21 May 2007 | Uncategorized
For four months at the end of 2005, I was given access to an extraordinary series of Foreign Office documents concerning the government’s strategy to tackle the threat of radical Islam at home and abroad. Literally dozens of emails, position papers and policy discussions came my way. It became clear that someone within Whitehall was deeply disturbed about the direction of British foreign policy, especially the strategy of engagement with groups and individuals on the Islamist extreme right. At one point I was receiving so many documents that I barely had time to read their contents, let alone judge whether there was a story in them.
But stories there were. The documents showed that senior figures in the Foreign Office believed that Britain’s policy in Iraq had led to an increase in radicalism among young Muslims, something the prime minister was denying at the time. I published the story in the Observer, where I was working as home affairs editor. But that was just the beginning.
The leaks provided me with a further news story for the Observer about plans to infiltrate extremist groups, and with features for the New Statesman on CIA rendition flights, diplomatic engagement with Egypt’s banned opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the panic that had engulfed the Foreign Office as a result of the disclosures. The documents also formed the basis of a Channel 4 documentary on the government’s troubled relationship with radical Islam and an accompanying pamphlet, When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries, for the think tank Policy Exchange. The leaks were a journalistic goldmine. The revelations about the compact between the Foreign Office and radical Islam also went some way towards changing government policy towards the self-appointed representatives of Britain’s Muslim community, such as the Muslim Council of Britain.
It is difficult to imagine a series of documents that could have been more in the public interest to disclose. Decisions being made in the Foreign Office, with a direct effect on the British people, were taking place with little or no consultation. In particular, the Foreign Office had embarked on a detailed strategy of engagement with Islamists at home and abroad without reference to Parliament or even, it seemed, the prime minister himself.
owever, at the end of January 2006 my source was arrested under suspicion of breaching the Official Secrets Act. I have not heard from him since. The latest news is that he has been bailed until June, while investigations continue. By then, his life will have been held in suspension for 18 months: this at a time when Labour politicians complain that the ‘loans for peerages’ investigation has dragged on for a mere 12 months with no charges being brought.
If, and when, the case comes to trial it will provide a fascinating test of the secrecy laws. The documents, many of which have been collected in the Policy
Exchange pamphlet, are also available online. They provide a unique insight into government thinking on Islam between 2001 and 2006, a period that encompasses the suicide attacks on New York and the bombing of London. Reading through them again, it is difficult to imagine how national security can have been seriously compromised by the disclosures, which contributed considerably to the national debate on one of the most important issues of our time. Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly is known to have been influenced by the disclosures in making her decision to seek new grassroots Muslim partners in the battle for hearts and minds. The Policy Exchange pamphlet has also helped inform the Conservative policy group on national and international security headed by Pauline Neville-Jones, a former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee who also served as political director in the Foreign Office. It would be a delicious spectacle to see Kelly and Neville-Jones called as witnesses for the defence in any
trial that results from the Foreign Office leaks.
However, it is not difficult to see what motivated the arrest. The leaks were proving intensely embarrassing and coincided with a crackdown across Whitehall against unauthorised disclosures. This had been sparked by a separate leak of a memo said to outline plans by President George W Bush to bomb the Arabic television station Al Jazeera in April 2004. Following the publication of the claims in the Mirror, Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh and parliamentary researcher Leo O’Connor were charged under the Official Secrets Act.
In opposition, the Labour Party had fought the introduction of the 1989 Official Secrets Act, arguing that a ‘public interest’ defence should be inserted
into the legislation to give protection to genuine whistleblowers. During the parliamentary debate, Shadow Home Affairs spokesman Roy Hattersley said that the definition of harm to national security ‘is so wide and so weak that it is difficult to imagine any revelation which is followed by a prosecution not
resulting in a conviction’. Frank Dobson, who went on to serve in Tony Blair’s first cabinet, added: ‘Surely we as a Parliament have not sunk so low
that we want to introduce new laws to protect official wrongdoing.’
Once in power, the Labour Party had no such qualms. The Blair government has wielded the big stick of the Official Secrets Act with alarming regularity since it came to power. In August 1997, just months after winning an election on a promise of new openness and transparency in government, the new government faced a serious predicament in the person of David Shayler, an MI5 officer whose revelations about the intelligence service were published in the Mail on Sunday.
