YABLOKO’s picket: “Heads of the Khimki police
to trial!”
Press Release
August 3, 2010
On August 3 YABLOKO conducted picketing by the Criminal
Police Department of the Moscow Region protesting against
arbitrary rule of the Khimki police under the slogan “Heads
of the Khimki police to trial!” The participants of the picket
demanded to bring to justice the policemen who had participated
in persecutions against the defenders of the Khimki Forest.
Leader of Khimiki ecologists Yevgenia Chirikova came to support
the picketers.
YABLOKO’s activists held slogans “Heads of the Khimki police
to trial!”, “Put an end to arbitrary rule by the Khimki police!”,
“Away with arbitrary rule of the Khimki police!”
“We have such a situation in Khimki that the smallest gathering
of people is prohibited and dispersed, while the efficiency
of the police work from the point of view of the law and the
citizens has been falling towards zero,” YABLOKO’s leader
Sergei Mitrokhin told in his speech at the picket. According
to Mitrokhin, an attack against journalist Mikhail Beketov
is still uninvestigated (editor-in-chief of and independent
Khimki Pravda paper defending the Khimki Forest who was beaten
virtually to death and left to die. To-date Beketov is handicapped),
and none of the policemen dared to opposed the attack of hooligans
against the Khimki administration. “The Khimki police is not
simply exercising arbitrary rule, it is even dangerous for
the society,” Mitrokhin added.
Leader of Khimiki ecologists Yevgenia Chirikova jolined the
picket. Due to faked accusations Chirikova and a number of
her colleagues have to hide as they and their relatives are
persecuted by police.
“Now we have a so-called “mini-Stalinism” in Khimki: they
can detain a person on the street under faked pretexts and
get him imprisoned. We had this in our history only in Stalin’s
period,” the ecologist said. She also said that the ecologists
were not protesting against construction of a highway in general,
“We only want the highway to change its route and go past
the forest”. This is especially important, she added, when
we have such extremely hot summer and many forests are on
fire. “We should preserve every tree,” Chirikiva said.
The local authorities gave a permission for a picket of five
persons only. So all the other participants had to stand at
some distance so that not to provoke more detentions.
