How Russian officials justified denying a permit for Boris Nemtsov’s memorial march — again
For the second time, St. Petersburg’s Committee on Public Order and the Rule of Law has denied organizers a permit to hold a memorial march for assassinated opposition politician Boris Nemtsov on February 29. Denis Mikhailov, an organizer for the event, wrote on Twitter that the reasons given for the denial centered on the assertion that officials did not understand the march’s aims: “denouncing political repressions,” “denouncing violations of human rights and liberties,” and “demanding regime change in the RF.” The city’s bureaucrats also noted that the abbreviation RF, whose usage is comparable to that of US in the United States, “does not exist in the current legislation or Constitution of the Russian Federation.”
Cover photo: Andrey Pronin / Sipa / Scanpix / LETA