These included details of files kept on senior Labour politicians such as Jack Straw, Peter Mandelson and Harriet Harman. More seriously, Shayler later claimed that officers from Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, had participated in a plot to assassinate Colonel Qaddafi of Libya.
Despite the fact that Shayler’s claims referred to a period before Labour came to power, the new government pursued him relentlessly, requesting his
extradition from France, where he had set up home after leaving the security service. This pursuit extended to journalists who wrote about Shayler, and in
2000 I found myself in court after publishing an article in the Observer about the Libya plot, in which I said the newspaper had been given the names of the spies allegedly involved in the plot, but had been prevented from publishing them for legal reasons. (The officers’ names, David Watson and Richard Bartlett, have since entered the public domain, but they have never been prosecuted for their
alleged crimes.)
The Observer successfully fought an order to hand over all documents relating to my dealings with David Shayler and established an important precedent in media law that has made it more difficult to seize journalistic material. But it did not help David Shayler, who returned to Britain in 2000 to face trial. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in November 2002 for breaching the
Official Secrets Act, after more than five years of fighting for his claims to be investigated by the government.
David Shayler did not succeed in his own case, but his lawyers did establish an important precedent for future whistleblowers. In 2002, the House of Lords had decided that Shayler’s lawyers could not use a public interest defence. It also decided that the 1989 OSA was compatible with human rights legislation.
However, it did establish that in certain cases a ‘defence of necessity’ could be used if a whistleblower had acted because there was an imminent threat
to human life.
Less than six months later an opportunity arose to test the legislation. In March
2003 as the military preparations for war in Iraq gathered pace, a young woman in her late 20s walked into her boss’s office at GCHQ, the government’s secret eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, and admitted to leaking a document of the highest possible classification of secrecy. Katharine Gun, a junior Mandarin Chinese translator, knew her career was at an end and that she could face a long prison sentence. But she believed the contents of an email she had received in the course of her work could stop the war. She believed her action could save lives.
The email, dated 31 January 2003, was from Frank Koza, head of regional targets at the National Security Agency in the United States, and asked for British help in spying on the United Nations, which was immersed in an intense debate about whether to authorise an attack on Iraq. Britain was arguing for a second UN resolution to specifically sanction the invasion, without which many thought the war would be illegal.
Key to any vote were the so called ‘swing’ nations, Chile, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea and Angola, temporary members of the Security Council,
whose votes were essential in gaining legal cover for the war. Koza was demanding a ‘surge’ in spying activities to give the US an ‘edge’ in the negotiations.
He was desperate to know the voting intentions of the ‘swing six’, but also hinted that private information about individual diplomats should be amassed in case blackmail was necessary.
I ran the story about the leaked email in the Observer on 4 March 2003, three weeks before the outbreak of war. It had taken nearly a month from leaking the document to its appearance in the press and Gun was in a state of almost unbearable tension. She immediately owned up to being the source of the leak and was arrested by the police for a suspected breach of the Official Secrets Act. Gun believed that when the UN discovered what was going on, they
would never allow the war to go ahead. What she didn’t realise at the time Katharine Gun after charges against her were dropped, London February 2004
was that George W Bush had already decided on regime change in Baghdad, with or without the United Nations.
However, when the case finally came to trial in February 2004, the prosecution failed to present any evidence and the case was dropped before it had begun. At the time, speculation suggested that the government had decided to drop the case because it would have led to the publication of the attorney general’s legal advice on the legality of the war, which was initially equivocal. But the Crown Prosecution Service always said that the reason was far more banal: that it had become clear that it would be impossible to fight Gun’s defence that she had acted
to save lives.
Although it is impossible to know precisely why the government dropped the Gun case, it is probably fair to say that the ‘defence of necessity’, established by David Shayler, helped save Katharine Gun from prison. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the government has indicated its intention to close down the defence in future cases. Last July, The Times reported the intention of the new Home Secretary, John Reid, to remove the necessity defence and suggested that he would present the necessary legislation in last autumn’s Queen’s Speech. This did not materialise, due to a lack of parliamentary time. But the Home Office has confirmed that it is keeping the OSA under review and will revisit the defence of
necessity as soon as it can.
