Against torture – in the city, country and world

Participants in solidarity actions with Russian anti-fascists demand to stop violence against detainees and fabrication of criminal cases.

Actions in support of Russians who are being persecuted and tortured as part of the “Penza case” are taking place all over the world - Warsaw, Gdansk, Prague, Budapest, Tallinn, Tartu, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, Toronto and in dozens of Russian cities - Chelyabinsk, Kaliningrad, Kursk, Samara, Novosibirsk, Astrakhan, Kemerovo, Volgograd, Izhevsk, Penza, Nakhodka, Rostov-on-Don, Vorkuta, Tomsk, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Kandalaksha, Saratov, Moscow, St. Petersburg.

In St. Petersburg, on February 15, near the building of the regional FSB department, the “Vesna” movement presented a re-enactment of “the beating and strangulation of a person by an intelligence officer.”

A man in a leather jacket and a black balaclava was busily tightening a belt around the neck of a bloody girl, stretched out right on the steps of the Big House. “With this action we wanted to remind people of the recent torture against residents of St. Petersburg and Penza,” the activists explain. “We are not satisfied that in 2018 in our country the inadmissibility of such methods is not yet obvious to intelligence officers.”

The subject of particular surprise was not only the fact that no one was “screwed” during the defiant performance, but also the fact that the department employees did not seem to see anything unusual for them in what was happening.

Busy citizens in civilian clothes, with or without briefcases, calmly entered and exited the building, not in the least embarrassed by what was happening on its steps. “This must be an everyday picture for them - well, someone is being tortured on the porch... a common thing!” – commentators on social networks sneer.

The mood for the next day’s protests was completely different - about a hundred people came out to a mass picket at the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to victims of repression, protesting against today’s repressions, torture, and against the fabrication of cases of anti-fascists and other civil activists.

Former political prisoners Yuli Rybakov, Alexander Skobov, Vyacheslav Dolinin, organizers of the action from the Yabloko party Anatoly Golov, deputy Boris Vishnevsky, member of the board of Memorial Vitold Zalessky and others expressed their words of support and a call not to leave prisoners alone with the punitive system.

Photo: Galina Artemenko

“We need to take to the streets, we need our actions to gather not a hundred, but a hundred thousand people,” Boris Vishnevsky is convinced. – The course taken to rehabilitate Stalin, which we are all now observing, leads to the resumption of such methods when confessions are extorted from people through cruel torture. It’s not 1937 for us to act like this.”

Dinar Idrisov, who himself recently became a victim of a brutal massacre, emphasized that the use of torture is no longer just a suppression of civic activity, we are dealing with a direct danger to life. The situation should not be left out of public attention for a day.

“Today is Forgiveness Sunday,” recalled member of the Human Rights Council Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko. – All social networks are filled with the words “forgive me, and I forgive everyone.” This day turns into a Pharisee action. They just say that, without thinking about what they are to blame for. And our main fault is indifference. This is why we will one day seriously have to ask for forgiveness. And from those who sit in the Big House today, and from those whom we have not been able to reach over the past twenty years - because of which what is happening has now become possible.”

Photo: Galina Artemenko

Historian and publicist Daniil Kotsyubinsky told how the news of the torture of those involved in the “Penza case” found him in the archives of the Big House, where he became acquainted with the case of his grandfather, who was repressed and executed. Today, according to the historian, there is no more pressing and pressing task than to do everything possible to protect those who are now caught in these millstones.

“The picket at the Solovetsky Stone against FSB torture and repression seemed to me to be something more than just a protest, even for such a terrible and urgent matter,” concluded Kotsyubinsky. – There was no special preparation for the event, only a network announcement. But people came. This was not a rally, it was a meeting of St. Petersburg residents, each of whom knew why he came to the Solovetsky Stone and what he had to say. It was a kind of test for life. The city showed that it is alive.”

Let us recall that earlier the Yabloko party announced a series of actions against torture and repression of civil activists, which will continue until this bleeding topic loses its relevance. The first of them, held last Sunday, was joined by representatives of Democratic Petersburg and Solidarity. There were, of course, anarchists and anti-fascists.

Those gathered demanded to stop the fabrication of cases against anti-fascists and to bring to justice those who tortured “confessions” out of them.

Photo: Galina Artemenko