Riot police flood Saint Petersburg ahead of demo
SAINT PETERSBURG, Nov 25, 2007 (AFP) — Riot police flooded the centre of Saint Petersburg on Sunday to counter an unauthorised march of opponents to Russian President Vladimir Putin one week before legislative elections.
Police officers stood in line, each separated by about five metres (15 feet), the entire length of the city's famous central Nevsky Avenue, an AFP reporter said. Trucks full of riot police reinforcements were also visible in side streets.
Only a few thousand opposition protestors were expected. A similar rally of about 2,000 people was dispersed in Moscow on Saturday and chess legend turned opposition leader Garry Kasparov was jailed for five days.
The rallies come one week before December 2 parliamentary elections in which Putin's United Russia party is forecast to win crushing victory.
In Saint Petersburg protestors are planning to march as far as the Winter Palace, the former residence of the tsars before the Bolshevik revolution. However, the authorities have only authorised a rally -- without a march -- on a different square.
"They have launched a military operation in the city," said Olga Kurnosova, an organiser with Kasparov's Civil Front group. "The authorities are scared of people who do not want to support the Putin personality cult."
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Russia braces for opposition protests after Kasparov arrest
by Sebastian Smith
MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian authorities geared for fresh protests Sunday, a day after opposition leader and chess legend Garry Kasparov was jailed for leading a march against President Vladimir Putin a week before parliamentary elections.
Riot police flooded the centre of Saint Petersburg on Sunday to counter an unauthorised march of opponents to Putin.
Police officers stood in line, each separated by about five metres (15 feet), the entire length of the city's famous central Nevsky Avenue, an AFP reporter said. Trucks full of riot police reinforcements were also visible in side streets.
Kasparov was sentenced Saturday for five days for organising an unsanctioned rally and refusing to obey police orders, but told reporters the charges were "unfounded" and charged the Russian leader with taking recourse to scare tactics.
"What happened in court today looks like something unthinkable. Procedure was grossly violated, naturally I will appeal, but there can be no talk of justice anymore," he said in comments broadcast by the Moscow Echo radio.
"The authorities are going beyond all possible and impossible bounds, I call on all our supporters not to yield to the scare campaign," he said.
Opponents of Putin plan to demonstrate again in Saint-Petersburg on Sunday.
The arrest came during a march in central Moscow by members of The Other Russia coalition, led by Kasparov, and bringing together radical leftwingers, moderates and liberal reformers opposed to Putin's policies.
Kasparov and one of his bodyguards were grabbed by riot police and forced into a police bus which then drove them away from the scene where hundreds of opposition activists were in a tense standoff with security forces.
"Freedom! Freedom!" supporters shouted after the bus, AFP journalists said.
Kasparov was also arrested last April after an opposition march in central Moscow was violently dispersed by riot police.
"We were posing no threat to public order," he told journalists after interior ministry forces surrounded him and his supporters.
"We wanted to peacefully march to the election commission. The powers that be are simply afraid of people who express their dissent."
Saturday's arrest came after around 2,000 anti-Putin demonstrators held a rally, following which a few hundred marched toward the Central Election Commission office to deliver a petition denouncing the December 2 parliamentary vote.
Putin's United Russia party is set to win a strong majority in the poll, which takes place just three months before presidential elections planned to elect a successor to the Kremlin leader.
Police said a total of 13 people were arrested following the demonstration.
Nationalist writer Eduard Limonov, a senior leader in The Other Russia, was arrested, while election candidate Maria Gaidar of the liberal opposition party Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) was briefly detained, spokesmen said.
"Putin is a coward. We elected a coward. He's afraid of peaceful people," SPS leader Boris Nemtsov told demonstrators.
Intimidation from the authorities limited the number of people present, said Nemtsov, who was nominated on Friday by the SPS as the party's candidate for the presidency.
"People are afraid, they have been told there will be disorder, they have been told there will be an attack on me. The authorities want us to be afraid, but in fact it is they who are afraid," he said.
In a statement ahead of Saturday's protest, The Other Russia acknowledged that Moscow authorities had not given permission for the march but said the group planned to go ahead with it anyway to protest the election.
Hours earlier, police raided an office housing the coalition's website, a spokeswoman said.
The Other Russia rally was one of around 10 political demonstrations that took place in the Russian capital on Saturday.
Near Red Square in central Moscow, around 2,000 members of the youth group Nashi rallied to show their support for Putin, many holding white balloons which they said symbolised the "airheads" of the opposition.
"These are our rivals," said Sasha Isayev, 20, pointing to his balloon. "They are stupid and ridiculous opponents."
Elsewhere in Moscow, the Communist Party held a rally as did a handful of other pro- and anti-Putin groups.
Around 3,600 police officers were on special duty, with more than half of them assigned to The Other Russia gathering alone, Moscow Echo radio reported.
Separately, the SPS said its main office was vandalised by youths ahead of Saturday's rally.
A number of participants and journalists covering a march of The Other Russia early this year were injured when riot police violently dispersed the demonstration, drawing international criticism.
Subsequent public rallies in Moscow and other cities however have been largely peaceful.
