Udaltsov and Journalists Arrested at Rally
Published: July 11, 2012 (Issue # 1717)
KRISTINA FATINA / SPT
A speaker addresses protesters at the Farewell to White Nights opposition rally on the Field of Mars on Sunday.
The authorities arrested national protest leader Sergei Udaltsov and dozens of other people in St. Petersburg on Sunday as anti-Putin protesters gathered to take part in an authorized Farewell to White Nights rally. Two journalists were arrested and charged with “organizing a march.”
About 100 people, including reporters, turned up at around 7 p.m. Sunday at a site near the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall that was initially advertized as the starting point for the march, but was later rejected by City Hall.
“We applied for a march and stationary rally along the route that we walked along during rallies in the winter, spring and summer, which was a march from Oktyabrsky via Ulitsa Zhukovskogo and then a rally on Konyushennaya Ploshchad,” local activist Olga Kurnosova said this week.
“They [City Hall] rejected the march and authorized only a rally on the Field of Mars, instead of Konyushennaya Ploshchad. Because we’d distributed quite a lot of information about the march starting from Oktyabrsky, of course I didn’t have any choice other than to go to the concert hall to tell people that they should go to the Field of Mars.”
The Left Front’s leader Udaltsov, who came from Moscow to take part in the rally, and Kurnosova were planning to tell people to walk to the Field of Mars where an authorized stationary rally “For Political Reform, Against Repressions” was due to be held, Kurnosova said this week.
But when Udaltsov started answering questions from reporters and Kurnosova made an announcement, the large group of people that they were standing with was quickly surrounded by OMON special task police. About 15 of the people inside the encircled group — including Udaltsov and Kurnosova — were arrested, put on a police bus and taken to a police precinct.
Reporters Ivan Skirtach of ITAR-TASS news agency and Sergei Kovalchenko of RBK Daily newspaper were detained and charged with failure to obey a police officer’s orders, an offense punishable by up to 15 days in prison, Interfax reported.
The organizers had hoped that the police would not make arrests near Oktyabrsky Concert Hall because of a previous agreement that people would be allowed to walk to the site of the rally and due to the planned presence of two State Duma deputies, Dmitry Gudkov and Ilya Ponomaryov of the Just Russia party, Kurnosova said.
Deputies have the right to meet with voters anywhere, without any authorization.
But Gudkov broke his leg playing football shortly before the event and failed to come to St. Petersburg, while Ponomaryov changed his plans and flew to Krymsk to help deal with the consequences of the devastating flood suffered by the Krasnodar region at the weekend.
“But when we talked to the police, we were told that the presence of the deputies doesn’t change anything and they would detain everybody anyway,” Kurnosova said.
“During a prior meeting with the police, it was agreed that we would be given a chance to announce that the rally would be held on the Field of Mars, but apparently they were given different orders afterwards. Having observed police tricks for years, I can tell for sure that of course they were planning to detain Udaltsov and me all along.”
According to Kurnosova, about another 40 people were arrested when they came to police precinct No. 2, where Udaltsov and the others were being held, after the rally, which passed without incident.
“We’ll see how it stands up in court with the new law [on holding public assemblies],” Kurnosova said. “We are accused of holding a march, but there was no march, no political paraphernalia. If we have no flags or placards and aren’t shouting anything, it can’t be called a march. But here they are attempting to charge people who simply took a few steps toward a pedestrian crossing with holding a ‘march.’”
The police said a total of 33 people were detained. In a statement Sunday, the police said that 13 of them had been detained for attempting to “organize an unsanctioned event” near Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, while 20 were detained near police precinct No. 2 for “not reacting” to police orders to disperse. Kurnosova said this week that about 55 people had been detained.
Those detained were mainly charged with violating the rules on holding public assemblies and disobeying police orders. Many were held at police precincts until Tuesday.