Moscow journalist Sergei Aslanyan was stabbed repeatedly earlier this week. Anslanyan, who specialises in motoring and hosts a programme on state Mayak radio station, was attacked on 29 May after a stranger called him and asked to leave his apartment “for a talk”. Aslanyan was attacked as he left the house. He managed to call an ambulance himself, and is now in a stable condition in hospital, where he is under police guard.
Some of Aslanyan’s colleagues believe the attack was caused by comments about the prophet Muhammad he made on a radio station. Sergei Arkhipov, head or radio at VGTRK state holding, which owns Mayak radio, said Aslanyan heard his attacker say “You dislike Allah”.
The Muslim society of Tatarstan had expressed concerns about Aslanyan’s anti-Muslim comments in an appeal to Russia’s general prosecutor’s office. After the journalist was attacked, they condemned both the assault and premature conclusions about “Muslim trace” in the case. Their leader Rishat Khamidullin told journalists that Aslanyan was treated brutally and “such an attack after his insulting statements is no more than a provocation against the Muslims”.
Attacks on journalists are common in Russia. In April Novaya Gazeta reporter Elena Milashina was beaten near her house. In May three journalists of Novaya Gazeta branch in Ryazan were beaten. Another newspaper’s reporter, Diana Khachatryan, alleged she was threatened by pro-Kremlin youth movements after publishing an article about the United Russia congress.
The latest most scandalous attacks on journalists include the beatings of Kommersant’s Oleg Kashin, and Khimki Truth’s Mikhail Beketov, and the murders of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, who wrote columns for the same paper while working for Memorial human rights centre. In the vast majority of these cases, no one has been brough to justice.
Freedom House placed Russia at 172 out of 197 countries for press freedom this year.
A Moscow court has confirmed that three women accused of being members of Pussy Riot can be held in prison until trial.
Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Semutsevich had appealed against an earlier decision to keep them in detention until 24 June — when they face charges of hooliganism for allegedly staging an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. If convicted they face up to seven years in prison
All three women claim that they were not among the masked performers at the Cathedral. Two of the three women have very young children who they believe are suffering without their mothers.
The women’s arrests triggered an emotional public discussion about the Orthodox church’s relationship with Russian authorities and society. Radical nationalist movement members have been preventing activists from protesting against the Pussy Riot arrests. The Church, led by patriarch Kirill, who publically supports Vladimir Putin, performed a public prayer in April “against blasphemers”. Kirill’s support of the Pussy Riot prosecution has concerned many religious Russians, who have petitioned for the release of the women.
Members of Pussy Riot who have not yet been arrested are now in hiding. They gave this exclusive email interview to Index on Censorship.
– Did you expect these consequences — arrests, criminal proceedings, your supporters being beaten and insulted by radical nationalists — when you planned your cathedral performance? Would you repeat the performance if you knew how this would end?
– We didn’t expect the arrest. We are a women’s group which is forced to consume the ideas of patriarchal conservative society. We experience each process that happens in this society. Besides, we are a punk band, which can perform in any public place, especially one which is maintained through our taxes. That’s why we would definitely repeat our prayer. It was worth it: look at the awakened pluralism — political and religious!
– The state remains intolerant towards much artistic expression. What about broader Russian society?
– We are trying to educate society and will definitely take the importance of this process into account in our further actions. We expect people to at least look through Wikipedia after watching us on YouTube.
– What must you do now to avoid arrests?
– After Putin’s inauguration, just wearing a white ribbon on your clothes — a symbol of protest — has become a reason for arrest in Moscow. So we don’t wear them now.
– Will you continue performing? You said that anonymity helps you replace the band members in case they get arrested. Have many people offered to join you?
– Many people have expressed their wish to participate in our perfomances and we are planning them right now. We don’t consider the patriarch[y]’s ignorant opinion and are not going to perform any protest songs against him personally.
