Translated material
Protest performances. May 2006
Svetlana Kovaleva ,
This review is dedicated to various types of protest actions that took place in May. The review was prepared by the Demos Center with the support of the OSI - Assistance Foundation.
Failed gay pride parade
An attempt to organize a gay pride parade in Moscow in May resulted in a series of incidents.
A group of gay movement activists has been seeking to hold a gay pride parade in Moscow since 2005. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov stated that he would not allow this event to be held in the Russian capital, and subsequently repeatedly confirmed his position. In February 2006 Gay activists announced that they intended to hold not a parade in Moscow, but a “human rights march,” but the authorities again made it clear that they would ban the event. At the same time, religious leaders made harsh statements that indirectly called on the public to prevent gays from holding public rallies by force.
The exchange of statements continued for three months. Russian gay activists were supported by politicians and public figures in Western countries. At the end of April 2006, gay activists announced that they would still apply to hold a gay pride parade and would hold it even despite the government ban.
At the same time, the Moscow authorities also banned the holding of a rally “in defense of traditional values” planned by the “Union of Orthodox Citizens” for April 30. The authorities motivated the refusal by saying that the application was submitted too late.
On the night of May 1, skinheads, representatives of other extremist organizations, as well as Orthodox radicals (more than 150 people in total) disrupted a party in the Moscow gay club Renaisance Event Club.
Those gathered blocked the approaches to the club and shouted homophobic slogans and obscene language at the club's visitors for several hours. In addition, eggs, bottles and stones were thrown at the club doors.
Some of the picketers were detained and taken to the local police station to draw up a report on an administrative violation. However, the actions of the police did not prevent the offenders from disrupting the party of sexual minorities. On Monday, law enforcement agencies were criticized for their hesitant actions.
On the afternoon of May 1, about 30 people came to the Three Monkeys club and began to threaten the staff and advise them not to open the establishment that day, and in the late afternoon, dozens of aggressive people gathered for a protest near the club.
Police officers arrived at the scene of the unauthorized rally. The scene of the incident was cordoned off, club visitors were met at the approaches to the establishment and advised to return. Those who had already gotten inside were put on fitted buses and taken to the city center. Law enforcement officers first tried to persuade those gathered to disperse. The fighters later dispersed the unauthorized rally. More than 20 people were detained. It was decided to leave riot police near the clubs until the morning.
On May 15, an application was submitted to the Moscow government to hold a “Procession in defense of the rights of gays and lesbians” on May 27. The organizers noted that this will be a human rights march, during which there will be no attempts to violate moral standards. It was assumed that the parade, in which up to two thousand people would take part, would take place from the Main Post Office to Lubyanka Square.
On May 18, the Moscow Government rejected the application to hold the rally, citing the “impossibility of removing vehicular traffic along the route of the procession.” According to experts , this decision of the Moscow authorities was illegal.
At the same time, comments from government officials in the media about the possibility of holding the action ran counter to this stated motivation.
For example, the mayor of Moscow, Yu. Luzhkov, outlined his position this way: “...I will not allow such parades... I have a negative attitude towards these phenomena, since I consider them unnatural for human nature, although I try to be tolerant of everything that arises in human society." The mayor of the capital also noted that “such events may be acceptable for European countries that are more advanced in this matter than Russia.” “In our country, I believe, such a parade is, first of all, unacceptable for moral and ethical reasons,” he said, emphasizing that “one should not expose one’s deviations in the field of organizing life and sex to the public.”
Earlier, the mayor's press secretary Sergei Tsoi also said that the Moscow authorities will not allow the gay pride parade to take place under any circumstances and in any form.
Deputy head of the information and public relations department of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, Evgeny Gildeev, noted that in the event of an unauthorized rally, the Moscow police will act “in accordance with the order of the capital government, which prohibited representatives of sexual minorities from holding mass protests.”
The organizers of the march filed a complaint with the Tverskoy Court of the capital against the decision of the city authorities, but the court recognized the decision of the Moscow government as legal and refused to satisfy the application of the organizers of this event.
On May 27, the organizers of the banned gay pride parade tried to hold two unauthorized events instead - in the Alexander Garden and at the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky. About 10 protesters, mostly foreigners, tried to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Orthodox radicals and shaven-headed youth - opponents of the parade - attacked them, shouting “Gays will not pass”, “Shame on the sodomites”. Riot police began to push back the radicals. The protest turned into a brawl and mass arrests.
An unauthorized picket at the monument to Yuri Dolgoruky was stopped by riot police.
In total, about 120 people were detained during the protests for violating public order. Among those detained are both participants in the failed rally and their opponents.
According to eyewitnesses , the detained parade participants were placed on the same buses as the detained fascists. At the same time, the police applied sanctions much more harshly to the parade participants than to their opponents, which, most likely, was due to the fact that, from the authorities’ point of view, the main violators were the parade participants, who ignored the city hall’s ban on holding their event and held it." unresolved."
Here, for example, is Mayor Luzhkov’s assessment of what happened: “They broke through there, and, of course, they got hit.”
Commenting on the situation with the parade to the Demos Center, Lev Levinson (Institute of Human Rights, Institute for Public Expertise) noted that “When reporting on public actions, the media usually define them as authorized or unauthorized. The same words “permit” , “we do not allow” are used by Luzhkov and other mayors when speaking about rallies and demonstrations. The law does not require that these events be sanctioned, nor does the law allow for the possibility of “not authorizing” a rally or banning a picket.
The Federal Law “On Meetings, Rallies, Demonstrations, Processions and Pickets,” adopted relatively recently, guarantees a notification (and not a permit) procedure for carrying out such actions.
