| By Kathy Lally
YEKATERINBURG, Russia Last Halloween, the opposition here
put together a daring demonstration, portraying Vladimir Putin
as Count Dracula and President Dmitry Medvedev as Frankenstein.
Lesser officials were turned into a collection of werewolves
and mummies, and licking their lips they boiled and drank
the people's blood in the form of cranberry juice.
"People laughed," said Evgeny Legedin, one of the
organizers. "That is the strongest weapon against a dictator.
They can't stand it."
A year later, Yekaterinburg's activists are paying for their
fearlessness. Legedin is in England, seeking political asylum.
Maxim Petlin, an outspoken city councilman, is in pretrial
detention on bribery charges. Sergei Kuznetsov, a longtime
dissident, has fled to Israel. Another activist made his way
to Britain last week. A fifth critic, Igor Konygin, keeps
up the fight, threatened with arrest at any time.
"The authorities believe people should all think the
same way," said Konygin, who has already endured one
jail sentence. "So everyone who shows opposition is in
jail. It's a sign to everyone else."
Legedin said the authorities in Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest
city, where the Bolsheviks murdered the last czarist family,
became less tolerant than usual over the last year as this
December's parliamentary elections began to loom. The ruling
United Russia party considers anything less than 60 percent
of the vote unacceptable failure. In 2008, he said, a presidential
envoy was sent from Moscow to clamp down.
If United Russia shows any vulnerability, the whole calculation
of Russian politics changes. The party represents Prime Minister
Putin's grasp on the country. And, as he plans to return to
the presidency after elections in March, he wants to look
stronger than ever with the economy and social contract showing
strain. That leaves little room for independent officeholders.
On Thursday, a liberal politician, Leonid Volkov, was disqualified
from running for the regional legislature after a handwriting
analyst ruled that 77 signatures on a petition were false
Volkov calculated it took 7.5 seconds to examine each one,
given when the expert was called in. Eventually 154 were disqualified,
some because the names had been signed at a faster speed than
the dates next to them. Volkov is suing.
In February, Petlin, an activist member of the liberal Yabloko
party, was accused of taking a bribe from a well-connected
development company to drop his campaign against the construction
of a shopping mall that would destroy a park and encroach
on a cemetery.
When he was charged, a hundred people filled the courtroom,
said Vyacheslav Bashkov, a member of a public commission that
monitors human rights in the Sverdlosk region's prison system,
eager to prevent his detention while the investigation proceeded.
"It was almost a small revolution," Bashkov said.
"He was set free."
Petlin, now 38 and the only Yabloko member in the 28-seat
city Duma, kept battling the shopping center. On Aug, 26,
his freedom was revoked and he was taken to pretrial Detention
Center No. 1, which is so overcrowded, Bashkov said, that
each cell holds twice its capacity. People sleep on the floor,
or take turns on the beds. Tuberculosis and hepatitis are
rampant. "We are talking about innocent people who haven't
been tried," he said.
A few days ago, with prosecutors still unprepared to try
him, Petlin's detention was extended until Dec. 22.
"I think he had an idea about the scale of the corruption,"
said Petlin's wife, Tatyana, "but none of us could even
imagine this."
Delayed consequences
Petlin was part of Strategy 31, which organized the Halloween
protest and demonstrates on the 31st of every 31-day month
in support of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which
guarantees freedom of assembly. Other cities more often than
not refuse permission for the rallies and haul away the demonstrators,
but Yekaterinburg has allowed them. Here, the consequences
come later.
In mid-July, investigators accused Legedin and Konygin of
slander, a criminal offense, for holding up a picture of the
chief prosecutor in a public square along with a sign saying
"No to Corruption." The offense carries a prison
sentence of up to three years.
Legedin was frightened. Earlier in the summer he had applied
for a British visa, hoping to visit England in August or September.
When it arrived in August, he left. At Heathrow airport, he
asked for political asylum, leaving behind his job at a pharmaceutical
company.
"I didn't want to leave my country," he said, "but
if I stayed, I knew I would go to prison. I don't want that."
Kuznetsov, a 54-year-old human rights activist and journalist,
had been campaigning hard on behalf of Petlin, said his wife,
Olga Moiseyeva. The authorities had never forgiven him for
a successful suit he filed with the European Court of Human
Rights, which in 2008 upheld the right to freedom of peaceful
assembly in Russia. In May, he began to hear disturbing rumors
that the powers-that-be had had enough of him and intended
to destroy him. Kuznetsov decided he should flee.
After reaching Turkey and then Israel on tourist visas, he
decided he would go on to Britain without a visa, Moiseyeva
said. That proved a serious mistake. He was prevented from
boarding a flight and arrested. Israel wants to deport him
to Russia, she said. He remains in an Israeli prison, trying
to find a country that will accept him.
'Declarations to actions'
Konygin was a lieutenant colonel in the police department
in 2003 when his bosses asked him to support them in a scam,
he said, signing false documents so they could help themselves
to federal funds coming in from Moscow.
"I refused," he said, "and I was fired."
Challenging his dismissal, he got his job back. A week later,
on Dec. 29, 2004, he was charged with stealing the money
the ruble equivalent of $200,000 that he had refused to
sign off on. After two years in pretrial detention, he was
sentenced to four years. Unbeknownst to him, his sister, told
he would be freed if there were some restitution, sold her
apartment and paid $50,000. It didn't help.
In September 2007, his parents' home in a village 25 miles
from Yekaterinburg mysteriously burned down. The fire department
found no water available, Konygin said. His 70-year-old father
died in the fire.
"I was not allowed to go to the funeral," he said.
After his release on parole in January 2008, he began a campaign
to clear his name. Soon the police department filed charges,
insisting he repay the remaining $150,000.
Konygin, 43, and his wife now run a digital print shop. His
clash with the authorities frightens her, and they argue about
it. But they have three children, and he does not want them
to hear their father called a thief.
"If we're ever going to establish the rule of law, we
have to go from declarations to actions," he said. "I
decided to act."
In July, he was accused in the slander case along with Legedin.
He intends to stay.
"I was born here," he said. "It's my home
town, and I love it."
See also:
The
original publication
FSB provocation against
YABLOKOs Maxim Petlin. Press Release, February, 25, 2011
YABLOKOs
leader Sergei Mitrokhin spoke at an anti-corruption rally
in the Sverdlovsk region. Press Release, September
25, 2011
Elections
to the State Duma 2011
Human
Rights
Freedom
of Speech
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