Campaigners still believe an amendment to the 1989 Act is imminent. Julie-Ann Davies, who was arrested in connection with the Shayler case in 2000, has
spent the past seven years researching Britain’s secrecy laws and is currently studying for a PhD at Glasgow University. She said: ‘I have no doubt the government intends to act. Whenever a window of public interest opens up, they close it.’ Former senior BBC journalist Nick Jones is now chair of Reform the Official Secrets Act (Rosa), which campaigns for a public interest defence for whistleblowers in national security cases. He said the Al Jazeera trial marked an intensification in the drive for government secrecy: ‘There does seem to be a new push, triggered by the war on terror, to restrain journalists who want to write in this area. Meanwhile, all talk of protecting whistleblowers has disappeared in a puff of
smoke.’
The paradox is that in the present circumstances the more serious the disclosure, the more chance of running a successful defence. My source, for example, who could only be accused of leaking ‘confidential’ rather than ‘secret’ documents, would not have recourse to the necessity defence. He would have to fall back on a defence that said he had acted in the public interest, something of which Labour seems to have lost sight after ten long years in government.
Martin Bright is political editor of the New Statesman
Subscribe to Index on Censorship here
30 Apr 2007 | Azerbaijan News, Comment
What was initially billed as a celebration of the importance of religious and cultural tolerance and understanding turned into something a bit harder edged when the 56 nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) held a major conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani foreign minister Elmar Mammadyarov voices pride in his country as a ‘land of tolerance’ where – and by and large it is true – people live in a spirit of ‘harmony in difference’ regardless of ethnic origin and religious affiliation.
The April 26-27 conference on the Role of Media in the Development of Tolerance & Mutual Understanding drew more than 180 delegates to Baku at a timely moment in the wider debate.
The UN has appointed the former Portuguese president Jorge Sampaio as High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, to promote reconciliation between religions, cultures and nations. And the world body’s human rights committee has just passed a controversial resolution aimed at stopping ‘defamation’ of religions in general and Islam in particular.
In Baku the lead conference participants very quickly got to their point: that a key problem was the media’s failure to take proper professional responsibility for its various deeds.
‘Both democracy and liberty are senseless if the citizens, the institutions, the state and the media do not have the highest sense of responsibility in all that they do,’ said keynote speaker Ion Iliescu, former president of Romania.
Iliescu cited the case of Don Imus, the US radio station ‘shock jock’ fired after voicing one racist epithet too many for his employers. Forced to choose between audiences, profit, and social responsibility, they chose the last and dismissed him, he said. ‘(Was that) an infringement of freedom of expression?’ Illiescu asked. ‘Obviously not!’
The Imus case was to Iliescu’s eyes, black and white. There were no greys to confuse his judgment when asked whether it was right to qualify the basic human right of freedom of expression solely in the name of racial tolerance and community cohesion.
Taking up the theme, a series of speakers lined up to call on the western media to stop ‘belittling or denigrating’ Islam, in the words of one Egyptian delegate. Yet often the long term beneficiary of such thinking is not mutual understanding, let alone tolerance, but the ambitions of governments to manage communities and constrain political debate.
Examples were close to hand. Only days before, Azeri opposition journalist Eynulla Fatullayev had been jailed in Baku for criminally libeling – ‘belittling or denigrating’ perhaps – an Azeri community in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan efficiently manages the activities of its own Muslim Sunni and Shia communities, plus its various Christian communities and 15,000 Azeri Jews through its State Committee for Work with Religious Associations.
The conference debate tracked the issue on through detailed calls from the Muslim delegates for tolerance, mutual understanding and mutual respect. Director-General Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri of the OIC’s cultural agency cited the UNESCO declaration on tolerance, a quality that is ‘above all an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others’, and cannot be used to justify infringements of these fundamental values.
Yet the debate still echoed the discussion surrounding the controversial passing of a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council on Combating Defamation of Religions on 30 March. The resolution, though not new – versions of it have been passed every year since 9/11 by the Council’s predecessor body at the UN – has been widely criticised.
