At least 100 people arrested in tributes to Navalny in Russia

Placing a bouquet of flowers to the victims of political repression is an act of rebellion in Russia. In a country with almost a million police officers, thousands of citizens overcame their fear and paid tribute to the activist Alexei Navalny after learning of his sudden death in prison this Friday. At least 102 people were arrested, according to the Russian organization OVD-Info, specialized in defending victims of political repression, and their great problem now is that the authorities might consider that these protests were not a spontaneous act of empathy towards the dissident, but were instead organized by Navalny’s platform, the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Being an organization that was declared “extremist” by the authorities, detainees run the risk that bringing a flower to a monument will be equated to an act of terrorism before judges.

Hundreds of Muscovites showed up with their faces uncovered, despite the cameras with integrated facial recognition, at the Solovetsky Stone, the monument to political reprisals located on Lubyanka Square, where the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, the former KGB, is located. The police sealed off the area and allowed them to make this gesture of affection towards Navalny, the dissident most hated by Putin, although several arrests were made, including that of a journalist. Additionally, attendees’ faces were likely recorded and there is a precedent for security forces later returning to their homes to ask questions.

It was a controlled protest. In another, more symbolic act, some dissidents brought flowers to Moskvoretsky Bridge, located in front of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral. There, since 2015, a group of opponents has been guarding a small citizen tribute to the former opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, shot dead at that same spot when he was organizing massive protests against Russian participation in the war in Donbas. Late at night, some unidentified people arrived at the scene along with several agents to remove all the flowers and throw them in the trash.

The police acted more forcefully in St. Petersburg, where at least 20 of the arrests took place, including a photographer and a reporter for RusNews journalist. In Nizhny Novgorod, citizens paid their tribute in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior, at the sport where journalist Irina Slavina blew herself up in 2020, a day after the police searched her house for allegedly possessing material from Open Russia, the foundation created by the exiled dissident Alexander Khodorkovsky, labeled an “undesirable organization” by Russian authorities. “Blame the Russian Federation for my death,” the reporter wrote on her social media accounts.

Security forces also broke up tributes in other Russian cities that were further away from the news focus. In Vladivostok, in the far east of the country, the police not only dismantled the piles of flowers that showed up in the Vera (Faith) and Nadezhda (Hope) parks, but also took note of the names of the people who came to that small tribute to Navalni. The same thing happened in Khabarovsk, on the border with China, and in Irkurtsk, the city on Lake Baikal. In this last location, the agents went one step further and photographed the attendees.

With Friday’s arrests, that makes practically 20,000 detentions at demonstrations since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. In fact, since Navalny returned to Moscow (and was arrested on the spot) in January 2021 it has been practically impossible to even picket individually with a single placard. In Russia, only acts of propaganda by the authorities are allowed, and the only unauthorized demonstrations that the Kremlin has allowed have been those of some members of the Communist Party over the alleged 2021 electoral fraud — and its leader was later arrested in a strange case that mixed poaching and alcohol—and the protests by wives of men sent to the front, although on this occasion the police detained the journalists and not the protesters so as not to increase tension with the soldiers.

The situation was so dangerous for protesters this Friday that OVD–Info showed them a manual titled Instructions for the ideal detainee. “Reality is far from the ideal and the behavior of police officers is even further from it,” warns the document in which the organization asks protesters for “calm” and “common sense.”

“And a golden rule: know your rights and protect them, but do not exaggerate your rights. Especially if you are inexperienced and not confident in your abilities. There is an enormous difference between defending legal rights and oscillating rights,” points out OVD–Info. There are so many repressive laws enacted in recent years that it is enough to accuse people of discrediting the authorities or being part of an extremist organization to open a criminal case against those who placed a flower at the monuments to those who were politically retaliated against this Friday.

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