----- Original Message ----- From: "David Christian" <dckomatlcom.net at mindspring.com> To: <a-infos-en at ainfos.ca> Sent: Monday, June 24, 2002 2:51 AM Subject: (en) altmedia: Moscow police: Havent you ever broken any bones? (report on recent demo)
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> The Police Suppressed a demonstration at the Swedish embassy in
> Moscow.
> Vladimir Potapov 6/5/02
> Three participants in a protest action against police tyranny were
> arrested by the Moscow police on the 5th of June 2002 near the
> building of the Swedish embassy. The protest action was held as a
> show of solidarity with political prisoners who are serving various
> sentences in Swedish prisons after the "Antiglobalization"
> demonstrations in Goteburg in June of 2001.
>
> Young men and women from the radical ecological movement "Rainbow
> Keepers", the Autonomous Action Project and the Moscow Union of
> Radical Artists demanded the release of the political prisoners, who
> have been locked up in jail since the "anti-globalization" protests in
> Goteburg in June 2001.
>
> The call for international action in solidarity with the political
> prisoners held in Swedish jails was made in the name of the Black
> Cross, the legendary organization dedicated to the support of
> political prisoners and anarchists since the beginning of the
> Twentieth Century.
>
> Last year's events in Goteburg merit being kept in mind today. In
> the middle of June 2001 in Goteburg, Sweden, a summit of the European
> Union was held, on the eve of which the President of the US, George
> Bush, arrived in that city. The Swedish powers took unprecedented
> measures to assure that the massive protests against these two events
> would come to no effect. Thousands of opponents of capitalist
> globalization from many countries of East and West Europe, and even
> from North America, came to Goteburg. The municipal authorities
> officially committed some schools for the housing of the participants
> in the legal protests who came to Goteburg. However, the police
> immediately resorted to violence. Early in the evening of 14 June
> 2001, mounted police attacked the activists who were coming out of the
> Hwidtfeldtska school, in order to take part in the officially
> authorized demonstrations against Bush's arrival. Hundreds of people,
> among them activists from Ukraine and Russia, where blockaded inside
> the schools, which were made like concentration camps for the entire
> day. Even more brutal were the attacks of the antiterror police
> brigade, armed with automatic weapons, on the Schillerska School on
> Saturday 16 June 2001. Beyond this, the police organized some battles
> on the streets and squares of Goteburg. Dogs were set upon the
> people, and weights had been braided into the tails of the police
> horses to increase the damage to the protesters. But what really
> shocked many in Europe and the world most of all, was the fact that
> the Swedish police actually opened fire on non-violent demonstrators
> for the first time in several decades. Many persons, who received
> serious wounds in the abdomen and other parts of the body,
> miraculously survived.
>
> Despite the facts of excesses carried out by the policy and of the
> violation of human rights, which were reported in the mass media, no
> one in the police leadership was brought to accountability. And this
> is not surprising, if we consider the later experience of Genoa, where
> at the time of the demonstrations in July 2001 the police shot in the
> head and killed the anarchist Carlo Guliani, or the experience of that
> antiterrorist hysteria, which rose up in the countries of the golden
> billions after September 11th, attempting, and not without success,
> under the pretense of antiterrorist measures, to simply stiffen
> repressive legislation, so that participants in civil-political
> protests must be counted as guerrillas and terrorists.
>
> Among those arrested in Goteburg was the Russian citizen Artyom
> Shlyonov, who was held in jail for more than a month. He was accused
> of throwing rocks at the police on 14 June 2001, which is, at least,
> strange, since he arrived in Goteburg in the early hours of the 15th.
> This circumstance permitted suspicion of police misconduct and the
> attempt to justify police violence against the demonstrators, by
> backdating the arrest reports. Artyom Shlyonov was subsequently set
> free, but his case was closed because of insufficient evidence of his
> guilt, which only supported the suspicions regarding the police. The
> Swedish government did not undertake any apologies or compensation for
> the illegal incarceration of Artyom Shlyonov, which lasted more than
> a month.
>
> Of the 240 people who were arrested at the time of the demonstrations
> in Goteburg in June of last year, some are still behind bars to this
> day. Just this alarming feature of their fate is what brought 25
> persons from Defenders of Rainbows, Autonomous Action and the Moscow
> Union of Radical Artists to the walls of the Swedish embassy in
> Moscow.
>
> The intention of the action was a theatrical submission to the Swedish
> authorities of letters of protest against the tyranny of the Goteburg
> police and the falsified sentences. The young men and women were in
> costumes of the police and arrestees, carried sham wooden guns and
> cardboard service caps, and on the black tee shirts of 5 participants
> in the action, bright red letters were clearly written, so that
> together they spelled 'AGAINST'. They did not succeed in stripping
> off their shirts to reveal the second part of the message, which was
> written on their bare skin. Representatives of several militia units
> fell upon this radical street theatre, among them even some exotic
> divisions, such as the special division of the Ministry of Internal
> Affairs which uses sniffer dogs. One of the employees of this
> last-named service, who did not introduce himself, and whose rank was
> not discernible, since he had some intricate wrap covering himself
> above the shoulders, at first tried to seize the press identifications
> and tired to arrest the correspondent of the Social Information
> Agency, Vlad Typikin. Then he attacked one of the photographers, who
> was recording the events, but who managed to save his film. This same
> special militiaman 'affectionately' turned to one of the protestors,
> unnaturally embraced him, asking 'Haven't you ever broken any bones?'
>
> In spite of the fact that the police had authorized Artyom Shlyonov to
> deliver the the protest papers to the Swedish embassy, they wouldn't
> let him go without a catch. On some contrived pretense, three of the
> protesters, Shlyonov among them, were arrested.
>
> The rest determined to march to the building of the Internal Affairs
> division in Michurinsky Prospect, being much concerned that the bones
> of their comrades remain intact.
>
> Yet another small detail: even as the protest was breaking up in
> Pushkin Square on 28 May 2002, the Moscow police used their dogs
> against the demonstrators. Actions of the guards where formally
> coordinated with quiet, scarcely noticed persons in civilian clothing.
>
> It is not out of the question, as was the case with Chechen Human
> Rights work, that the actions of the police and military were managed
> by the Federal Security Service.
>
>
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