Russian authorities on July 27 brutally cracked down on a major protest in Moscow, arresting 1,388 pro-democracy demonstrators who had rallied for fair local elections. See the photo gallery here.
While similar weekend protests have become quite commonplace in Moscow, this number of arrests in a single day was unprecedented: the most in seven years, according to OVD-Info, a news site that monitors detentions at protests.
Thousands of people joined the demonstration, which had not been authorized by the local authorities. Protesters were outraged that election commissions had refused to register opposition and independent candidates for Moscow’s city council elections on Sept. 8.
Police brutality
Many protesters and bystanders suffered violence at the hands of the police, who moved quickly to dismantle the demonstration before it could gain any momentum.
Photos and videos of the demonstration showed armored police officers beating people with truncheons and throwing them to the ground or into police trucks. Some protesters appeared to be covered in blood. Some people who were targeted by police appeared to be members of the public not connected to the protest.
“Representatives on several occasions witnessed indiscriminate use of force by police, who beat protesters with batons and knocked them to the ground,” reported the watchdog organization Amnesty International, which had observers on the ground.
На каких фильмах росли эти омоновцы? pic.twitter.com/A10NFvwIJB
— Олег Козловский (@kozlovsky) July 27, 2019
Moscow’s electoral commission and district commissions refused to register many opposition candidates, claiming that they did not have enough genuine signatures on their petitions. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his allies called for the protests in response.
The opposition candidates included Dmitry Gudkov, head of the Change Party, Lyubov Sobol from Navalny’s Russia of the Future party and Ilya Yashin from the Solidarity party. The commissions’ decisions may still be re-considered by the Central Election Commission.
The arrests began days before the demonstration. Navalny was arrested on July 24 and sentenced to 30 days of detention for urging people to attend the rally.
Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh tweeted on July 28 that the opposition leader was hospitalized with severe skin redness and facial swelling, which was diagnosed as an “allergic reaction.” Yarmysh said that Navalny never had an allergic reaction in the past.
CCTV footage as police storming into Navalny office https://t.co/LRXvVjnCp1 pic.twitter.com/NSDWXJOeHG via @navalnylive #Russia
— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) July 27, 2019
Police searched the houses of eight opposition candidates in the election on the eve of the July 27 rally. Five of them – Sobol, Yashin, Gudkov, Ivan Zhdanov and Yulia Galyamina – were arrested before the protest began. They were released and arrested again when they attended the rally.
The demonstration took place near Moscow City Hall before spilling out into the nearby streets.
According to media reports, police clashed with the protesters, preventing a mass crowd from coalescing. Many journalists and observers were arrested along with the protesters.
Petitions rejected
Moscow’s city council has 45 seats and is currently controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.
To register in the city council elections, candidates were supposed to collect signatures from at least 3 percent of a district’s voters.
However, district commissions routinely rejected signatures collected by opposition candidates, claiming that they were fake or did not comply with regulations. In some cases they were rejected due to misprints.
Civil society organizations lambasted these rejections as a non-transparent and politically motivated move to get rid of opposition candidates. In many cases people whose signatures were rejected confirmed that they had given them.
Election officials have registered 233 candidates so far. These include candidates directly backed by the Kremlin, as well as candidates from several parties friendly with the Kremlin, including the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, A Just Russia and the Communists of Russia.
Two candidates from Yabloko – a liberal party also accused of links to the Kremlin – have also been registered. Yabloko denies having such links.
Meanwhile, about 20,000 demonstrators attended a state-sanctioned rally against the refusal to register opposition candidates on July 20. The next major rally with the same demands is scheduled for August 3.
According to the AFP news agency, last week’s protest organizers could face up to 5 years in prison.
International Criticism
The crackdown drew international condemnation. The U.S. embassy in Moscow said that the disproportionate use of force “undermines rights of citizens to participate in the democratic process.”
The European External Action Service also criticized the police action against peaceful demonstrators, including prominent opposition figures and journalists.
These detentions and use of force “follow the worrying series of arrests and police raids against opposition politicians carried out in recent days, and once again seriously undermine the fundamental freedoms of expression, association and assembly,” wrote Maja Kociajancic, the EEAS spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy.
Unprecedented 1,388 detained in Moscow. This was planned. Police started arresting even before protest began. The authorities are scared at how often small protests have been springing up & want to intimidate. But polls show the number of Russians willing to protest is ticking up pic.twitter.com/uXj7DlTKqv
— Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) July 28, 2019
Many observers have also highlighted how the brutal crackdown in Moscow took place only weeks after full voting rights were restored to the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a body which oversees human rights in Europe.
“Some European politicians have argued for Russia’s return to PACE with concern for Russian civil society,” said Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin. “I want to hear their opinion after yesterday’s mass arrests in Moscow, when most of the representatives of this civil society were thrown behind bars.”