Opponents argue that the resolution does little to protect the rights of the believer or their right to freedom of religious belief, and justifies specific controls on the believers’ rights to freedom of expression. The motion puts the focus on confronting defamation, suggesting that artists, writers and dissidents in states where religion has a political context could find their work censored to protect the ‘reputation’ of a particular faith.
In Baku these suspicions were fed by a recurring conference theme; that the western media is a homogenous force with a hostile agenda.
It was not a traditionally censorious position: Mammadyarov was one of many leading speakers to defend the principle of self-regulation of the media. However he argued that it had a ‘key role in preventing irresponsibility of media outlets and (to) encourage media to use its potential for the sake of peace and dialogue between cultures, rather than for the instigation of inter-religious and inter cultural tensions.’
Ironically though, many delegates who accused the western media of simplistically reading Islam as extremist and terroristic, were sometimes just as simplistic in their analysis of the western media itself.
Citing a 2001 Newsweek article by Indian Muslim born US journalist Fareed Zakaria headlined ‘Why Do They Hate Us?’ Egyptian senior editor Mohammed Imbrahim el-Desouky of the daily al-Ahram argued that this kind of coverage presented a picture that fostered hostility.
Miklos Haraszti, chief representative on free expression issues at the Organisation for Security & Cooperation in Europe, was not so sure, contending that Zakaria’s article was a self-reflective look at US policy in the post 9/11 context. Western published opinion on US policy was more diverse and self-critical than many speakers from Muslim nations were suggesting.
What about the other side of the coin, asked Reinhard Meier, deputy editor of the Swiss daily Neue Zuricher Zeitung. ‘Is the reporting and information about pluralistic realities more objective and fairer in the media of Islamic countries?’ Furthermore the problem, thanks to the Internet, had gone beyond the realm of the conventional mainstream media.
Haraszti suggested that Islamist groups that issued fatwas that incited violence against writers and journalists should be prosecuted in their home countries. Meier recognized the problem of unbalanced reporting and a tendency to generalize and stereotype among journalists. But the “level of imperfection” was not the same everywhere.
Five journalists are now in jail in Azerbaijan. Fatullayev, jailed for 18 months for a libel in a website post he denies writing, is the editor of Realny Azerbaijan, successor to the opposition weekly Monitor, shut down after the March 2005 assassination of its editor Elmar Huseynov.
Fatullayev’s imprisonment ‘is part of a pattern of increasing repression of independent media in Azerbaijan, often through politically motivated defamation cases,’ says the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Council of Europe secretary general Terry Davis told the Baku conference that freedom of expression is a right that must be exercised in a ‘respectful and civil manner to ensure peaceful coexistence’, but the rights of individuals to express different views and beliefs also needed protection. It is a principle that is still only selectively applied.
24 Apr 2007 | Comment
Two resolutions, one introduced in the House in January and in the Senate in March, seek to recognise the events of 1915 as genocide, but the passage of either could jeopardise the US’s political relationship with Turkey. The resolutions are pending approval from committees in both houses.
Turkey, as an American ally, has allowed the US to use its military bases and has played a significant role in American efforts in Iraq. Both the Bush administration and the Turkish government have condemned the move, and though the resolutions are non-binding, if passed, they could be interpreted by Turkey as acts of hostility.
Turkey, in its quest for EU membership, has denied that what happened between 1915 and 1923 to the country’s Armenian population is genocide. Some things, however, are undisputed: in 1915, during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, authorities forced the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Turkey’s 1.75 million Armenians. The estimated number of Armenians that died ranges between 300,000 and 1.5 million.
The Armenian National Committee of America is one of the most outspoken campaign groups in support of the resolution. ANCA spokeswoman Elizabeth Chouldjian said the issue at hand is a moral one. ‘America needs to be on the right side of the issue,’ she said. ‘Not characterizing genocide as genocide is dangerous. We have to take every precaution to end the cycle of genocide.’
The hope, she said, is that if the US recognises the killings as genocide, Turkey would be forced to take a more open and honest approach in re-examining its history.
