Russia cracks down on G8 protesters

Political dissent is not what it used to be in the city that cradled the Bolshevik Revolution. Anti-globalization protesters in St. Petersburg, Russia, say they have been hampered at every turn by authorities seeking to keep the focus firmly on the official agenda of this past weekend's summit of G8 leaders. Russia is for the first time chairing the G8, an informal club of powerful nations that also includes Canada, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Japan. President Bush and other leaders met in St. Petersburg this past weekend to discuss a range of issues, such as energy security, education and the global fight against infectious diseases. Russia's chairmanship of the G8 has come under fire from critics who accuse the Kremlin of reversing democratic reforms and stifling dissent since President Vladimir Putin came to power six years ago. If further proof of Russia's authoritarian tendencies was needed, opposition leaders said, events leading up to the summit have provided it. "Systematic repression against the Russian opposition has become in fact the prelude to the G8 summit in St. Petersburg–that is to say, part of its agenda," said a statement released on July 12 by participants at the "Other Russia" conference, a meeting of prominent opposition figures held in Moscow this past week. The "anti-summit" was an attempt to persuade the West to get tough with the Russian leader. Speaker after speaker complained about the state of democracy and urged G8 leaders to stop treating Putin as a democrat. The event was marred by heavy-handed policing, with the venue, a hotel in central Moscow, flanked by 13 busloads of riot police including special forces and plain clothes FSB security service agents. The former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, one of the anti-summit's main organizers, said the Kremlin was trying to frighten delegates. "They are trying to impose fear and to show nobody is protected, even in the conference venue," he said. "If you want to know what's going on, just go downstairs. The FSB has just arrested four of our people." Kasparov, one of Putin's most implacable opponents, said he believed the alternative summit was necessary to allow the opposition to develop common principles so it could become a viable force before parliamentary elections next year and a presidential election in 2008. He complained the run-up to the anti-summit had been marred by violence and the arrest of about 40 opposition activists. Above all, he said, he wanted the leaders of the G8 publicly to hold Russia accountable as a democracy. The authorities gave the forum permission to hold a protest in a crumbling suburban stadium, a world away from the lavish 18th century Constantine Palace where the G8 was holding its annual meeting. About 100 protesters–almost lost in a stadium designed to seat thousands–decided to "break out." They wanted to take to the streets, some calling for a march to the Aurora battleship, whose crew joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and which is moored as a museum ship in the city. Chanting "Russia is not a prison," "freedom" and "no to the G8," the protesters made it as far as the locked stadium gates where a police officer told them that they would be arrested if they broke public order laws. "They are scared that people will hear the truth about Putin's regime," said Lev Ponomarov, head of the All Russia Movement for Human Rights. "Do you think we have freedom in Russia behind bars like these?" he told reporters crowding around the stadium gates. Like other activists, he said the reason for the tiny number of protesters was police action to stop people from coming, although he said he had no hard and fast numbers of those detained. An additional problem for organizers was the inability of foreign anti-globalization activists to get to St. Petersburg. The expense of traveling to Russia and the country's strict visa regime deterred all but a handful of activists, said Guy Taylor of UK-based Globalize Resistance, a key organizer of demonstrations at last year's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. A number of activists, including a group of 11 Scottish anti-poverty campaigners who have cycled to every G-8 summit since 1998, have been refused entry to Russia. "It's a shame people [couldn't] attend. It's all part of wider trend of G8 meetings becoming less and less accessible, by disappearing up mountains, for example," Taylor said, in a reference to the 2002 G8 summit, held in Kananaskis, Canada. "I think it's a sign of weakness that the G8 has to run away from activists with the freedom to protest."