Last night, the Hammersmith Apollo arena in London was invaded by thousands of Russian speakers who came to see the only UK tour date of the iconic St Petersburg rock band DDT.
The band, founded in 1980 by lead vocalist Yuri Shevchuk, has been at the forefront of Russian rock ever since.
Unlike most other Russian rock bands of the 1980s, they never traded their mother tongue for English: a difficult choice, but one that paid off in the long run. DDT also quickly acquired the status of dissidents, experiencing frequent rows with the authorities. Recently, Shevchuk’s name hit the headlines again for openly confronting Vladimir Putin in a heated debate and for partnering with Bono to save the Khimki forest from destruction.
DDT presented their new album “Inache” (“Otherwise”), surprising the public with unusual sounds and stunning visuals. In the final part of the concert, the performance shifted towards the lyrical ballads the band is famous for.
Opening the show, Shevchuk said: “Why is this show called “Otherwise”? Because many people in Russia want to live otherwise. Tonight, we will say goodbye to the glorious past and will crawl into the brutal reality of today, as we want Russia to have a brighter future”.
Index spoke to Shevchuk after the concert. The star gave a statement in support of the Sing for Democracy project, which is using the Eurovision contest to build momentum and call for human rights in Azerbaijan, the host country for the musical competition this year. Recently, two musicians were arrested after performing a concert in Baku: they have not been released yet, and according to insistent allegations they might have been tortured. In Russia, the case of punk band Pussy Riot is still firing up the public opinion. Shevchuk told Index:
“A musician is a very peculiar type of being. As in Azerbaijan, so in Russia, so in London — a musician is a being of freedom. A musician does not have any owners, except for God. You thus must not offend musicians, as they are the freest of all people. Because music is not generated from anywhere; it comes out of freedom, of inner freedom. Hence: hands off the musicians!”
Opposition activists have sued Russian television station NTV after the channel aired the documentary “Anatomy of Protest”, which claimed people were paid to participate in recent mass protest rallies.
Eleven years ago thousands of people gathered in Moscow in support of Russian private NTV channel, protesting against state-owned Gazprom’s subsidiary — Gazprom Media Holding — buying it from media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky. He had faced pressure from Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin to sell NTV (as well as “Echo of Moscow” radio station). That rally didn’t influence the transaction; NTV was passed into the hands of Gazprom-Media, which later fell under control of Yury Kovalchuk who is considered a close friend of Putin.
Eleven years have passed and Vladimir Putin has returned to power, ignoring mass protests against his third presidential run. Now NTV is the focus of another rally. This time some 300 people gathered near Ostankino TV tower on Sunday, protesting against NTV policy and particularly the documentary, which was aired twice last week suggesting people received money and cookies for protesting against Vladimir Putin.
Many of the protesters held placards reading “NTV lies”, flowers and old broken televisions “to mark NTV’s funeral as mass media”. Dozens of people were arrested, including opposition leaders Sergey Udaltsov and Boris Nemtsov. All were released by the following morning.
The arrests angered many, with complaints on NTV’s Facebook page, and “NTV Lies” hashtag trending on Twitter.
The Democratic Choice opposition movement has filed two lawsuits against NTV. One is for libel — the movement is demanding NTV withdraw statements in the documentary about opposition leaders hiring people to attend rallies and aiming to arrange provocations and bloody revolution in Russia.
The other lawsuit relates to Democratic Choice authors’ rights — the documentary included a video showing citizens of Kenya attending a rally in support of Vladimir Putin, who didn’t seem to understand the Russian language and could not explain at all why they supported Putin.
“Democratic Choice” activists claim the video was shot by them to show that Putin’s assessments of how many people actually supported him on rallies were controversial. The NTV documentary claimed that the Kenyans interviewed might have been hired by opposition activists.
A libel lawsuit against NTV was filed by politician Boris Nadezhdin, and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has called for a boycott of all NTV programmes. Bloggers have called on advertisers including Proсter & Gamble to pull the plug on the company. The company responded, saying it respects freedom of expression, but prefers to stay out of politics and doesn’t see itself as a party in this conflict.
Expert magazine editor-in-chief Valery Fadeev, who appeared in the NTV documentary, said his words were taken out of context. He added that not only his magazine, but the whole Expert publishing house is ending any cooperation with NTV.
Gazprom Media Holding denied the allegations, issuing a statement from the group head Nikolay Senkevich.
Senkevich said that NTV “covers each aspect of social life” and that calls to boycott the channel go against democratic principles. Andrey Isaev of Putin’s United Russia party called the opposition reaction to the documentary “hysterical”.
Russia’s journalists are divided by the controversial documentary. To some, working on NTV is still seen as a normal journalistic activity, as far as it doesn’t concern making Kremlin propaganda movies about Russian opposition. To others, it is no longer acceptable.