‘Recognition is not going to change the facts of what happened, but it can certainly relieve the emotional burden on Armenians and other victims of genocide,’ said Ronald Suny, a professor and historian at the University of Michigan. ‘We think of recognition as the first step of clearing the air and letting historians and politicians deal with the issue.’
But Andrew Finkel, an Istanbul-based journalist, said that the issue of addressing Armenians’ sense of injury and grievance won’t eradicate problems that hinder a discussion from taking place within Turkey. ‘It would provoke a tit-for-tat counter reaction,’ he said.
In fact, he said, a US resolution would make the struggle for human rights and free expression in Turkey more difficult. Within this overtly political debate lies the question of historical accuracy and historians’ and scholars’ ability to have open discourse about contentious issues within the country. Free expression in Turkey is curbed by draconian articles in the country’s penal code, but pressure from the US won’t effect the sort of change that the country needs. ‘The more important resolution is that Turks themselves face up to their history,’ Finkel said.
The Bush administration takes a similar stance. The state department has said the administration doesn’t want to politicise an issue that should be resolved through discussion within Turkey. On 11 April, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried said: ‘The United States doesn’t deny any of the killings. They’re an established historical fact, but historians need to discuss the details of what happened, why it happened, who did what. This needs to happen, and it needs to happen as a process of genuine national reconciliation.’
To date, 38 states in the US and 19 countries worldwide have officially recognised the genocide. The resolution in the House of Representatives is pending a decision from the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the resolution in the Senate is pending in the Committee on Foreign Relations.
19 Apr 2007 | Comment, News
We are going to Moscow on Thursday evening. There are a few meetings arranged there. I could have gone at the very beginning of the week but was absolutely overloaded with the usual work in the office.
Stas [Stanislaw Mikhailovich] is thinking about whether to stay in Moscow through until Saturday to take part in the March of the Discontented. He is worried his participation might complicate his situation. He was detained in Gorky Square in Nizhny Novgorod during the March of March 24. They didn’t open a case into his alleged breach of the administrative law, for some reason. At the same time I feel that he has already made his choice and is morally ready to go further on. He demands that I leave Moscow on Friday evening. He feels that I will be of more help staying in Nizhny. I understand that his concerns about my safety are the only background of all this reasoning. OMON [the internal affairs ministry militia] in Nizhny demonstrated their readiness to follow whatever order they received.
We are taking the midnight train to Moscow. Our carriage is the last one. Some groups of passengers are shifting from one foot to another. Passing them, I recognize two familiar faces of the UBOP (special department on combating organized crime) servicemen. There is tension in the air as they watch us while we walk. Their chief, Maxim Bedyrev, rushes to us, saying:
‘Stanislaw, we would like to talk to you…’
‘What’s the reason? Any warrant?’
‘No, just let’s go aside and have a word.’
‘I don’t want to.’
We keep wrangling for a few minutes. Never forget to refer to Article 51 of the constitution: we have the right to remain silent. It’s clear that if we submit, the train will leave without us. Maxim squints at us. It is evident that he is furious and trying hard to hold his feelings.
‘Are you so sure that no accident will happen in your homes while you are away?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You should not be that sure. What if you have failed to switch off an iron?’
We can’t wait any longer – the train is leaving. As we get on, we hear Bedyrev call ‘Stanislaw Mikhailovich, are you aware what will happen if you dare to go to Pushkin Square on Saturday?’
***
We arrive at Kursky station, Moscow, at 6 am on Friday. As we are getting off the train, three policemen enter our carriage. One of them introduces himself and demands our documents. We are asked to follow them to the police station.
The office is full of policemen. One detained man is looking at us through the bars of the cage. Another detainee is sweeping the floor of the police office. When they hear that we work with the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation for Promoting Tolerance, they inquire what we mean by the word ‘tolerance’. The policemen treat us in a much more polite way after I receive a call from journalists from the Echo of Moscow radio station. I tell them, ‘Guys, you are in the news.’ While I am commenting on our problem in a live interview, a young investigator is filling in his report asking Stas the usual questions about any criminal convictions. He confirms the conviction he received for incitement to racial hatred after publishing an article by Chechen separatist Aslan Maskhadov.
