Picket with a secret

The St. Petersburg police came up with a cunning and a relatively legal scheme of struggle with street activity

Since October, news on the detention of activists standing in single pickets has been regularly coming from St. Petersburg. The department is delivered due to an anonymous complaint, record a person’s data, hold there for several hours, and then they simply release without the charge. So with a picketer who opposes pension reform, they can act repeatedly. At the same time, those who stand with posters for preserving the parks do not touch. According to the ATS-Info, for three months more than 30 such detentions were recorded. Activists themselves connect such a suspicious street activity of organs in St. Petersburg with the advent of the temporarily acting governor Alexander Beglov.

“They conducted an experiment-the same people first stand with political posters, and then in defense of parks and squares,” says the deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Boris Vishnevsky, ““ political ”is taken to the department, they conduct a conversation and release. The same people get up for parks - they are not even noticed.

However, on January 4, the city defender Anna Dudnikova was detained when she stood in a picket for preserving green areas in the city. They allegedly did this after the complaints about her (the police assure that all the detentions are taking place precisely on someone’s “requests to detain”). True, Dudnikova held the poster of political content: "Begs, you will also have nothing to breathe!" Ksemir Vranks, a member of the Green Coalition of Petersburg, says that activists plan to go to court, since “legally this is not serious”:

- We have a very strong pressure from civil society in St. Petersburg. In the city, not a day passes without pickets. When there was Poltavchenko ( former governor of St. Petersburg. - Ed. ), There were always protests, rallies that were suppressed, but the pickets passed.

“And now there is a purposefully struggle against politically objectionable activists who need to be removed from the streets.”

-( continues ) now the total background-increasing products for products, gasoline, housing and communal services, retirement age-the authorities are trying to slow down at least in some way, removing people away. We have both against pension reform, and against the war with Ukraine, and against the “network of the network”. Delay everyone.

Beglov became the temporarily acting governor of St. Petersburg in October last year. Prior to that, he was the president’s envoy in the North-Western Federal District. Vishnevsky is sure that mass detentions are the preparation of Beglov for the elections: “To show that under his leadership - in the city is quiet and peaceful, now it is ordered to make no political actions. Rallies do not coordinate, and pickets that do not require approvals are illegally disrupted. ” According to the deputy, these actions of law enforcement officers fall under Article 149 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - "Obviating the meeting, rally, picket." Vishnevsky sent an appeal to the prosecutor of St. Petersburg Sergey Litvinenko with a request to consider cases of detention of activists for the crime from the police.

The Commissioner for Human Rights in St. Petersburg, Alexander Shishlov, told Novye that now in St. Petersburg there are a huge number of obstacles to citizens for the right to freedom of assembly: “This is a disrespectful to residents of the city, a crafty law enforcement practice of public events, obviously not allowing the implementation of the goals of their organizers-far-fetched prepositions for refusals, the organization of fake“ cultural-mass events ”, The proposals of "alternative sites" in a forest belt, behind a gas station near the cemetery, at the garbage dump. "

Grigory Durnovo, head of the monitoring group of OTD-Info, told Novye that at the January holidays, reports on the detentions only from St. Petersburg were received on the hotline of the OWD-Info: “It is not very clear what the leadership of Peter is associated with. In addition, there is some specifics: picketers are taken from someone’s statements. Perhaps they are now collecting information: they tell us that some are scanning phones, asking personal information. Maybe not to steam with administrative cases, they just put it into a base. ”

“The motives of such actions of“ well-wishers ”and“ law enforcement ”require a strict assessment of society and the media,” the Ombudsman of St. Petersburg Shishlov is sure. - It seems that there is no other effective ways to influence the authorities and law enforcement officers today.