Babi Riot

The history of the Omsk entrepreneur Irina Zaitseva is typical for modern Russia. This is the story of the struggle of a person who has lost fear with a system that has lost his conscience. Having stood up for her younger brother, convicted, as she believes, in the fabricated case, the owner of a network of points in trading pies declared war on the entire system of officials and security forces of the region, organized her own public movement and introduced fashion for pickets and occupation of departmental buildings.

This is an unfinished story, but we know for sure when it began: on the night of November 13, 2009, when the tipsy employees of the State Directorate came to the house of the younger brother of Irina, who lived in the same yard.

Vyacheslav was with them - very drunk and very beaten. Irina and her husband were declared witnesses, although it was forbidden to attract relatives, and they said that they took her brother with drugs. “They were rude, laughed loudly and drank beer right at our house, even left the bottles of empty bottles,” says Irina. Finding nothing, the investigators left and increased Vyacheslav with them - since then his sister has not seen him free. When the gates closed behind uninvited guests, she carefully packed empty beer bottles in cellophane, considering that they could be useful as evidence. It is unlikely that at that moment Irina, her husband, brother and drug control officers could have assumed that this night visit would not only change the fate of all participants in the search, but also significantly revive the landscape of political life in Omsk.

***
35-year-old Vyacheslav Loginov was in every way an ideal candidate for a police provocation: previously convicted, not working anywhere, periodically using drugs. He was 18 years old when his mother died, the older sister then lived with her husband in the village, and there was no one to look after a young man who was left alone in a three -room apartment. Soon he sat for the first time - as his sister says, taking someone else's guilt on himself. The second time was small theft - I wanted to give a gift to the girl. At some point, he began to use heroin, then he seemed to be tied, but sometimes he broke. Shortly before the arrest, he met Alena, a former head teacher at school, now a successful sales manager, and they loved each other, but after another breakdown, Alena moved to live with her mother. The fate of the former prisoner-narcomaniac, in theory, was not supposed to interest anyone, so when in November 2009, drug police, Evgeny Poroshin and Vladislav Mandrygin, delayed the glory of garages near his house, they did not particularly ceremony with him. In the video shot by the operatives themselves, it is clearly visible that the detainee is beaten. And it is well audible that when one of the drug police examines a pack of cigarettes found in his pocket, his colleague tells: “On the other hand,” and it is on the other side of the pack that a bag of powder turns out to be. But the shooters do not pay attention to this, they achieved the main thing - Glory admitted that this is his drugs and money found in his pocket, also for drugs.

The witnesses are obviously drunk and barely keep on their feet, but in the end one of them flatly refuses to sign the search protocol.

Subsequently, this understood will give written testimony that when detaining logins did not give bodily damage, and after an hour and a half he "was strongly beaten and barely kept on his feet." "I began to refuse to participate in unlawful actions in relation to the detainee," writes to the witness.

But neither the testimony of witnesses, nor recognition of the understood, nor obvious evidence of the application of force to the detainee did not help in court. Loginov was found guilty of the storage and distribution of drugs and received 6 years in a maximum security colony. The verdict easily resisted all higher authorities, including the Supreme Court.

But Irina did not calm down. “They made a huge enemy in my face, they don’t even imagine which,” she says with a challenge. “I warned them from the very beginning: you will remember me for a long time.”

Zaitseva began her own investigation: she walked and talked with drug addicts who told her about the dummy witnesses about the “buyers” who worked for the police (then she learned that the person who carried out at the request of the drug Police “control purchase” in the case of her brother recently died from an overdose) and about the side business of some drug control officers. Irina wrote about everything that she found out with a request to figure out and conduct an audit: to the prosecutor’s office, to the Investigative Committee, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB. “She wrote to Putin, Zhirinovsky, even Lysom’s line,” the entrepreneur smiles. “So he ended them in the end.”

A year passed after the detention of fame, and one of the operatives that beat him, Vladislav Mandrygin, was caught with drugs. As the investigation established, he changed heroin to gadgets: a USB modem and a Panasonic camera-and was sentenced to 6 years in a colony. Of course, there is no evidence that this detention is directly related to Loginov’s business and his sister’s activity, but no one can argue that the special operation followed the numerous statements of Irina into the special services. Zaitseva and her daughter -in -law (shortly after the conviction of Vyacheslav Alena returned to him and they got married in the colony) were at the trial of the drug police. Leaving the court building, Irina saw a colleague of Mandrygin - Poroshina. She caught up and shouted into his face: "You, bitch, next!".