They are evidently puzzled after our comprehensive explanation of what tolerance is.
‘And what? Are people already taken to jails for publishing Maskhadov in our country?’
I am amazed by the simplicity of his reaction. Maskhadov is not a notorious ‘terrorist’ in the perception of this particular police lieutenant. Our conversation is just friendly after that. We are told that we will be released in just five minutes. The policemen drop a few sarcastic remarks about their colleagues from Nizhny Novgorod and we leave.
***
10 am on Saturday morning. I am going to my friends’ office to drop my backpack there. I still hope that I will manage to leave Moscow in the evening. My train ticket to Nizhny Novgorod for the previous night was just wasted.
The first coincidence happens when Stas and I meet activist Marina Litvinovich. She is taking huge heaps of roses out of her car. They are planning to distribute copies of the constitution of the Russian Federation among young people. I get a bunch of roses to distribute among those who join the March. Stas takes some copies of the constitution.
***
11.30. While approaching Pushkin Square, we see huge numbers of OMON and military. I am going along Tverskaya Square with my bunch of roses. Reserved men in plain clothes with wires poking out of their ears are casting suspicious glances at me but don’t try to stop. They must be consulting with their chiefs as their lips keep moving whispering something into receivers. Pushkin Square is blocked off. All the area around the monument to Pushkin is crammed with people in blue uniforms. There are around a thousand of them there. The opposite side of the square is also cordoned off. People start to approach us as they see the roses and take them for some sign.
Just in the middle of Pushkin Square we bump into one of the Dutch journalists who were detained in Nizhny. Remke was beaten in Nizhny Novgorod by the OMON servicemen as he failed to understand how wide they wanted him to spread his legs. He has mended his torn leather overcoat by now. He is not shocked by the sight of numerous military trucks and heavily armed police force after what he observed in Nizhny Novgorod when the protesters were dispersed on March 24. But he is evidently shocked by the minimal response from his own government to the violation of the rights of citizens of the Netherlands at the demo. The so-called political interests and double-dealing diplomacy of political and economical interests is clouding the eyes of European politicians so much that they don’t want to make a notice of the growing danger posed by Putin. Our Dutch friend says, ‘I am just worn out and don’t want to be detained once again.’ But he is in the square now, and nobody knows how the situation is going to develop.
***
11.45 We are trying to find out where our friends are. Marina Litvinovich’s phone answers that we can find her in Tverskaya Street. We head towards her. We overhear two police colonels giving the order: ‘There is a group of about 50 people going towards the Square. Detain them all.’ In a few seconds we see this group. It is being led by Garry Kasparov. We join them trying to distribute the constitutions and roses among the people. The OMON blocks our way. We are standing face to face with them. Kasparov tries to persuade them to let us go on. One of the OMON people is making a nasty remark about Kasparov being a traitor. He calmly responds:
‘You don’t have the right to call me a traitor as when I was your age I was gaining recognition and honour for my country, while you are breaking its main law.’
People start to shout out, ‘Give way!’ We are being supported from behind the chain of the OMON. It is they who are surrounded by people. People are protruding their hands over the hard-helmeted heads of the OMON. Then the slogan changes: ‘Russia without Putin!’ Immediately the OMON chiefs give the order to detain people. We try to escape through the open doors of some cafés and shops. The OMON grab an elderly woman who is clutching a lamppost. She squeals ‘They are killing me’, while three huge men are trying to tear her off the pole. I see Stas being dragged into the bus. He is screaming, ‘Let me go.’ Several men are trying to hold him and he is being dragged in opposite directions. People on the right and on the left of me are just disappearing one by one. The bus is crowded with people. Some OMON servicemen are taking Kasparov from a café.
***
I am looking around trying to calm down. We have to decide what to do next. I recognise a man in a blue windbreaker. It is Andrey Illarionov, a former Putin adviser, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in the US.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘We should try to get to Turgenev Square and take people from here.’
He is right. The authorized rally is going to start in under an hour in Turgenev Square. It is absolutely pointless to wait in Tverskaya Street until we are also loaded onto the buses.
