Protests march from Moscow to London
by Tom Washington at 26/08/2010 12:00
Regular Russian protest marches on the 31st of the month will be staged in London, thanks to flamboyant exiled tycoon Yevgeny Chichvarkin.
Meanwhile the original Moscow edition is set to welcome gay rights campaigners for the first time as opposition groups continue to assert their right to peaceful freedom of assembly in the face of official opposition.
“Over the past years in Russia the government has been steadily refusing Russian citizens their legal right to free assembly and stage events. Every 31st of the month people gather on the squares of Russian towns, are beaten by riot police, and have to submit to civil charges,” announced Chichvarkin.
Not political
His interests are constitutional and not politically motivated, he says. “I am not a member of any party,” Chichvarkin said on his blog. “I do not sympathise with the national Bolsheviks and I don’t like either of parts of this word. Nor do I like the hammer and sickle…I also distrust the attitude of some regular participants in the March of the Dissenters.”
“But we, Russians living abroad, cannot just stand by quietly and watch as Russia becomes a police state. We are meeting in London because we are not allowed to in Moscow.”
The choice of the 31st reflects Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, guaranteeing the right to peaceful assembly. Campaigners say this is routinely ignored by the authorities.
Diversifying
The city authorities always have an answer to requests from Strategy 31st to hold their gatherings, supporters say. Every time permission is denied and so the protests are broken up. A group which has met with more direct rebuttals has been Moscow’s gay community. Labelled ‘satanic’ by Mayor Luzhkov, gay activists are getting increasingly frustrated as each year the gay pride march is banned.
They are now joining forces with the 31st-ers and Tuesday, Aug. 31 will see their combined forces gather around the now fenced off Triumfalnaya Ploshchad. “I do not mind, let them come to the rally,” said Strategy 31st leader Lyudmila Alexeyeva. “They are people just like us with their own problems,” she told Interfax. She said that she and other figure heads defend people’s rights and this includes the rights of sexual minorities.
Gay Rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev said that he hoped Strategy 31st supporters would join the LGBT community in the gay pride campaign. The ban is awaiting a verdict from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Manning the barricades
Triumfalnaya Ploshchad, the usual Moscow venue for the protests, is now closed for reconstruction work but protesters still plan to gather there on Aug. 31 from 6 pm.
The rally is unsanctioned and usually meets with robust resistance from the police who are under orders to disperse it as quickly as possible
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