Beaten
Marchers Take Battle To Court
By Galina Stolyarova
Staff Writer
Opposition politicians, who took to the streets on March 3 to participate in a march of dissenters, are gearing up to continue their battle in court. They are planning to file suits against Governor Valentina Matviyenko for libel and the local police for excessive use of violence against the peaceful demonstration and at least one St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly lawmaker. The Assembly held its final session on Wednesday ahead of elections to be held on Sunday. Lawmakers Mikhail Amosov and Natalya Yevdokimova, who had both attended the dissenters’ march, used the session to send a parliamentary inquiry to Matviyenko. The governor faces three questions: n who ordered Yabloko activists and other participants in the march to be detained and is going to be held responible for detentions? N who ordered parliamentarian Sergei Gulyayev to be detained and beaten, and who will be punished for it? N who requested additional police force units from other regions be sent to St.Petersburg, exactly how many police were deployed against the march and who funded the mission? Despite the massive presence of police in riot gear, no ambulances were seen on or near the scene. Opposition leaders say some of the detainees were left for several hours without medical assistance until their lawyers intervened. “Deputy Sergei Gulyayev was detained in an exceptionally violent way, with the police exercising demonstraive use of force,” reads the parliamentary inquiry. “When he was already in the police car, the lawmaker was brutally beaten once again, and he was knocked unconcious.” Gulyayev, who was taken to Yelizavetinskaya Hospital, is determined to find those who beat him and bring them to justice. “As they dragged me to the police car, kicking me in the process, I heard one of them urging the others to hit me harder,” the deputy recalls. “However difficult it was for me to move, I managed to look at the man, and I remember his face very well.” The march of dissenters organizers also brought up the matter at the State Duma in Moscow on Wednesday. Just Russia lawmaker Alexander Chuyev suggested that the Duma’s security committee investigates the circumstances of the police’s actions and informs the parliament of the result. “We must know what motivated the police to use force against civilians who took part in the march,” Chuyev said. “The police even even beat deputies with truncheons.” But Chuyev failed to find enough supporters for his initiative and it was buried by the Duma. “The march was yet another major provocation of [National Bolshevik leader Eduard] Limonov and [United Civil Front leader Garry] Kasparov,” said Duma lawmaker Sergei Abeltsev of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. The LDPR is a nationalist bloc that generally supports Kremlin-backed United Russia, according to Interfax. One of the slogans dominating the protest was “Free Elections,” and march participants expressed frustration over the course of the election campaign, from which Yabloko was excluded on a disputed technicality. “Our favourite party was blocked from elections, we can no longer vote ‘against all,’ so the only thing left to us to show our opinion really is street politics,” said Oleg, 33, a marcher. “But even then we have armed police let loose on us.” Gulyayev is preparing to file a case against Matviyenko for libel. “I will file the case against Matviyenko not as a governor but as an individual, who distributed lies about our initiative,” Gulyayev said. Matviyenko had appeared on Channel 5 news bulletins in the evening before the march denouncing the planned demonstration and warning people not to join what she called “the extremists.” Frequent warnings broadcast on public address systems on street corners and in the metro advised people to stay away. Volunteers distributing leaflets about the march were also detained by the police. One of the people detained included Gulyayev’s elderly mother. Anna Sharogradskaya, head of the Regional Press Institute, said that in the Soviet era individuls understood the oppressive power of the state. Now things have changed. “We are told that life gets better in Russia, while in reality the liberties are shrinking,” Sharogradskaya said. “It is like a virus that constantly mutates: when you manage to produce an antidote to fight it, a different new strain pops up and you are defenceless against it.”
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