We are going down the underground path. There are some journalists who recognize Illarionov. The flashes of their cameras attract people’s attention. When we get out, some 50 people are following us.
Andrey and I are getting close to the police cordon to find out what is going on in the buses with the detained people. I see Kasparov’s face through the broken window of a bus. Some minutes before that a young man broke it from the inside and escaped. Again we come face to face with the OMON. A CNN journalist is interviewing Illarionov. There are instigators in the crowd. One of them is screaming, pointing his finger at Illarionov, ‘What are you waiting for? Kick him with your baton at his head. Don’t beat Russians. Fracture the head of this American vermin. What are you doing here? Aren’t you still in Washington?’ Andrey ignores him. An OMON chief shoulders his way through the crowd. He tries to grab Andrey, but the people don’t let him.
We decide to go to Turgenev Square, taking a route that goes from the office of the Izvestia newspaper in the opposite direction to Pushkin Square. The OMON and the military bosses won’t expect us to take this route. Nastasyinskiy Lane is empty. The way is free. We call our friends, trying to find them and get them to join us. I get a text message from my friend Ilya, ‘I have been detained. We tried to break through the OMON cordon. People say that 1,000 people are marching to the Sadovoye Koltso.’ It is our column Ilya’s heard about.
Banners are unfolded. The red, white and blue banners of the Russian Federation fly over our heads. People shout: ‘Russia without Putin!’; ‘We want other Russia’; ‘No to a police state’. There are no obstacles in our way. We approach a Russian Orthodox church where we see people on the belfry. When we come alongside the church, they start ringing the bells, expressing their support. We feel free and cheered up. Stas calls me from a police station. I tell that the March is making its way. I hear him relaying the news to Kasparov.
As the march reaches Petrovka, 38, the famous address of the criminal police, people start singing, ‘Our proud Varyag is not going to give up’, a song of undefeated Russian sailors from the time of the Russian-Japanese war of 1905. We are also shouting, ‘No to the state with the FSB everywhere.’
In Trubnaya we see several hundred people more. Our two columns flow together.
The OMON chiefs have sent their watchdogs to stop us. They appear from Sretenskiy Avenue. Andrey is next to me. Marina Litvinovich is marching shoulder to shoulder to Ruslan Kutaev, a Chechen businessman and politician who was the co-chair of our Russian-Chechen Friendship Society for the first few years. Andrey is pulling me by a sleeve, telling me it’s time to run. I understand that he wants to pass the narrow street where the OMON is running to before they close their ranks.
We fail and run into the shields of the OMON. Andrey is telling them to let people go on. He keeps repeating, ‘This is our city’. Pointless. He pulls me out of the crowd just at the moment the OMON begin to detain people. We run over the OMON chain and jump over a fence. Many people escape with us. Hundreds of others keep running towards the Sretenskaya Square. Another OMON cordon. This time they are just chasing people as the column has already been dispersed. We see them dragging people, like sacks of flour, into their cars. We see them beating people with their batons.
Two OMON servicemen try to seize a young man who was marching next to us. Andrey and I run up to them and try to talk them into not detaining him. It is useless. They are hunters and the young boy is their prey. One of them is threatening us with his baton. Andrey tries to protect me. Suddenly, I feel an acute pain in my ankle. It is not a baton – it is the heavy boot of a policeman who is kicking my leg. As I limp aside, I see Litvinovich being chased by some other OMON militiamen.
***
Several hundred manage to get to Turgenev Square. The rally is underway. We have to go through the metal detectors. Policemen are searching Illarionov. There are several books in his inner pocket.
‘What are they?’
‘These are very interesting books…. This one is the constitution of the Russian Federation. The other one is the Criminal Code.’
They let us go through. Former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov is behind us. His face is red. He also had problems getting to the site as the OMON tried to detain him on the way. They failed. Andrey Illarionov refuses to make speeches although he is the person who has become de facto leader. Political satirist Viktor Shenderovich is making a speech. It is difficult to make out how many people have managed to get together here. Not less than 2,000. I am told that Putin has left Moscow for Saint Petersburg.
