Lucky
Member
http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=11011
Russia Supreme Court Bans Liberal Party, Eliminating Opposition To Putin
Russia's next parliament is likely to have no genuine opposition after a court in Moscow Friday banned a leading liberal party from standing in elections.
Russia's supreme court announced that it had liquidated the small Republican party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members. The party is one of very few left in Russia that criticizes President Vladimir Putin.
The move against Russia's opposition came as pro-democracy activists prepared for the latest in a series of anti-government rallies that have infuriated Russia's hardline authorities.
Hundreds of demonstrators are expected to gather Saturday in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fourth biggest city. The protesters from The Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups, are expected to march despite attempts by pro-Kremlin officials to prevent them from demonstrating.
"The march's leaders are being called in by police and intimidated. We are half a step away from a police state," Denis Bilunov, a member of the march's organizing committee, told the Guardian. "There isn't much point in talking about democracy in Russia any more."
Saturday's protest follows an opposition rally earlier this month in St. Petersburg in which at least 5,000 people chanted slogans against Putin, and which was violently dispersed by police.
The size of the last demonstration appears to have surprised the authorities. They have refused permission for the latest rally to go ahead and blocked the route.
On Thursday Moscow's prosecutor's office also suspended the Nationalist Bolshevik party, another radical and previously banned anti-Kremlin group. The National Bolshevik party is a radical activist group that has been a driving force behind recent anti-government protests, as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in December and next year's presidential vote.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, the leader of the Republican party, said Friday that the ban was part of a Kremlin-inspired campaign to crack down on dissent. "This is part of the Kremlin's policy of suppressing the opposition. It's being done to prevent opposition parties from taking part in elections," he told the Guardian. "This is the fate any opposition party in Russia."
Ryzhkov - one of a handful of independent members in the Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, and a leading Putin critic - said his party would appeal in Russia and to the European court of human rights.
Organizers of Saturday's rally in Nizhny Novgorod say they have faced widespread intimidation by the city's pro-Kremlin authorities. Earlier this week police from the special organized crime unit of Russia's interior ministry seized 60,000 copies of an opposition newspaper due to be distributed during the demonstration.
The mayor's office announced a children's festival on the site of the proposed march, and blocked off the road to carry out what it said were urgent repairs.
"Taking to the streets isn't our plan," said Bilunov. "But the problem is that the opposition is being pushed out of the legislative process. This is the only way we can protest legitimately. We are being barred from federal channels and from parliament."
The Other Russia brings together a series of diverse opposition groups hostile to the Kremlin. They include Gary Kasparov's United Civil Front, the Popular Democratic Union, led by Mikhail Kasaynov - a former prime minister who fell out with Putin - and the National Bolsheviks.
Organizers also hope to attract the support of locals fed up with new construction in the city's historic heart, as well as environmentalists concerned about the destruction of green spaces.
At their last rally in St. Petersburg the opposition marched under the slogan Those Who Don't Agree.
Friday the National Bolshevik leader, Eduard Limonov, predicted the latest ban on his party would lead to "big problems". He told Interfax news agency: "I am not afraid for my life. I am primarily afraid for my relatives and friends. I have accepted the prosecutor's office's challenge. We are launching a fight."
The Kremlin argues that its new electoral law - which says that all political parties must have 50,000 members and be represented in half of Russia's provinces - is meant to streamline Russia's untidy political scene. Critics say the legislation is designed to kill off smaller parties that oppose the Kremlin.
Background
Russia's tiny opposition is represented in the current Duma by four or five MPs (members of parliament). Pro-Kremlin parties predominate among the 447 deputies. The small opposition Republican party, banned yesterday, was formed by defectors from the Soviet Communist party. It emerged in 1990 on the wave of liberalism encouraged by then-Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Republican party has one MP, Vladimir Ryzhkov; its other attempts to win seats have repeatedly failed. But it has played a solid role in the liberal opposition. The liberal Yabloko party also has two MPs. Two other anti-Putin MPs sit as independents. In theory, the opposition includes Russia's Communist party and the far-right Liberal Democratic party. In reality, they rarely if ever voice opposition to the Kremlin, observers point out.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070324/D8O2NS300.html
Russian Forces Break Up Opposition Rally
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia (AP) - Riot police wielding truncheons broke up an opposition rally in a central Russian city on Saturday, detaining dozens of activists and beating some of them in the third major crackdown on a demonstration in recent months.
The activists focused on local issues but also accused the Kremlin of stifling free speech, silencing dissent and depriving them of a free and fair political process ahead of December parliamentary elections and next year's presidential vote.
Authorities had not given permission for the rally in a central square in Nizhny Novgorod, saying a demonstration could only take place far from the city center. Hundreds of riot police in full gear cordoned off the central square.
Still, organizer Natalya Morar said, several hundred protesters managed to hold a short rally - dubbed the March of Those Who Disagree - near the central square until police dragged them into buses that took them to police stations.
An Associated Press photographer saw dozens of protesters taken into custody by police and some beaten with truncheons. The photographer was briefly detained by officers, who later released him, saying there had been a mistake.
President Vladimir Putin, who is constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term, has given strong hints that he would pick a favored successor. Opposition groups have accused the Kremlin of further consolidating control over the country's political life ahead of elections to make sure its opponents stand no chance of winning.
State-controlled television channels made no mention of the rally in their newscasts throughout the day.
Oksana Chelysheva, another organizer and rights activist, said her group had received complaints from hundreds of people heading to the rally who said they were blocked by police from entering the city center.
Morar said hundreds of activists had been pulled off trains and buses and detained on their way to the rally.
She said several dozen journalists, including foreign reporters, were also detained.
Among those arrested was Marina Litvinovich, an aide to liberal opposition figure Garry Kasparov, a former world chess champion turned fierce critic of Putin.
Litvinovich told The Associated Press that she was detained, to prevent her from protesting, as she was driving into the city, on the grounds that her personal car was on a list of stolen vehicles. She was released several hours later, only to be arrested a second time for the same purported reason.
Morar said two other organizers detained ahead of the rally were in custody on suspicion of terrorist activity. She said they have been accused of distributing pamphlets with instructions on how to become a terrorist.
Regional police spokesman Alexander Gorbatov said that only about 30 people had been detained for holding an unauthorized protest.
It was unclear what would happen to the protesters who were detained. Under Russian law, police can hold suspects for up to 3 days, after which they must either be released or a court must sanction their arrest for a longer period of time, pending investigation.
The local news agency, Nizhny Novgorod, cited deputy governor Sergei Potapov as saying protesters were receiving funding from the United States and several European countries.
"They are looking for pretexts for discontent for money," Potapov was quoted as saying.
Organizers denied the allegations.
"The authorities are afraid of people, they feel highly insecure," Chelysheva said. "They fear that people will express their discontent" during elections.
The rally in Nizhny Novgorod, about 250 miles east of Moscow, was the third such protest in recent months. While the first was allowed to take place in Moscow in December, police detained dozens of participants before and during the rally, according to organizers. Protesters then gathered for a second March of Those Who Disagree earlier this month in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, but the rally was violently broken up by police.
Since taking office in 2000, Putin has made steps to centralize power and eliminate democratic checks and balances. He has created an obedient parliament, abolished direct gubernatorial elections, tightened restrictions on rights groups and presided over the reining-in of non-state television channels.
