*On March 29, 2007, the SOVA Center organized in Vienna, at the OSCE Supplementary Meeting on the Human Dimension on the theme "Freedom of Assembly, Association and Expression: Promoting Full and Equal Participation in Pluralistic Societies", a briefing (side event) on the situation with these main freedoms in Russia. The briefing was also attended by Yuri Dzhibladze, Yevgenia Zusman ( Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights ) and Anita Soboleva ( Yuriks ).

On March 23, the prosecutor's office of the Novousmansky district of the Voronezh region sent a lawsuit to the court for the demolition of an illegally erected temple. The prosecutor's check established that in February 2005 the administration of the Novousmansky district leased a land plot near the Medicinal settlement for a period of 49 years for agricultural production.

On March 25, 2007, an ethnic Armenian resident of the Sverdlovsk region, Hovhannes Karapetyan, who worked as a builder in the city, was murdered in Samara. On the TV screen in the apartment where the crime took place, the murderers left an inscription in blood "Death to the chock." A corpse with a broken head, numerous stab wounds and a cord around the neck was found by the owners of the apartment. No signs of a robbery were found (only Karapetyan's mobile phone was missing).

On March 29, 2007 in Vienna, at the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Freedom of Assembly, Association and Expression , the SOVA Center organized a briefing dedicated to the situation with these basic freedoms in Russia. Alexander Verkhovsky, the director of SOVA Center, presented his report at the briefing. We are publishing the report. At the beginning of this decade, the Russian society associated extremism primarily with the ultra-nationalists and their illegal activities.

On December 15, 2006, the representative of the Novosibirsk center for sectarianism at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Oleg Zaev, sent an appeal to the head of the Kolyvansky district, Alexander Panin, that the church of Christians of the Evangelical faith "Resurrection" "belongs to the totalitarian neo-Pentecostal "Faith Movement" and is a dangerous destructive cult that has strong influence on the psyche of adepts.

On March 30, the Pyatigorsk Regional Court announced the verdict in the case of the imam of the Pyatigorsk mosque, Anton Stepanenko. He was sentenced to one and a half years of probation with a probationary period of one year. A.

On March 29-30, 2007 in Vienna, the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Freedom of Assembly, Association and Expression took place. Russian NGOs the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, and Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (JURIX) came out with recommendations to the OSCE participating states. We are publishing these recommendations.

On March 29, 2007, fascist symbols and inscriptions were found on seven graves at the cemetery "In Memory of the Victims of January 9" in St. Petersburg, which can be regarded as extremist. In addition, in one of the cemeteries in the Gatchina region, traces of damage were found on 52 tombstones. Both facts are being checked, the issue of initiating a criminal case is being decided. Sources Vandals damaged tombstones in two cemeteries // Fontanka.Ru. 2007. March 30.

Representatives of the Orthodox youth movement "Georgiyevtsy" perceived as an insult the use of imperial symbols by the participants of the "March of Dissent" held on March 3 in St. Petersburg.

On March 29, in Moscow, at the Independent Press Center, within the framework of the Discussion Club of the All-Russian Civil Congress (VGK), a public discussion "Freedom of conscience, human rights movement and political parties" and a presentation of the book "Freedom of belief, conscience and religion in modern Russia. Specialized information and analytical report". published by the Moscow Helsinki Group The book (authors - A. Babushkin, S. Buryanov, V. Lukhovitsky, S. Mozgovoy, M.

On March 29, 2007, a plaque in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, installed in the territory of an old Jewish cemetery, was desecrated in Kaliningrad. Unknown vandals painted a fascist swastika with white paint and wrote "You freaks!" and "Jews". Chairman of the Jewish community of Kaliningrad "Adat Israel" Viktor Shapiro wrote a statement to the prosecutor's office of the Kaliningrad region.

On March 29, 2007, the OSCE Conference on Freedoms of Assembly, Association and Expression opened in Vienna . The first meeting of the conference ended with an official statement by the representative of Russia, who expressed his indignation at the presence of a representative of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS), which the diplomat called an "extremist organization," was present at the conference.

In the city of Rossosh, Voronezh Region, believers demand that officials at various levels declare invalid the deal for the resale of the church building. In Soviet times, the building of the Exaltation Church was used as a factory workshop. In the 1990s, the bell tower, standing separately from the temple, was transferred to the Voronezh diocese. In the building of the bell tower, a church was built in honor of St. Alexander Nevsky, heated by the enterprise.

On March 30, 2007, the Pyatigorsk court sentenced the imam of the local mosque, Anton Stepanenko , to one and a half years' imprisonment with probation for one year. Stepanenko was found guilty under Art. 127 (illegal deprivation of liberty) and Art. 330 (arbitrariness) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, to which the charge under Art. 163 (extortion). He was also found guilty under Part 1 of Art.

On March 30, 2007, Tatyana Nikolaeva, Assistant Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Northwestern Federal District, announced that in 2006 the number of extremist crimes in the Northwestern Federal District increased by 127%. According to her, 57 criminal cases have been initiated; two thirds of these crimes were registered in the Komi Republic and St. Petersburg. Nikolaeva also noted that in St.