***
It’s time for the rally to finish. Marina and I decide to go to Presnenskiy police station, where the first detainees have been taken. Stas is among them with Garry Kasparov, and a range of activists, reporters and ordinary protestors.
There is already a crowd in front of the police station. I see Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of the State Duma whose Republican Party of Russia is likely to be liquidated soon. He tells that some hundred members of the party participated in the rally. He has just seen the detained people. There are two lawyers with them: Karinna Moskalenko and Elena Liptzer. I again meet Andrey Illarionov. He has also come to support the friends. People from the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Demos Center are here. My friend Alik Mnatskanyan calls my cell phone. I see him standing on the steps of the police station. He is working as a journalist taking pictures. Nina Tagankina of the Moscow Helsinki group shows me a torn copy of the constitution. She picked it up in Tverskaya after the dispersal.
‘It would be one of the main exhibits in future. The constitution trampled by the OMON.’
I want to say that human rights defenders should do more than just pick up ‘exhibits’ after the events. But Nina’s eyes are shining with joy and I don’t want to upset her. She is here with all the people. And that’s important.
But time is passing. The prisoners have been detained for more than three hours now. The crowd of people is shouting ‘Freedom to political prisoners.’ We try to express our support, shouting out the names of the detainees. The site is surrounded with five-storey apartment buildings. Their residents are getting out onto their balconies and express their support to us.
The chief of the police station comes out with a megaphone. He is being followed by an OMON lieutenant-colonel. The pale-faced police chief is trying to persuade the crowd to disperse, but his voice is trembling. Andrey approaches him. He is very calm and reserved. He explains that it is better to release all the detained people as their custody has become unlawful. In response, the police chief murmurs, ‘The OMON isn’t following our orders. Somebody else operates them.’
The whole area is surrounded by the OMON again. Huge trucks can be seen on the main road. They don’t let people get past their cordons. Then the violence starts again. OMON beats people, seizes them and drags them to their buses.
We count our ‘casualties’. Eighteen people have been taken away this time.
Stas appears on the staircase. He is standing smoking. Then he comes towards us. Nobody is trying to stop him. The OMON has left and these policemen are sick and tired of the whole thing. He shows us the report on his ‘breach’ of the administrative law. It says: ‘Was detained while shouting out anti-governmental slogans in a big crowd of people.’ However, there are evident breaches in the report. No name and no signature of the person who made the ruling. No time of detention is indicated. This should mean it can be appealed.
We go to Amnesty International’s office. My foot is aching, and it is difficult to walk. I probably need to go to hospital. My friend who works with Amnesty is trying to get the address of the nearest hospital with a trauma surgery office. Failed, failed, failed…. She groans, ‘It is a disaster to fall ill in Russia.’ Yes, it is. At the same time, I’m trying to get the contact details of lawyers, as we keep receiving calls from Marina Litvinovich about violations of rights of many people who have been taken to other police stations. She is still in Novaya Square at the court building, waiting for Kasparov and the rest.
On the way to hospital Friederike is making phone calls to the most troublesome police stations. They respond as some minutes later we begin to receive calls that detainees there have not been so maltreated. It does help as these guys still don’t like international attention. They are dreaming about escaping their reality for good. Certainly, they won’t be able to afford Kurshavel, the resort of choice of the oligarchs.
I talk to Andrey Illarionov on the phone. He is going to be my witness. I really am going to report the trauma of being kicked. It will be pointless but I will do it.
In hospital we are not very welcome. They are evidently not going to provide me with help. I have no registration in Moscow. I have left my Russian passport in the office. I have to beg the doctor. She does me a favour in the long run but it takes me 200 rubles. No fracture, fortunately, but the foot is swollen. As I am leaving, she tells me that I was the 54th patient she’d seen from the demonstration.
When I get to Nizhny and wake up after a half-a-day’s heavy sleep, I turn on TV to learn that Putin has spent the weekend in St Petersburg in the company of Jean Claude Van Damme. Putin in a black shirt, with radiantly-smiling van Damme, is watching no-holds barred fighting. The white marble of Van Damms’s teeth looks even brighter against the background of Putin’s black shirt and pale face.
(more…)
