Kasparov, Anti-Kremlin Activists Detained In Moscow

MOSCOW, Russia -- Former world chess champion Gary Kasparov and at least 170 other anti-Kremlin activists were detained Saturday when hundreds of riot police sealed off a central Moscow square and clubbed some protesters to prevent a banned opposition rally and march.

Garry Kasparov, a former world chess champion, seen at a news conference in Moscow, Thursday, April 12, 2007. Kasparov who became a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin's government, and members of the group called Other Russia, held a march to downtown Moscow on Saturday, despite city authorities refusal to allow it.
"They are seizing people everywhere so that any group of people that look even the least bit suspicious is immediately arrested, not just blocked, but arrested, harshly," said Kasparov in a cell phone interview with the radio station Echo Moskvy after his arrest. He waved to supporters from a police van before he was driven off.

Police later broke up a demonstration outside the police station where he was being held. Protesters shouting "freedom for political prisoners" were kicked and clubbed by police.

Earlier, lines of police, including undercover officers pointing out vocal demonstrators, quickly moved in on anyone who began to chant slogans or who tried to galvanize people milling around the police cordon.

Some elderly women, carrying flowers and copies of the Russian constitution, were knocked down or hauled away. A number of journalists were also arrested, but officials said they were quickly released.

Kasparov is one of the leaders of the Other Russia, an opposition coalition that called on its supporters to assemble in Pushkin Square despite a decision by the city authorities to ban any gathering by the group there.

"The authorities are afraid of us, they are nervous," said former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who broke with President Vladimir Putin and is now a leader of the Other Russia and a potential presidential candidate. "Why can free people not walk? Why are they beaten?"

The coalition has held a series of marches in Russian cities in recent weeks, all of which have been suppressed, sometimes violently, by riot police. Another is planned for St. Petersburg Sunday.

Kasparov and his supporters say they plan to continue to step up their protests in advance of parliamentary and presidential elections in the next 12 months. They charge that Putin has constrained Russian democracy and is managing the election process to prevent a free choice.

Local authorities stressed that they did provide a permit for a demonstration at another location where Kasyanov later spoke to several hundred people.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said the Other Russia -- by seeking to stage a march where it was not permitted -- was looking for a confrontation with the police.

"We have sanctioned a large number of events, both pro-government and pro-presidential and also anti-government ones," Luzhkov told journalists on Saturday. "We live in a free and democratic country and allow the expression of both agreement and disagreement with the government.

Processions are a problem to us. We have not allowed pro-presidential organizations to hold them as well and suggested that they find a large place for a rally. We act similarly with anti-government organizations who want to express their protest to the authorities."

Officials said 9,000 police and Interior Ministry troops were deployed at different locations across the city.

The authorities appear unwilling to allow opposition gatherings except at locations where the crowds can be easily contained by large numbers of police.

A pro-government youth group was allowed to rally Saturday on Pushkin square where about 150 people gathered inside the police cordon.

The Kremlin, in particular, appears to be haunted by the memory of street demonstrations in neighboring Georgia and Ukraine where the crowds grew exponentially and eventually toppled governments after fraudulent elections.

"The authorities want to scare the opposition," said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. "There are always radical activists who will go out on the street but this show of force was psychological pressure designed for those who want to go out but are unsure and want to be safe."

Kasparov's Other Russia, despite the attention it receives from the authorities, remains a very marginal group in this country, where the overwhelming majority of the population either supports Putin or is indifferent to politics.

And the opposition itself is divided. Some opposition figures, including the leaders of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, have distanced themselves for the Other Russia because of the presence of radicals such as the National Bolsheviks.

At the sanctioned rally Saturday afternoon, the political satirist Viktor Shenderovich chided some of the young radicals in the crowd telling them to ease up on the talk of revolution. The authorities, he said, have "an inferiority complex."

"Our job is to develop that complex," he said.

Source: Washington Post