Voice under the sight

From 6 am to Moscow time, December 4, the Voice sites and its chief project “Maps of Violations” have ceased to open at the requests of users. The media were also subjected to the most powerful DDOS attacks, which placed on their resources the banner of the “maps” (The New Times, “Echo of Moscow”, Slon.ru). The leaders of the Association Lidia Shibanova and Grigory Melkonets were subjected to telephone attacks: unknown people called them, carried the “purge” and thereby did not allow observers to get through. “All mobile communications are blocked in our office, the Internet is periodically disconnected,” the Voice Coordinator in Barnaul Sergey Andreev told The New Times. Exactly the same was done with the branches of the Association in Stavropol and Kaliningrad, where the observers also turned off the light. In Tomsk, as Elena Sidorenko, the coordinator of the Voice in the region, said, almost all observers-there were 40 of them-either they did not allow polling stations at all, or (five that they managed to pass) “asked” from there an hour and a half after the start of the vote. “We did not have such lawlessness as in Tomsk or Novosibirsk,” says Vasily Strekalov, a representative of the Voice in Novokuznetsk, “but several incidents with the prevention of our observers were recorded. Many observers from the "fair Russia" and the LDPR were removed from the sites. Each time, members of the commission found fault with some shortcomings in the documents. ” In Samara, the observers of the Voice were removed from sites with the wording "you work for the money of the West." “81% of Voice observers were not allowed to vote at home,” the New Times said in the Moscow office of the association.

If the enemy does not give up the main resource of the Association “Voice Voter Rights” (it was created in 2000)-this is its 3 thousand more corresponding observers who work in 40 regions of the country as volunteers. These are mainly young guys who went through special seminars and trainings: here they were taught how to track violations of the electoral legislation and catch falsifiers by the hand. In early September 2011, the Voice, along with the online publication of Gazeta.ru, created a “map of violations”. According to Roman Badanin, former project manager and former deputy chief editor of the Internet resource

* * Roman Badanin resigned from the post of deputy head of the newspaper. RU ”12/01/2011, after the“ Map of Violations ”was removed from the site. , she had an inhuman resonance: for the first time, people from all over the country had the opportunity not only to report the lawlessness of the authorities during the election campaign, but also to see that the same thing happens in other regions - from Vladivostok to Moscow. So the “Voice” tied the protest fraught with cities and towns earlier. By the end of the campaign, this also understood the power: on November 27, at the second stage of the Congress of United Russia, Prime Minister - presidential candidate Vladimir Putin transparently hinted: these are enemies (he delicately called them “granted”), acting on the poisoning of “foreign states”. The FAS team was heard by everyone who was supposed to. The NTV channel on December 2 Urgently released the film-disclosure film “Voice from nowhere”, in which he connected the functionaries of “Voices” with foreign intelligence. Those who lived under the Soviet regime immediately remembered: exactly the KGB “exposed” dissidents, civil activists and allowing themselves to be liberty during the years of perestroika of the media. At the same time, the Voices Voice were checked by the Prosecutor General’s Office, according to the letter of three deputies of the State Duma and a fine of 30 thousand rubles for “violation of the rules for the lighting of the campaign”. On the night of December 2 to 3 at Sheremetyevo Airport, the Executive Director of the Voice Association Lidia Shibanova was detained at the border (she returned from Warsaw, where she took part in the Civil Forum “EU - Russia”): customs officers informed her that they had some information about the impending offense, and therefore conducted a complete inspection and inventory of her things, and launched a laptop and a laptop - in it - in it There is a program that threatens the security of the Russian Federation. At the same time, a lawyer to Shibanova, who was explained with customs officers for 12 hours, was never allowed. So the signal: "Enemies!" With the help of television and security forces, he was sent throughout the country.

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The “Voice” attack perfectly illustrates the medieval approach when the messenger, who brought bad news, was killed

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The strip and the signal was heard: the pressure on the observers - the correspondents of the Voice began: the students were called into the dens and threatened the expulsion; The heads of enterprises - employees and reported that they knew what they are doing, and therefore it is better to stop being observers in order to avoid problems in the service; Unknown people called on mobile phones, introducing themselves to the employees of the special services, and urgently advised to stop working with the “vote”. It also reached direct pressure: the correspondents of the Voice, who were traveling to Orenburg from Chelyabinsk, unknown people confiscated certificates, Grigory Melkonets told The New Times. “Over the past month, all regions have reported that law enforcement agencies showed increased attention,” said Alexander Fadeev, coordinator of the regional vote regional network. - So, in Nizhny Novgorod, 9 people called the FSB officers for a conversation, the regional election commander distributed materials defaming materials from the election commissions. Some even demonstrative surveillance was arranged for some. ” The regional commissions of the Tula and Lipetsk regions initiated a verification of documents at the Voice branch. The prosecutor's office of Novosibirsk turned to the Ministry of Justice to conduct an unscheduled audit of the Voice of Siberia. In some places it worked. “In Rostov-on-Don, 23 people left the Association Department per day. I have never seen this during my work. But of course, we managed to replace them at the expense of the reserve, ”said Fadeev.

The goals “Attack on the Voice” are evidence that the authorities are preparing for mass falsifications, ”Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of opposition“ solidarity ”, told The New Times. The correspondents of the magazine testify to: where the “voice” was present at the polling stations, the authorities feels fifty. For example, in the Irkutsk region, observers of the association were present in 42 sites, and United Russia did not win any victory. “The power of the tantrum is the reason for the attack on the“ voice, ”says Dmitry Oreshkin. - This is a really strong structure with a network of observers in more than 40 subjects of the Federation. But if in past years they simply recorded violations, and then wrote a report on them that few people were interested in Russia, then this time began a slightly more complex project: firstly, a “map of violations”, which caused increased interest among users, secondly, their correspondents should collect the final protocols from the areas in which they are present. For obvious reasons, it is more difficult to throw in these areas, which means that, following the results of the voting day, they could have a good sample by the regions and would show how people actually voted. Power, of course, cannot allow this. ” “The attack on the“ Voice ”perfectly illustrates the medieval approach when the messenger, who brought bad news, was killed,” says Alexander Kynev, head of the regional programs of the information policy development fund. - We saw that this campaign is distinguished by a change in public mood - people say, send violations to a “map of violations”, social networks are actively used. The authorities think that if you neutralize the most active talkers, then the reason for conversations will disappear. ” According to Kynev, the authorities are attacked by the “voice” and other independent sites (LJ, Twitter, “Card”, “Echo”, BG, Slon.ru, The New Times) because it fears that these resources could prevent the desired results of “United Russia”. “Their main goal is so that no one would tell, publish, do not talk about violations,” says Kynev. - So that we would not know that, for example, “ours” were hooked at Moscow State University, and non -city students were explained that they could not vote in Moscow. So that no one except the authorities itself controls the campaign, voting day, vote count. ” The first data showed: this time the authorities did not break off.