OVD-Info: Five years of help and observation

We distribute and analyze information about political persecution. When necessary, we help us to find a lawyer. Over the five years of monitoring, we recorded more than 12 thousand detentions at protests, collected information about 529 defendants in politically motivated criminal cases and recorded 194 stories of persecution.

Today we publish several stories of people on both sides of the telephone tube: those who accepted and accept calls to the hotline of the OWD-Info, and those who talked about their troubles.

Grigory Okhotin, Co-founder of the ATS-Info

We appeared on the night of December 5 to 6, 2011. I went to the first rally as a journalist - it was interesting whether the observers would come, how they would feel. At the end of the rally, it was quite tough - I have not seen this before: astronauts, batons, blood.

They detained a lot of our friends, eight people drove in two cars along the police department to find out what was happening. At the Tagansky police department, in which they kept our common friend , I met with Danya Baylinson, and then we already traveled together. All that was found out, posted on Facebook. And during the night we compiled the first list of the ATS, where, according to our data, 253 people were. It was published on the website of the "Big City", calling the article "Arrests in Moscow." Indeed, these arrests later stretched for two weeks, it was a big topic.

After that, everyone began to call and write to me, on December 6 there were also detentions - on the triumph. 600 people were detained there. And then Dania and I settled for inventing a system. By December 10, they made the first site, installed a hot line. Immediately set the format of express-Novosti and stories of the detainees-what is now called "their experience."

From December 2011 to May 2012 there were many detainees, but not at large rallies, but at different promotions between them. They stiffly screwed, beat and all different things happened there - but this did not cause resonance, everyone was passionate about a white -open protest.

After May 6, on Bolotnaya Square and “occupy Abay” the detention touched everyone, and they began to write about them - this was a topic. OVD-info has become sharply relevant, and many remembered our phone. We wrote about who they are delayed, where we were taken, what they are charged with whether a person needs water/food. When they were issued, released - they monitored each detention in great detail, even then they tried to coordinate legal assistance.

The first year and a half of the ATS-Info, was a purely volunteer project in which 10-15 people participated. Then there was a huge internal motivation, there were protests. Now a little differently and monitoring should be done on a professional basis, because it is necessary to work for about 24 hours 365 days a year. Calls to the hotline, as now, were forwarded to the personal phone of the duty officer. At first, we had three on duty, after May 2012 we gathered a large group of volunteers, and was on duty in turn. They were on duty then by day. Wherever you are - in the country, in the office - you had to be ready to write news. Everyone worked somewhere in parallel.

We did not have a sample. We relied on the need and our journalistic experience. Although it quickly became clear that we had much in common with the “chronicle of current events”, with its approach to submitting dry information, without emotions. Michelle Foucault and an information group in prisons were also influenced.

When will the OVD-info cease to be necessary? I used to think that in order for people to stop detaining, you need to do something like that once. Now I understand that the protection of freedom is not a one -time action, but a constant process. Our project, in one form or another, will be necessary, I am afraid, always.

Maria Bakhareva and Elizaveta Zhukova, volunteers

At the beginning of the 2011 protest movement, we were both deeply pregnant and, of course, there could not be even a question of going to Bolotnaya - especially considering that before a number of our close friends had already managed to visit among the arrested. Therefore, the proposal to become volunteers of the OWD-Info project was a relief-so we, remaining at home, were still part of one common cause and could benefit.

After the detention of previous days, everyone gathered for Bolotnaya (although the rally was permitted) as a war. We had special phones and mailes of a hot line, plus our personal phones, which could also be used to communicate with the ATS-Info. Fortunately, as we all remember, that rally really turned out to be peaceful and all these phones were not useful to anyone.

Olga Nikolaenko, volunteer

I was not so long as a volunteer at the ATS-Info, but just on my night duty fell the first praunis call in the history of the project. It was late at night - two or three hours. Perhaps there was a calculation that it is easier to bring a sleepy and not sleepy person. In this mysterious and insidious plan, one thing was not taken into account - students do not sleep in the session. Therefore, the bell did not wake me up, but only distracted from the cramming of Italian verbs.

This episode occurred almost immediately after the publication of the first report of the OTD-Info and plunged us (at least) into a state of misunderstanding of our own position. On the one hand, we were afraid of surveillance, provocations and pressure (as history shows - not in vain). On the other hand, they experienced some awkwardness for these fears: did we imagine a lot about ourselves?

I, I remember, was some very conspiracy meeting with disassembled and merged phones, a secret meeting place and other spy passions. We then reasoned that in this situation it was better to be paranoid than fools.

Natalia Smirnova, participant in the OTD-Info

For the first time I heard about the ATS-Info in early May 2012. The Moscow air then turned into a concentrated story: something important seemed to happen right here and now. City life was knocked out of the usual track, it was rapidly rushing into the unknown and demanded constant, every minute attention. What is happening at the monument to the heroes of Plevna? Where were the detained friends taken away? Where and for whom riot police are chasing now? And many other questions that the big media did not have time to answer-scattered answers to them had to be removed from Twitter and video broadcasts from the places of events. One of these days, shortly before the round -the -clock camp of Okopayabai appeared on Chistoprudny Boulevard, a friend called me. “Are you with the Internet? Can you go to the ATS-Info, see where the detention is now? " "At the OVD-Info?!"

Then it did not fit in my head that there was an official site where information about the detention is immediately published. Of course, after a minute it turned out that the site was not official at all, but so many are still mistaken. Since the beginning of 2013 (it was then that I unexpectedly turned from readers into one of the project participants) I have repeatedly called me immediately and unconditionally release the detainees. It is not uncommon and such calls: “Hello, Tagansky police department? My dog was lost. " Or even: "Hello, is it a tax?"

Grigory Durnovo, member of the OTD-Info

OVD-info appeared before my eyes, its creators are my friends. Being at that time an employee of the "Daily Journal", I constantly used the data of the ATS-Info. At some point, it became clear to me that the OVD-info is the work that I want to do, because, firstly, it concerns, in my opinion, one of the most important problems today-political persecution, secondly, is addressed directly to people and, thirdly, brings quite tangible and specific benefits. I began my cooperation with the ATS-Info by editing reports, then I began to write texts, and in the end I became a regular participant in the project.

When you work at the ATS-Info, there is a real opportunity to get at least some idea of what is happening in other cities, get acquainted with people, and hear about their pressing problems. You even begin to feel some kind of involvement-you feel especially clearly when in the conversation the interlocutor begins to mention some geographical details: the names of the streets, parks, remote microdistricts. You begin to feel, I apologize for loud words, some small connection with the country.

First -person pursuit

In addition to thousands of small news, we published almost two hundred detailed stories about political persecution. We recall some of them:

2011 : beginning

2012 : May

2013 : walks in support of political prisoners

2014: Best police practices

2015: Murder Boris Nemtsov: Unusual consequences of detentions

2016: pursuing musicians and an attempt to abduct an activist in the European Union