MOSCOW (AP) – Moscow police on Saturday detained about 200 people attending a forum of independent members of city councils, an action that took place amid multilateral repression of dissent by Russian authorities.
Police appeared at the rally shortly after it opened at a hotel in Moscow, saying all those present would be detained for attending an event organized by an “unwanted” organization. A police officer who led the raid said the detainees would be taken to the police station and charged with administrative violations.
Moscow police said in a statement that they had moved to stop the meeting because it had violated coronavirus restrictions because many participants had failed to wear masks. They said about 200 participants had been detained, some of them members of an unspecified “unwanted” organization.
OVD-Info, an independent group that monitors arrests and political repression, has published a list of more than 180 people who have been detained. Among them were Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician who leads one of Moscow’s municipal districts; former Ekaterinburg mayor Yevgeny Roizman; and member of the Moscow city council, Yulia Galyamina.
Police began releasing detainees after subpoenaing them for participating in the activities of an “unwanted” organization, which is a felony punishable by a fine. It was unclear how many remained in police custody on Saturday night.
“Their purpose was to scare people from getting involved in politics,” said Andrei Pivovarov, a politician who helped organize the forum, in a video recorded while in a police van.
Pivovarov played a leading role in Open Russia, a group funded by self-exiled Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky has moved to London after spending 10 years in prison in Russia on charges widely considered political revenge for provoking the rule of President Vladimir Putin.
A 2015 law introduced criminal punishment for membership in “undesirable” organizations. The government used the law to ban about 30 groups, including open Russia.
A previous law required non-governmental organizations that receive foreign funding and engage in activities vaguely described as political to register as “foreign agents”.
The laws have been widely criticized as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to quell dissent, but Russian authorities have described them as an appropriate response to alleged Western efforts to undermine the country.
Saturday’s forum police crackdown followed the arrest and imprisonment of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most determined political enemy was arrested on January 17 on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nervous breakdown he blames on the Kremlin. The Russian authorities rejected the accusation.
Last month, Navalny was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating probation during his convalescence in Germany – charges he denied as vendetta by the Kremlin. His arrest and imprisonment sparked a wave of protests across Russia, to which authorities responded with massive repression.
The government stepped up its crackdown on the opposition ahead of the September parliamentary elections as the popularity of the Kremlin-backed United Russia party declined.