A Moscow court has sentenced businessman Alexey Kozlov to five years in prison for fraud. The verdict is seen as a slap in the face to civil society, which demanded justice and freedom for Kozlov on the latest mass rally for fair elections in Moscow.
Alexey Kozlov was accused of stealing leather company shares using a fradulent scheme in 2006. He claimed he was innocent and his case was trumped-up by former business partner and senator Vladimir Slutsker. Slutsker denied the allegations.
Kozlov’s case was the second “economical” case to draw the widest response after the case of former YUKOS oil company head Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Kozlov was arrested in 2008 and then sentenced to eight years in prison on fraud charges after having quit his business with Vladimir Slutsker. He spent three-and-a-half years in prison, until in September 2011 his wife — noted Russian journalist and human rights activist Olga Romanova — gained a Supreme Court order for the case to be retried.
This was celebrated as a victory of human rights activism. Romanova has become the voice of prisoners throughout Russia and created an NGO for relatives of businessmen whose cases were fabricated by their influential business partners and corrupted law enforcement authorities. For all of them Kozlov’s release in September became an example of how rights activism can be rewarded for its efforts.
Thousands of people supported Kozlov on a rally on 10 March. Hundreds of them gathered near the court — but only to shout “Shame!” when Kozlov was arrested and convoyed out of the court. The case was retried, but the corrupted judicial system remained.
Alexey Kozlov will be set free in a year and a half, after the court took into consideration three and a half years already served.
Olga Romanova was in charge of the recent Russian rallies against election fraud. She has been one of the most remarkable public critics of Vladimir Putin. Fellow human rights activists believe her husband’s sentence is also the authorities’ “punishment” to her for her activism and independence. Activists added that this is clearly an attempt to silence her.
Romanova isn’t the only one authorities are trying to silence.
Another member of Pussy Riot punk feminist group Irina Lakhtionova has been arrested on the charge of hooliganism. She is suspected of being involved in an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. As Pussy Riot’s lawyer Nikolay Polozov told Index on Censorship, this goes in the line with repressive politicy against political and civil activists. He is planning to file complaints to European Court of Human Rights.
Finally, on the same day Left Front movement leader Sergey Udaltsov was sentenced to ten days of administrative arrest for allegedly having neglected a policeman’s order after a rally on 10 March. He has announced a hunger strike in protest.
Another opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, was fined 1000 roubles (£21) for breaking the rules of holding rallies, during a mass protest against allegedly fradulent presidential elections on 5 March.
Earlier this week the court refused to release two arrested Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina and activist Taisiya Osipova, from The Other Russia.
Most frequent bloggers’ believe these cases have one message – Vladimir Putin is back.
Thousands of people gathered on central Moscow street Novy Arbat on Sunday to call for Vladimir Putin to step down. The rally was a follow-up to mass protest rallies which started after allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections in December.
It was much smaller than the protests leading up to the election, and the mood was dramatically altered.
This time, people had to face the reality that the right to freedom could not be achieved in just three months and that the opposition’s most popular slogan “Russia without Putin” cannot be actualised without a clear political strategy. Some opposition leaders, who have been courageously protesting against Putin must now re-evaluate their strategies. At the protest, TV host Ksenia Sobchak stood on stage and said that protesters needed to “form a concrete list of what they are standing up for”. “This road is long, but Russia will be free in the end”, said Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko party founder and unregistered presidential candidate, reflecting the principal current message of Russian opposition: it takes time for the civil society to restore their violated rights.
One of Russia’s leading independent political scientists, Dmitry Oreshkin, monitored the elections on 4 March. Together with other independent elections monitors, he announced the presidential election results based on their independent calculations. Oreshkin claims Putin did not win the elections in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg (in these cities he got less than 50 per cent needed to win in the first round, independent monitors counted). This marks a tendency, which is likely to spread over Russia, Oreshkin said to protesters: if big cities citizens don’t vote for Putin today, smaller cities won’t vote for him either tomorrow.
Left Front leader Sergey Udaltsov tried to march to Pushkin Square with his supporters after the rally. Hundreds of Moscow nationalists tried to do the same on Stary Arbat avenue. Protesters from both groups were arrested “for breaking the law on rallies”. Opposition in Saint-Petersburg also tried to march in the city centre, but police hadn’t sanctioned the action, and 40 protesters were arrested.
Monitors’ reports and plans to form a detailed political strategy were the two major topics of the rally on the 10 March. The third was dedicated to political prisoners in Russia, particularly two members of the punk feminist group “Pussy Riot”, Nadezhda Tolokonnikkova and Maria Alekhina, who were arrested after their act of protest in a cathedral, and Alexey Kozlov, the husband of human rights activist and one of the rally’s organisers Olga Romanova.
Many of the participants in the rally planned to attend the court hearings on Kozlov and Pussy Riot. Those who protest against Vladimir Putin and demand political reform are amongst those who also call for profound reform of the judicial system.
