Buzek slams Moscow for protester crackdown

"On behalf of the European Parliament I have to express my consternation on hearing of the detention of some 100 people, including Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights centre and laureate of the Sakharov Prize 2009," Buzek said in a written statement yesterday (1 February). The European Parliament notes that this is the second time since the 2009 Sakharov Prize was awarded in Strasbourg last December that one of its laureates has been arrested. On 31 December 2009, 82 year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva faced similar action merely for defending the constitutional right to demonstrate freely and peacefully. On Sunday, Russian police detained up to 100 anti-Kremlin protesters, including leading opposition figure Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow on Sunday, despite an appeal by rights group Amnesty International to let the rally go ahead. Hundreds of people gathered to protest against what they see as a long-running Kremlin campaign to dismantle the constitutional right to peaceful protest, one of the few avenues open to Russia's weak and fragmented opposition. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, is leader of the opposition group Solidarity and one of the toughest critics of the Kremlin and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. At least 200 policemen cordoned off the square with 30 police vans before the rally. They refrained from detaining people for the first half-hour, shouting "Citizens, please clear the path. Don't block the pedestrians!" Protesters shouted "Shame!" and "Russia without Putin!" At least 300 people tried to join the meeting and 100 were detained, Interfax news agency quoted police spokesman Viktor Biryukov as saying. Between 7,000 and 10,000 people gathered for similar protests on Saturday in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania. The march was organised by local Kaliningrad rights group Spravedlivost (Justice), which claims to be apolitical. A number of Kaliningrad protesters chanted anti-Putin slogans, but a resolution passed by a show of hands focused on economic issues, including pensions, the transport tax and the price of petrol, said march organiser Konstantin Doroshok.