Информация о последних преследованиях нижегородских активистов попала в доклад международной правозащитной организации Human Rights Watch. Авторы доклады отмечают, что давление на общество властей России за критику в свой адрес, растет.
Nizhniy Novgorod
On January 27, police from Nizhny Novgorod’s Extremism Prevention Unit arrested four activists from the political opposition movement The Other Russia as they discussed logistical details for a February 4 protest. The human rights organization Agora reported that law enforcement officers said the activists were detained on grounds they “look like criminals who committed a robbery.” After being held in police custody for hours, all four were charged with participation in an unsanctioned gathering, and one was also charged with disobeying police orders. All were later sentenced to fines in administrative court hearings.
On February 19, an unidentified person attacked Alexei Sadomovsky, one of the organizers of the voters’ rights’ movement For Fair Elections, when he was on his way to a rally in support of fair elections. The assailant got out of a car outside Sadomovsky’s apartment building, hit him in the face, and kicked him in the head after he fell to the ground. He had a concussion and had multiple bruises on his face.
Sadomovsky told Human Rights Watch that he had little doubt that the attack was a direct result of his active role in organizing protests during the election period. “First, they knew exactly where I was going that day and were waiting right outside my apartment building to stop me,” he told Human Rights Watch. “Second, I never had problems of this nature before – not until I got involved in political activism.” He filed a police report but said he had not been able to find out whether a criminal investigation had been opened.
In December, Sadomovsky received a phone call from a deputy dean of the university from which he had graduated a year and a half earlier, inviting him for a conversation. When he declined, the deputy dean told him that there was, in fact, an FSB officer already on the university premises wanting to talk to him. The same day, while Sadomovsky’s mother was at work, an FSB officer asked her supervisor to pressure her son to stop his “internet activism against Putin.”
Nikolai Nikolaev, another leading For Fair Elections activist, was assaulted on February 4 by a group of men in civilian clothing. Nikolaev told Human Rights Watch that the men approached him on the street as he was returning with a group of friends from a rally in support of fair elections. The men introduced themselves as FSB officers but showed no identification.
Nikolaev refused to get into their car, but they forced him in. After they rode for a short period of time, the car stopped and another man got in. Without introducing himself, he told Nikolaev to stop attending protests and threatened him with violence if he did not leave Nizhny Novgorod.
The men hit Nikolaev multiple times on the head and shoulders with their elbows and fists. They drove him a few more blocks and threw him out of the car. Nikolaev suffered multiple bruises and an arm injury. Nikolaev reported the attack to police, but has not been able to find out whether a criminal investigation has been opened.
Nikolaev told Human Rights Watch that he recognized one of the men in the car as an officer from the Nizhny Novgorod police’s Extremism Prevention Unit. The officer’s face was also clearly recognizable on a video made with a cell phone camera by one of Nikolaev’s friends when Nikolaev was being forced into the car.
On the afternoon of January 30, Nizhny Novgorod police arrested a local political activist, Anna Kuznetsova. She was charged with failure to pay a fine for organizing an unauthorized rally on July 31.
Kuznetsova is a main organizer of the Strategy-31 rally in defense of freedom of assembly in Russia, which has been taking place on the 31st day of each month with 31 days in many Russian cities for the last two years. Kuznetsova had been organizing a rally to take place in Nizhny Novgorod the day after her arrest.
Kuznetsova told Human Rights Watch that she had not received a fine notice in the mail prior to her arrest, nor had there been a court order saying she had committed an offense, but she offered to pay the fine on the spot. The police declined.
She was then taken to administrative court, which was already closed for the day, but an administrative hearing took place anyway. Kuznetsova’s lawyer, husband, and sister were not allowed into the court building, and no defense witnesses were at the hearing. Kuznetsova was promptly sentenced to two days of administrative arrest.
Kuznetsova also told Human Rights Watch that while she was in administrative detention, she was visited by an officer of the Nizhny Novgorod police’s Extremism Prevention Unit. In an “informal conversation,” she said, the officer threatened Kuznetsova that if she “keeps up with all the protest activity” she will “never get out of this place.”