The only thing that state or municipal authorities have the right to do is to propose to the organizers to change the time or place (or both time and place) of the action. And this is reasonable, since it presupposes the need to separate, for example, gays and homophobes who decided to hold a parade at the same time along the same street."
By the way, it was precisely this function - to respect the interests of all citizens and to foresee, if possible, all the difficulties with holding this or that event - that the authorities of St. Petersburg failed to cope with in May. So, on City Day, with the permission of the authorities, a mobile platform of one of the gay clubs took part in the carnival, and then was installed in front of the Catholic Cathedral, which caused outrage among the parishioners of the temple.
Actions in defense of labor rights
Labor strikes took place in two regions of Russia.
On May 1, in the village of Khingansk, Jewish Autonomous Region, workers of two tin mining enterprises began a hunger strike.
On May 7, one of the hunger strike participants was hospitalized at the Obluchenskaya regional hospital. After doctors began to insist on the hospitalization of two more hunger strike sites, the management of the enterprises invited workers to stop the hunger strike in exchange for issuing them letters of guarantee for payment of wages, but the workers stated that they did not intend to stop the protest until the debts were fully repaid.
On May 3, in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, about 300 shipyard workers went on strike, demanding payment of wage arrears, changes in the wage scale, and improved working conditions.
If the authorities pay attention to rallies of labor collectives and workers have a chance to defend their rights, then in the case of a single protest, it is doomed to failure. The organization does not even confirm the very fact of the protest.
In Yekaterinburg in May, Marina Sysolatina, inspector of the Yekaterinburg correctional colony N10, continued her hunger strike, which began on April 20 in protest against the termination of her employment contract.
The purpose of the hunger strike is to achieve an extension of the contract with the GUFSIN, from where a woman is fired due to frequent illnesses of her children (officially, the refusal to extend the contract is motivated by the fact that since 2006, by law, women cannot work in a maximum security colony, and IK-10 is just such ). Currently, only women who do not have children work in the colony.
The doctors of the colony do not confirm that Sysolyatina is on a hunger strike; she was expelled from the territory of the colony by force (currently, a request has been sent to the regional prosecutor's office regarding the use of physical force against the colony inspector).
The starving woman has three dependent children, and therefore other negative aspects are associated with the dismissal. Now the inspector is in line for official housing in Yekaterinburg; she and her family do not have registration. If the contract is terminated, she will lose her queue for housing.
Another rally participant in Dagestan has died
In Dagestan, repressions continue against the organizers and participants of the rally in the Dokuzparinsky district . Thus, on May 3, the head of the social protection department of the Akhtynsky district administration, Niyaz Primov, was arrested. He was accused of organizing mass riots in the Dokuzparinsky district of the republic, which led to casualties.
Meanwhile, another resident of the republic, wounded as a result of the unrest, died. According to the doctor on duty at the Akhtynsky district hospital, where the wounded were taken, Tagir Tagirov, a 38-year-old resident of the village of Mikrakh, Dokuzparinsky district, Zeynal Gadzhimov, was admitted with a gunshot wound to the lung. He was subsequently transported to one of the Makhachkala hospitals, where he died.
Defrauded investors and riot police
Defrauded shareholders continue their protests in May. After a series of rallies that were dispersed by the authorities, Protestants resorted to a new way to draw the attention of the authorities to their problems. On May 19, about 1.5 thousand people gathered at the Gorbaty Bridge, which had been guarded by police since the morning. They broke through police barriers near the bridge and pitched tents on it. After some time, the police went inside the circle and tried to tear down the tent. The protesters resisted and a fight broke out. In the end, the riot police were forced to turn around and step aside. A large number of police and riot police officers were deployed to the Gorbaty Bridge to prevent the protesters from blocking traffic.
Acting officer who arrived at the scene. Deputy head of the capital's Central Internal Affairs Directorate, head of the public security police, Vyacheslav Kozlov, said: “People don’t like it when they break the law, but they break it themselves,” and, answering the question whether forceful actions are not ruled out, Kozlov replied: “Like in physics, everything is possible. Let’s look at situation."
The tent city of the shareholders was demolished on the night of May 19-20. At the same time, riot police beat up the picket participants. “When the assault began, I was in the center of the tent city. Not only were riot police punching and kicking people, they also kicked women in the face. Some women slept in tents, and they were kicked for this. They broke and twisted the arms of all the men ", said one of the defrauded shareholders, a participant in the tent camp near the Government House, Igor Gulyev.
On the other hand, Mikhail Pashkin, chairman of the coordinating council of trade unions of Moscow police officers, believes that the riot police in this case only carried out the order given to them, and responsibility for the violence during this essentially punitive operation lies entirely with the officials the presidential administration that gave such an order.
Motorist shares
The past month was marked by a new series of actions by motorists. While these events take place freely in the regions, in Moscow the actions met with opposition from the authorities.
The protest action “No flashing lights” took place on May 27 , according to the chairman of the people’s movement of motorists “Freedom of Choice” Vyacheslav Lysakov, in 40 cities of Russia (Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg and other large cities of Russia).
Only the Moscow police tried to stop the action: reinforced traffic patrol units were sent to places where protesters gathered, and they drew up administrative protocols against the participants of the action for violating traffic rules, as well as for administrative violations. On the Volokolamskoye Highway in the area of Tushino Airport alone, more than 100 reports were drawn up against drivers. Thus, the police tried to prevent the protesters from gathering in one place, but motorists constantly moved to other areas of Moscow. In total, over a thousand drivers took part in the event in their cars.