Omsk Twenty entrepreneurs and sellers of the Panorama-Center shopping center declared an indefinite hunger strike against police raiding

More than 500 people supported the hunger strikers' demands. On April 15, 20 shopkeepers and employees of Panorama-Center went on an indefinite hunger strike. The regional government, the mayor's office, the Department of Internal Affairs of the Omsk region were given their demands: ...

More than 500 people supported the hunger strikers' demands.

On April 15, 20 shopkeepers and employees of Panorama-Center went on an indefinite hunger strike. The regional government, the mayor's office, the Department of Internal Affairs of the Omsk region were given their demands: to immediately stop the persecution of the director and founder of the enterprise Vladimir Shirshov, the pressure of law enforcement agencies on entrepreneurs and sellers, and other employees of the shopping complex, whose number exceeds two thousand.

Novaya Gazeta spoke about how people in uniform attack this institution in the article “Resuscitation of Democratic Forces” (October 20, 2008) and in the article “Nothing Paralytic” (March 4, 2009). The reason for the forceful actions, in which, according to various testimonies, from three hundred to five hundred policemen participated, was the criminal case initiated against the head of "Panorama" in connection with a traffic accident that occurred on February 27 last year. According to investigators, Vladimir Shirshov, who was driving a foreign car, maliciously hit a traffic police officer, damaging his kneecap. Meanwhile, more than forty witnesses claim that at the time of the collision with her, the car appearing in the criminal case, as well as the accused himself, were in another microdistrict of the city, from which the leader of the Omsk right, Vladimir Shirshov, was nominated for by-elections to the city council (they took place five days later - March 2nd).

The testimonies of both Panorama employees and local residents (in particular labor veterans Nadezhda Vasilievna Troyan, Lyubov Mikhailovna Dishankova, Olga Mikhailovna Cherednichenko ...) are not taken into account by the investigators.

Larisa Bondarenko, the head of the Family Club (which has many letters of honor from the mayor, governor, etc.), told the correspondent of Novaya Gazeta about how witnesses of a less respectable age were interrogated. The case was in the SO of the Prosecutor's Office of the Oktyabrsky District. “Investigator Naumov grabbed my hand, dragged me into the office and locked the door with a key. I refused to answer his questions without a lawyer. He told me: “Are you very smart? And if a brick falls on your head, or on your daughter? When I got a call on my cell phone, Naumov called a policeman, and together they began to take away my phone. They twisted their arms, kicked them, hit their heads against the wall…” All this is stated in the complaint filed with the city prosecutor. It is accompanied by the conclusion of the forensic medical examination and the explanations of the citizens who fled to the cry, which confirm this story.

At least 10 similar complaints were filed with the prosecutor's office by persons who were in the field of activity of detectives in the Shirshov case. And in all cases, no corpus delicti were found in the actions of investigators and operatives. It is possible that law enforcement agencies simply did not have the strength to consider these complaints, since too many of them were thrown on the “kneecap” - the search for Shirshov and evidence of his guilt.

Shirshov was put on the federal wanted list in March last year - in connection with "avoiding summons for interrogation." Since then, large-scale search activities have been held in the Panorama-Center shopping center from time to time. After the first, held on March 21, 2008, with the participation of more than a hundred employees of the Internal Affairs Directorate, Shirshov suffered a stroke - he received a second disability group.

In the last, on October 15, as eyewitnesses say, at least five hundred law enforcement officers were involved - riot police, traffic cops, prosecutors. “They cordoned off the building in three rows,” say the starving Tatyana Brylko and Lyudmila Kuzmina, blocked all exits, cut off the electricity. More than a hundred people broke in here - they began to break into offices, knocking everyone in their path. In the course of the “special operation”, not only employees of the Panarama Center were beaten, but also buyers who turned up under the hot hand of law enforcement officers - for 9 hours they, like tenants, sellers, could not leave the shopping complex.

They were all released at about one o'clock in the morning, when, finally, they managed to find the "wanted one" - Vladimir Shirshov. Lying down, handcuffed to two riot policemen, he was taken to the IVS (temporary detention facility), from there - after the third ambulance call - to the hospital, where doctors testified that he was in a coma. However, this did not become an obstacle to the administration of justice: the next morning the patient was taken to the Kuibyshevsky District Court, where, after reviewing the case - within four hours - the judge came to the conclusion that the decision to put him on the wanted list had been adopted illegally: Shirshov could not appear for interrogations because for a serious illness. For the same reason, the investigation of the criminal case on damage to the patella was suspended.

It has recently been relaunched. The decision of the prosecutor's office to continue the investigation was the main reason for the hunger strike. “All the people who work here are well aware that the case brought against Shirshov is not worth a damn,” assistant director Tatiana Aleksashina told Novaya correspondent. It will fall apart in court, no doubt. But if the investigators manage to place Vladimir Ilyich in a pre-trial detention center for at least a month before the start of the trial, his health will not survive there. Then the only obstacle to the seizure of the shopping complex and the territory adjacent to it will disappear from the customers of this case. And the change of ownership will lead to the fact that more than two thousand people will lose their jobs, and their families - a source of livelihood.

The hunger strike in the shopping center is the first protest action against police raiding in the Omsk region. It takes place in one of the Panorama offices, where the Regional Fund for the Development of Democratic Institutions is located. There is also a collection of signatures under the Appeal to the regional authorities. More than five hundred of them have already gathered: not only the employees of the complex and tenants, but also buyers, residents of neighboring houses, as well as representatives of organizations that Panorma Center provides charitable assistance sign. There are many of them: a home for the disabled, a boarding school for hearing-impaired children, two orphanages, a sports club, and the Inspiration social center.

The starving demand that the governor of the region Polezhaev, the mayor of Omsk Schreider, and the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate, General Kamertsel, come to them for negotiations.