrants awaiting deportation in a special detention center by court order - went on a hunger strike. 15 participants in the hunger strike demanded that they be sent home as soon as possible - to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In protest, illegal immigrants not only refused to eat, but also swallowed foreign objects, in addition, two people tried to open their veins. As a result, several starving people required medical attention. As the representative of the law-enforcement agencies acknowledged, special detention centers are really not suitable for long-term detention of people. The delay in the deportation of illegal immigrants, he said, is due to a lack of funds.

No need to pressure us!

In July-August, the fact that the authorities do not recognize not only the ultimatums of terrorists, but also radical actions of citizens in defense of their rights, was most clearly confirmed, and this is also no reason to reconsider the fairness of the adoption of certain decisions.

A group of Heroes of the Soviet Union and Heroes of Russia began a hunger strike on July 6 . They sought to start a dialogue with the authorities, and also protested against the changes being considered by the State Duma to the law on the status of Heroes of the Soviet Union, Russia and full holders of the Orders of Glory. The heroes decided to starve until a serious dialogue between society and the top of the vertical begins. However, the amendments were adopted by the Duma on July 6, and by the Federation Council on July 13, just in time for the hunger strike.

The starving people did not manage to meet with the authorities. The group of Heroes of the USSR and the Russian Federation, conducting a hunger strike, was visited only by employees of the Golovinsky police department of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Northern District of Moscow. The police arrived to find out the identity of the starving people. At the same time, they behaved correctly and apologized for being sent to the starving Heroes for this purpose. Having written down the data of the hungry, the police officers left.

About ten mothers of children killed in the Beslan hostage-taking refused to leave the building of the Supreme Court of North Ossetia in Vladikavkaz on Tuesday, where Kulaev's trial is taking place, in protest against the course of the trial and the absence of "real culprits".

"From the point of view of criminal law, the protest action" of the mothers who occupied the building of the Supreme Court is "an attempt to put pressure on the court and an attempt to force it to make a decision that is not based on objective evidence," said a representative of the assistant prosecutor of the republic .

The Committee of the Mothers of Beslan managed to get a meeting with the President of Russia. To do this, they needed to formulate a more serious ultimatum . “At the end of May, we sent a letter to Putin, in which we wrote that despite the long distance between us, we are waiting for the meeting and are ready to walk to Moscow for it,” said the head of the committee, Susanna Dudieva. “This action is not directly related to the ongoing trial ( over the terrorist Nurpashi Kulaev captured in Beslan), it is being prepared in the event that Putin does not want to accept us." "Putin said that the authorities should be closer to the people. We have something to talk about with him, and we believe that he simply must meet with us."

Anti-war rallies

On July 21, on Pushkinskaya Square the traditional Thursday picket against the war in Chechnya, organized by the initiative group of the Anti-War Action Committee, took place in Moscow. About 20 people took part in the action. Activists held banners and posters calling for an end to human rights violations and violence in the Chechen Republic.

On August 21, in Grozny , refugees from Ingushetia living in Chechnya held a protest action against kidnapping on July 29. They blocked the Staropromyslovskaya highway after one of their countrymen, 20-year-old Ilyas Azimov, disappeared without a trace. Radio "Echo of Moscow" with reference to the representative of the human rights organization "Justice" Minat Borzayeva claims that the police who arrived at the place of the rally opened fire on them from machine guns. Earlier, referring to eyewitnesses, the radio claimed that the police had beaten some of the participants in the rally - relatives of the kidnapped Ilyas Azimov.

Rallies in the zone of armed conflict

A protest rally against the release from custody of persons suspected of kidnapping took place on August 25 in the Nadterechny district of the Chechen Republic. According to the district administration, about 100 people gathered for the rally in front of the local prosecutor's office - representatives of the clergy, councils of elders, residents of settlements and relatives of the abducted.

They demanded an additional investigation into the abduction on 12 August 2005 of two local residents at the regional market. In addition, relatives and representatives of the district's public demand that the republican prosecutor's office take control of the investigation.

Decline in rally activity

By early August, FOM sociologists noted a decline in protest moods among Russians. Compared with the beginning of July, the proportion of citizens in Russian society who allow themselves the opportunity to take part in any protest actions has decreased. The number of those who believe that actions of this kind are predominantly beneficial has decreased, and the proportion of "skeptics" has increased, from whose point of view the protest does not bring any benefit or harm.