Hunger strike

It is difficult to say at what point Zaitseva decided to move from the struggle for her brother to the fight against the system, and from a single protest to a collective protest. The upholstery thresholds of the receptions in power departments, she met different people - deceived equity holders who were on the street by large families and relatives of the convicts, confident that things against their loved ones were fabricated. On January 27, 56 people (such a figure is called the starving themselves, in the Ministry of Internal Affairs they told me that according to their data it was a question of 21 people - so many statements were received in the police) announced an unlimited hunger strike with the request of the majority of Omsk security forces and immediate arrival of the commission from Moscow for a comprehensive verification and review of a number of cases. The starving were located in Zaitseva’s house on North Street, house 18, stocked up with mattresses and sweetened boiling water and began to wait for the reaction.

Olga Lomakova, a young woman sentenced to three years in a colony and waiting for her son to begin to serve his sentence (the court gave her a delay), led the Internet. A year ago, Olga went to the intersection to a blinking green signal of the traffic light and was going to turn left when a car flashed towards her at high speed, her car was slightly touched, flew to the side of the road, knocked down a pillar and three pedestrians, some of which died, and the second remained disabled. As it was then installed with the help of witnesses, the car rode into the red light, and, most likely, with a significant excess of speed. But the court, referring to paragraph 13.4, according to which the driver without a reinforced vehicle is obliged to give way to vehicles moving from the oncoming direction directly and to the right, found Olga guilty. About what to do if the oncoming vehicle has traveled to a prohibiting traffic light signal, the SDA is not said.

Olga met Irina at a rally of human rights activists - it was there that Zaitseva said that she was going to announce a hunger strike, and urged everyone to join. “The fact that we from victims turn into people fighting is already good,” Olga says. “Even if our affairs do not resolve, we have already become different. Instead of tears and snot, we show our position.”

A month later, the starving realized that they would die earlier than some commission arrived. Then they announced that they were transferring their hunger strike to the "cascading regime" - divided into groups and began to starve in turn. This made it possible to feel much better, on the other hand, the word “hunger strike” greatly annoying the local authorities did not disappear from the reports, and local police were still forced to periodically send their employees to the 29th northern complaints and claims, at least for the report.

"Way to freedom"

“So, girls,” Zaitseva commands, opening the trunk of a family machine on which he and her husband usually transport products by points, “we analyze posters and go. You are at the administration, you are at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and I am at your loved ones, at the FSB. We meet here in an hour and a half.” Each woman puts on a green scarf with the inscription "The Path to Freedom": so the starving called their non -registered movement. Irina ordered scarves at her own expense.

The participants in single pickets have bilateral posters: each has its own inscriptions on the chest - depending on the problem. On the back, everyone has the same list of officials and security forces, whose resignation they achieve. Only the head of the Omsk Ministry of Internal Affairs is not on the list - General Yuri Tomchak was appointed a year ago, several times awarded starving audience and promised to figure out every business.

The chief of staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Omsk Region, Andrei Klepikov, at the meeting, first announced that there were nothing against the single pickets permitted by the law in his department. "We do not see anything reprehensible in this. Everyone is free to express their opinion as he wants, without violating the law, and without violating the rights of other citizens."

- Personally, the boss holds the situation under control, at his direction with them (protesters) are constantly found. And maybe that's why people have no complaints about our leadership, ”Klepikov suggests. - All statements were recorded with us. Of all their appeals, comprehensive answers of a preliminary nature were given, work is underway on them (appeals).

“People demand a check from Moscow,” I say to Andrei Viktorovich. - Do they know about this in Moscow?
- Know.
- Why doesn't the commission come?
- It is incorrect to discuss your leadership. Not ready to say why, for what reasons they do not come.

Grind the reception of the president

The 25-year-old Drug Control operative Yevgeny Poroshin-the one who persuaded his witnesses to sign-was detained in August 2011 by the UFSB officers in the Omsk region with 100 grams of amphetamine. Of course, there is no evidence that this is somehow connected with the Loginov case, but Irina Zaitseva is still periodically called up with the FSB operative, who conducted the detention and assures that, taking Poroshin, he informed her about this one of the first. On April 20, 2012, the court sentenced the former drug police to 10 years in prison in a maximum regime colony with deprivation of the right to occupy positions in law enforcement agencies for a period of 10 years.

