Press Release, October 27, 2013
YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin, head of YABLOKO Green Russia faction Alexei Yablokov, member of YABLOKO Political Committee and human rights advocate Valery Borshchev participated in the All-Russian campaign “Freedom to the Defenders of the Arctic”and in the opposition march for freedom of political prisoners on October 27.
“The arrest of Greenpeace activists is absurd. The authorities try to frighten as many people as possible to prevent them from protesting, but they won’t manage to frighten us, we will continue to express our opinion publically”, said Sergei Mitrokhin.

Alexei Yablokov called everyone to support the detained Greenpeace activists and to collect as many signatures as possible in support of them. “The Greenpeace activists do a very important political work: they attract the attention of the whole world to the lawlessness which takes place during the development of the Arctic and the development of natural resources in Russia. If we care about the biosphere, we must be against such development of oil resources”, said the environmentalist.

At first the activists conducted a flashmob, they carried white paper boats with them as a symbol of support to the Greenpeace activists. After that everybody joined a march in support of political prisoners at Pushkinskaya Square. More than 5 thousand people participated.

Answering to the journalists’ question, why YABLOKO participated in the march, Sergei Mitrokhin said that the main thing for YABLOKO is the struggle for fair justice. According to Mitrokhin, the law in Russia is not equal for everyone. This way, Vladimir Zhirinovsky should be prosecuted to Nazi statements. “But no one will arrest him despite my appeal to the Investigative Committee. The other people are prosecuted for smaller crimes or are arrested despite the fact that they are not guilty. That’s why we are for fair justice”, he said.

“We want to have rule of law and independent court in Russia, then there will be no political prisoners”, said Mitrokhin.

Valery Borshchev, one of the authors of the amnesty draft for the prisoners of the Bolotnaya Square Case, said:”This march unites the society against terror, lawlessness and reprisals”.

Valery Borshchev and Andrei Babushkin, member of YABLOKO Bureau and member of Presidential Council for Human Rights support a broad amnesty which is being prepared to mark the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution.

Nobody was detained after the march. The activists chanted slogans “For independent court”, “Russia without Putin”, “No to chekist rule”.