– The Russian Orthodox church, according to notable human rights activists, has lost its right to establish moral standards after having severely condemned you, as did some intellectuals who preferred not to notice your persecution. Who, in your perspective, is likely to take their place?
– We think that one can learn moral values through literature, music and art, but definitely not in church. And as far as people are concerned, any human being who advocates humanistic ideas should support any prisoner who has lost her freedom because the authorities are afraid to give up their power.
Following an inauguration ceremony on Monday, Vladimir Putin is once again Russia’s president. After an absence of four years, Putin won a third term as president in controversial elections in March.
But as former President Dmitry Medvedev retook his role as Prime Minister — finalising the Putin-Medvedev job swap — Moscow was filled with thousands of policemen who blocked all central streets and central underground stations.
Putin’s opposition were also out in force. The opposition held a sanctioned march on Sunday which they believe drew a crowd of approximately 100,000 protesters in Bolshaya Yakimanka street in the centre of Moscow (some Russian news reports estimated the crowds at 20,000 people, while police said there were 8,000 people present).
The march — the largest since anti-Putin protests last December — was meant to end at a protest rally on Bolotnaya Square, but the square was blocked by metal detectors that prevented people from entering it quickly. As protesters spent what seemed like an eternity queuing up to pass through the detectors, their outrage grew. Losing hope, some sat down in the middle of the street while they waited to enter the square.
Then the protest stopped being peaceful.
Members of a radical youth group threw smoke bombs at the police, triggering mass arrests and beatings. Protesters then began throwing stones and asphalt, which hit journalists, policemen and fellow protesters.
Hundreds were arrested during the fray, including opposition leaders Sergei Udaltsov, Alexey Navalny and Boris Nemtsov. One photographer fell to his death while attempting to photograph the clashes.
Most of the arrested were released next day, but over 100 young men arrested during the protest have now been drafted into the military.
On the day of their release, protesters returned to the streets to walk peacefully with white ribbons — symbols of the latest protests — on Moscow’s central boulevards. Once again, the police blocked protesters, and attempted to force the crowds towards underground stations to go home. Protesters wandered around the boulevard in a bid to thwart the police’s attempt to disperse crowds and find a safe place to peacefully protest Putin’s return to power. Protesters finally settled in near the presidential administration. Police quickly move in to arrest protesters who remained near the building, including journalists from Kommersant, the Moscow Times and the Dozhd TV channel. RFE/RL Russian service reporters were threatened by policemen, who forced them to stop using video cameras, but managed to escape. Hundreds of arrests were made.
Leading human rights activist, Lev Ponomarev, who was arrested on 7 May for walking on a boulevard with a white ribbon, told Index that he congratulates Putin on establishing a Nazi regime on the day of his inauguration. He said the clashes between protesters and the police showed that “the Putin regime stopped pretending to respect human rights, particularly freedom of expression”.
A Moscow court has pronolonged the detention of three members of punk feminist group Pussy Riotdetention until the end of June.
The three alleged Pussy Riot Members are being prosecuted after performing a protest song “Mother of God, send Putin away” inside Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevich were arrested soon after the performance, in the run-up to Russian presidential elections, on charges of hooliganism. All of them deny the allegations and membership of Pussy Riot, who keep their identity hidden by wearing signature brightly coloured balaclavas.
The arrest caused a major public discussion about the Orthodox church relationship with the government and societyin Russia.
Political and human rights activists have staged a number of solitary pickets supporting Pussy Rio in the wake of the arrest. A significant theme in the protests is the fact that Tolokonnikova and Alekhina are mothers to small children. Radical nationalist groups have tried to break up protests, including yesterday’s, when Pussy Riot supporters, including Moscow’s leading poets and musicians, gathered near the court building to hold a “Court Festival”.
The activists read poems and give lectures in support of Pussy Riot. Thirty people were arrested by the police: both supporters and opponents of Pussy Riot.
The prosecution of is widely seen as politically motivated, as Vladimir Putin might have been offended by their song. Amnesty International has named the women “prisoners of consciense”.
