[ad_1]
“I was going to tell them about the situation in the town of Sergeyev, where the bus did not work in winter because the road was too dangerous,” he told Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. “How, together with the local people, we have repaired and rebuilt this road link in a perfectly legitimate way.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Koviazin, like nearly 200 others in the hall where the event began, the Moscow police arrested former residents of 56 regions of the country and put them in a minibus. The man spent several hours with the famous opposition leader Ilya Yashin, who was a close collaborator of the assassinated opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, and learned first-hand the most relevant information about the political situation in Russia under Vladimir Putin.
Like other forum participants, Coviazin was accused of attending an event organized by an “unwanted” organization and banned in Russia. The organization is the London-based Open Russia Foundation, funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil magnate who spent many years behind bars and later became a critic of Putin.
If the administrative claim is confirmed by the court, the participants in the event who were released after approximately 3 pm from the arrest, threaten from 5 thousand. up to 15 thousand. a fine of rubles (approximately EUR 57.50-172.50). The forum was canceled after all participants were detained.
Rough and overdone
Like many people arrested on March 13, Koviazin links the police raid to the elections to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, which will take place on September 19. According to a poll conducted by the independent Levada Center and released on March 11, the ruling United Russia party, which allows Putin’s government to effectively maintain a monopoly of power in the country, is backed by just 27 percent. surveyed.
“I think the government has been forced to take such harsh and exaggerated actions,” Koviazin said. – All this takes place in preparation for the new election season. The government is afraid of change and is trying to suppress any manifestation of independence. “
Among those detained, Tomsk city deputy Ksenia Fadeyeva supports Koviazin and has directly linked austerity measures to United Russia’s degradation.
“They have a good understanding of what the elections will be like this fall,” he said. – There will be independent candidates, and they will have to be banned from registration for a variety of reasons, because, God forbid, you can win. I think the government is very nervous now. “
Kirill Prokorov is an activist from Karelia. In 2018, he lost in the Petrozavodsk City Council elections, but was invited to a forum in Moscow as a possible future candidate.
Prokorov told Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty that a police raid could be carried out to send a message to people like him.
“Everything was planned carefully,” he said. – The organizers were not told to cancel the event earlier. Officials waited for the forum to start before everyone gathered to arrest everyone. “
“I have the impression that media attention has been sought,” added the activist. “There was a desire to pressure active and potential candidates to think about their future in this country to realize that everything is under control.”
Andrei Pivovarov, executive director of Russia’s Open Russia, who no longer has any legal ties to the London-based foundation that organized the forum in Moscow, called the police raid a “demonstrative use of force.”
“His goal was to show his power in public,” he said. – Elections will be held this year and the popularity of the government is low. Most of the people who attended the forum are municipal and regional deputies who plan to stand for election.
Police minibus policy
Anastasia Burakova, coordinator of the United Democrats movement, who also contributed to the event, said the goal of the forum was to bring together like-minded people from across the country “so they can build horizontal connections and share ideas and experiences.”
In this regard, the police raid probably had the opposite result, noted K. Prokorov: “The police minibus managed to establish new contacts. I spoke in detail with deputies from many cities. I learned how they carry out electoral campaigns. Now I have the contact information of all the people with whom I have spent those six hours. I have achieved my goal. “
The experience of Viktor Višneveckis, environmental activist and municipal deputy for the city of Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic, was similar: “I planned to talk to other environmental activists at the forum and find out what was happening in their regions. In the end, I did it, not just in the conference room, but in the police minibus and then at the police station. “
“Now even educational events and exchanges of opinions are illegal,” he added. – We can no longer meet in public, and since there is nothing we can do about it, we will have to change the format. One possible option is the web space. Another is the more closed and less formal meetings. Of course, the people of the opposition cannot stop exchanging opinions. We just have to find new ways. “
It is strictly forbidden to use the information published by DELFI on other websites, in the media or elsewhere, or to distribute our material in any way without consent, and if consent has been obtained, it is necessary to cite DELFI as the source.
[ad_2]