"I so wanted to visit his trial, look in his eyes and say: Well, I warned you? - Irina sighs dreamily.“ She even asked all my friends: how to plant him, warn me. ” But Irina did not succeed in looking into the eyes of the next defeated enemy: just on those days when the court passed, activists of the “Way to Freedom” movement planned and carried out one of their most high -profile actions - the occupation of the reception of the President of the Russian Federation in Omsk.

By April, the protesters realized that it was time to change the deployment: administrative buildings are much better for protesting, rather than private houses. Inspired by the example of the city of Lermontov , where the starving people occupied the administration building and achieved not only all -Russian attention, but also significant concessions from the authorities.

On the eve of the action, the participants agreed "on the silence on the air" - do not discuss anything on the phone and meet in the morning at the cathedral - it is equally close to many administrative buildings, and if they follow them, then there will be no idea where the starving people are going to go. At the last moment, the choice fell on the representative office of the President of the Russian Federation. “In the end, the president is a guarantor of our rights and freedoms,” Irina then explained to the press. The girl in the reception was indifferently accepted from a group of 11 women's statements. “Girl, you read statements that bring you?” Zaitseva asked her. “Read what is written there.” The girl read: these were notifications about the transfer of a hunger strike to the reception room.

Half a day Irina Zaitseva gave out interviews: journalists from Moscow and other cities called, at the reception room, where after some time they stopped letting go from the street, local television cameras accumulated. Protesters demanded the visit of the representative of the president in the Siberian Federal District of Viktor Tolokonsky and the same commission from Moscow.

Late at night, OMON fighters brought all protesters into the street. One of them, they say, was carried out with the chair. The occupation did not last long, but for unusual for such protests Omsk, it was something completely new.

"We still hope"

The reasons for the resignation of the Omsk Governor Leonid Polezhaev in February 2012 - at the same time expected and unexpected, and in any case early - there are many: and too long the term of his reign (more than 20 years), and an unpleasant (less than 28%) percentage of the State Duma of the United Russia party, the list of which he headed, and numerous conflicts of the regional and city elites. Of course, a group of desperate and angry women gathering on the 29th north has nothing to do with the Kremlin’s decision. But Irina Zaitseva loves to remind that Polezhaev was offered to resign immediately after he was disgraced in Moscow, finding that he knew nothing about the hunger strike of his fellow countrymen. And just a few days after those who were starving on the 29th north celebrated the birthday of the head of the region made of polystyrene cake and buckets with red and black caviar. The table in the courtyard of Zaitseva was covered under the poster "Congratulations to a very expensive governor."

On the eve of the inauguration of the new Governor of the Omsk Region, Viktor Nazarov, Irina Zaitseva and her comrades went into the building of the investigative department, intending to try to gain a foothold there. But after a few hours they changed their minds and darted home. “They decided not to spoil the person’s holiday,” Irina explains. “He was new in this post, he did not prove himself to be bad. Let us give him time to deal with our affairs. How much do you think to give him?”

No one understood how, at the first press conference of Viktor Nazarov, a woman in a green scarf was among the journalists. “We are a young organization that fights law enforcement agencies,” Zaitseva turned to the head of the region. “How can you help us in the fight against drug mafia in uniform?” The governor proposed to meet after some time personally, and discuss everything.

Six months have passed since the announcement of the hunger strike. During this time, none of the affairs of the protest participants have moved off the ground. Olga Lomakova decided to take up the family: "I am tired. No one decided to anyone. In fact, it turns out that I can’t move anything. I have no energy like Irina's." “Well, if you lower your hands ...” Zaitseva does not agree. “When a person is confident in himself, positive energy is attracted to him. I am the pessimists who come to me immediately. If I decided not to fight, sit at home. Do not interfere with those who fight.”

On Sunday, June 17, Omsk chooses the mayor, 6 people from the “Path to Freedom” movement were signed by observers. “Do not say that everything has been decided, nothing has been decided yet,” says Zaitseva. “We still hope.”