Photo via u/sonicyeayea/Reddit, @YourAnonNews/Twitter
March 8, 2022, 11:12 am*
Police in Russia are cracking down hard on anti-war protesters, reportedly arresting over 13,000 people already, offering the flimsy excuse that large crowds are prohibited due to COVID-19 restrictions as though they’re not putting together large crowds to invade Ukraine. At the same time, they appear to be stopping random people on the street, demanding they hand their phones over and going through their private messages, detaining them if they refuse.
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Video posted online shows two such officers going through two phones as the owners watch, one cop appearing to scroll through rapidly, filmed by Kommersant journalist Ana Vasilyeva. For the young man’s sake, we hope it wasn’t a sexting session.
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According to Russian human rights project OVD-Info, over 4,300 protesters were arrested just on Sunday, with Russia’s interior ministry confirming many of these arrests, bringing the total up to 13,022 across 147 cities. That’s quite a lot, even by U.S. Black Lives Matter protest standards. The organization has also reported that detainees have been physically abused in Russian police stations, describing the treatment as torture.
“At the Brateevo police station in Moscow, detainees were hit in the face and head with bottles, kicked in the legs, kneed in the stomach, dragged by their hair and had sanitizer sprayed in their faces,” they wrote.
Tens of thousands of Russians, if not more, have taken to the streets to oppose Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in spite of the serious risks to their well-being and freedom. The Kremlin has responded not only with mass arrests, but by passing laws that seriously restrict speech, including a 15-year penalty for spreading anything they deem to be “fake news,” including calling the war on Ukraine a war rather than a “special military operation.” As a result, many independent Russian news outlets have temporarily or permanently shut down.
“The screws are being fully tightened – essentially we are witnessing military censorship,” OVD-Info spokesperson Maria Kuznetsova told Reuters.
Russians have a long history of mass protests against government oppression, including last year following the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny after he was poisoned. Thousands of protesters were arrested then, as well, but they keep coming out. Some activists have been spotted on camera attempting a classic anti-fascists tactic of “de-arresting” protesters, pushing cops off of people they’re arresting before booking it.
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To make things worse, Russian defense lawyers have said that they are not being allowed into courtrooms with their clients during hearings, again being given the COVID excuse in spite of the actual letter of the law.
“At first they did not let me in the court at all – they kept me behind the door,” said attorney Olesya Vasilchenko. “There were many relatives of the detainees and I could not pass through them. The doors were slammed shut.”
*First Published: March 8, 2022, 11:10 am
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