The former head of the Central Elections Commission criticized prosecutors for failing to pursue voting-fraud cases and said the street protests that followed December's State Duma elections show that many Russians have lost faith in the system. The outspoken comments made by Alexander Veshnyakov, Russia's ambassador to Latvia, in an interview published in Izvestia, were highly unusual for a currently serving diplomat. Veshnyakov served as elections chief from 1999 to 2007. After being critical of Kremlin-backed voting laws and campaign tactics, he was replaced by current elections commission head Vladimir Churov, a strong ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In the interview published Monday, Veshnyakov said cases of falsifications brought to prosecutors by the elections commission during his tenure were often not tried. [...] Source: The Moscow Times
posted 28 Feb 2012 00:16 by Rights in Russia
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updated 28 Feb 2012 00:16
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An opposition protester on Red Square carrying a banner calling for the destruction of the Lubyanka was whisked off to a psychiatric hospital Sunday after refusing to talk to police. Nadezhda Nizovkina, 26, and Vera Lavreshina unfurled banners reading “The Lubyanka must be destroyed” and “We are for the constitutional convention.” Nizovkina is a member of the Buryatia branch of the Solidarity movement, and Lavreshina is part of the Buryatia branch of the unregistered opposition party The Other Russia. [...] Source: The Moscow Times
posted 28 Feb 2012 00:15 by Rights in Russia
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updated 28 Feb 2012 00:15
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Lawyers for former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partner, Platon Lebedev, submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday over their December 2010 conviction on charges of embezzlement and money laundering. A Moscow court turned down an appeal of the conviction brought by the pair last year. In comments posted on Khodorkovsky's website, lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant reiterated the defense's position that the charges against the former oil company executives are baseless. [...] Source: The Moscow Times
posted 23 Feb 2012 14:57 by Rights in Russia
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updated 23 Feb 2012 14:57
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Five candidates in a small North Caucasus town carried their hunger strike at the offices of local authorities into its third day Thursday. They are protesting the refusal to register several dozen candidates in an upcoming local legislative election. As shown in a video posted Tuesday on YouTube by a user with the account name vintikfiesta, about 50 residents of the town of Lermontov, in the Stavropol region, stormed the Town Hall office Monday, demanding that the vote be canceled. [...] Source: The Moscow Times
posted 22 Feb 2012 22:00 by Rights in Russia
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updated 22 Feb 2012 22:01
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Some 120,000 people are expected to take to the streets in Moscow on Thursday in four separate demonstrations organized by supporters of Russian prime minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin and his opponents in the March 4 elections. Some 10,000 police officers will be deployed to Moscow streets during the demonstrations, Moscow police said in a statement. [...]
posted 21 Feb 2012 22:47 by Rights in Russia
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updated 21 Feb 2012 22:47
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Sergei Mokhnatkin's lawyer says his client was beaten by guards who were trying to stop him from filing complaints about goods stolen from the prison school where he worked, Grani.ru reported Tuesday. Mokhnatkin had earlier said the chief administrator of the school "worked as hard as he could," trying to improve the situation in the school, but officials hindered him at every step. Mokhnatkin said he had tried to help, "but they kept bullying me until I could stand it no longer." Mokhnatkin's lawyer, Valery Shukhardin, said he did not know the exact details of the attack, but that his client was not badly hurt. [...] In June 2010, Mokhnatkin was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for breaking a police officer's nose during a Strategy 31 rally — named after the article of the Constitution that grants the right to public assembly — on New Year's Eve in 2009 on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad. [...] "A police officer came over to an elderly woman and started to beat her, not just push, but to beat her," Mokhnatkin told Ren-TV, which interviewed him in jail last June. According to the court sentence, Mokhnatkin head-butted the policemen and broke his nose. The scuffle and what has happened since has made Mokhnatkin a poster child for abuse in the eyes of opposition activists, who say he is the first person imprisoned due to a Strategy 31 protest, simply for defending a woman. [...] Source: The Moscow Times
posted 20 Feb 2012 22:41 by Rights in Russia
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updated 20 Feb 2012 22:42
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Amid fistfights with opposition leaders outside the mayor's office Monday, pro-Kremlin activists won permission to hold mass rallies on all major Moscow squares on the day of the presidential election and the day after. Opposition activists were effectively shut out from prime protest spots on those two days. They accused their rivals of cutting in front of them in the waiting line. Police detained three opposition activists involved in a scuffle outside 13 Tverskaya Ulitsa. "Activists of youth groups such as Nashi and Young Russia reserved a place in line earlier," an Interior Ministry source told Interfax. "Representatives of the opposition didn't react to police demands to stop illegal actions and put up resistance." [...] Source: The Moscow Times
posted 19 Feb 2012 22:48 by Rights in Russia
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updated 19 Feb 2012 22:50
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More than a thousand pro-Putin motorists took to the street Saturday from 11 p.m. onward, circling the major city ring road counterclockwise and blocking crossroads for more than 15 minutes. [...] Police reported no incidents during the rally and said more than 2,000 cars took part. However, the organizers, a group called Network of Putin Supporters, put the figure on their website at 5,000 and claimed that they managed to cover the whole ring road. The idea of a political motorcade was introduced by opposition protesters, who first staged a Garden Ring rally Jan. 29. On Sunday afternoon, they took to the streets again, claiming to bring out more than 2,000 cars, many flying white ribbons and balloons, the symbols of the peaceful protests against Putin and for free elections. That rally was dogged with mutual accusations. Police put the protesting motorists' number at "a few hundred" and said participants were blocking traffic, while organizers said authorities tried to thwart them with deliberate street closures, roadside checks and even staged accidents. [...]
posted 16 Feb 2012 22:53 by Rights in Russia
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updated 16 Feb 2012 22:54
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The general director of web television channel Dozhd said Thursday that Moscow prosecutors have requested information from the channel regarding its financing of coverage of two opposition rallies held in December. Prosecutors are acting on a request by Robert Shlegel, a State Duma deputy from the ruling the United Russia party, according to a copy of the prosecutors' request posted on Twitter by Dozhd head Natalya Sindeyeva. Shlegel said he had filed a request with prosecutors in December, asking them to check whether Dozhd had served as a sponsor and organizer of opposition rallies on Bolotnaya Ploshchad and Prospekt Akademika Sakharova. "Dozhd, in my view, acted as an 'information sponsor' and partly as an organizer of these events," he wrote. "The question arose whether this is simple interest, or whether it has a financial motive underneath it." Prosecutors also requested tax documents and a copy of the channel's editorial charter. [...] Source: The Moscow Times
posted 15 Feb 2012 23:53 by Rights in Russia
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updated 15 Feb 2012 23:53
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Independent election-monitoring group Golos is moving its Moscow office after its landlord demanded that the group cancel its rental contract early, a move Golos calls illegal, RIA-Novosti reported Wednesday. The elections watchdog announced last month that its landlord, publishing house Literaturnaya Gazeta, had demanded that the organization leave the building by Feb. 1, despite the fact that Golos' rental contract was set to expire only in August 2012. Golos requested until March 1 to find a new office, but the publishing house refused and sent a letter indicating they wanted the space occupied by Golos vacated by Feb. 15 to make room for "new projects." Golos is Russia's only independent election-monitoring group. The organization came under pressure from authorities in the lead-up to the State Duma elections in December, getting hit with a fine in connection with a Web site it ran that recorded alleged elections violations. Its director was also temporarily detained at Sheremetyevo Airport days before the vote. [...] Source: The Moscow Times
