Picket for an hour

Human rights activists were unable to stay in Lubyanka for long

The open confrontation between Russian human rights activists and intelligence services, which began with television accusations that non-governmental organizations received money from the hands of British spies, yesterday almost turned into hand-to-hand combat. Human rights activists, offended by the FSB and television journalists, recently promised through the leader of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alekseeva to go to court to protect their reputation, but for some reason they decided to start the fight with more familiar forms - street protests.

About 50 people came during the day to the Solovetsky Stone in the park next to the Polytechnic Museum. Among the participants in the action were members of the movement “For Human Rights”, the human rights center “Memorial”, the “Yabloko” party, as well as representatives of “Labor Russia” and “Left Turn” who joined them. The organizers of the street action, which they called a picket, stated that the action was aimed at “drawing the attention of the country’s leadership, and in particular the leadership of the FSB, to the inadmissibility of provocations against non-governmental organizations.”

However, human rights activists acted on the principle of “an eye for an eye,” and yesterday’s action can also be considered a successful provocation, which the police officers bought into. Attempts to remove the posters from under the Lubyanka windows through negotiations were unsuccessful - moreover, the picketers even moved closer to the FSB building, to the corner of Myasnitskaya Street. Then the police began to detain the protesters in groups of several people. As a result, according to various sources, from 12 to 20 picketers were escorted onto law enforcement buses, among whom, in particular, were well-known human rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Oleg Orlov. It is noteworthy that some of the detainees happily posed in front of television and photo journalists on their way to the police buses.

No serious clashes were observed during the hour while human rights activists were rallying in the vicinity of Lubyanka. The detainees were taken to the Meshchansky police station, where reports of an administrative offense were to be drawn up against them.

Fedor SEREBRYANSKY