Trial of Bolotnaya 12 seen as a warning against challenging the Kremlin
By Kathy Lally
IN MOSCOW — The defendants sit in glass cages, bored or distracted, paying little heed to the case. It’s as though they’re extras in a tedious experimental theater production.
The prosecutors, two young women with bouncy ponytails who teeter on spike heels, appear to adhere to a script. The policemen testifying against the defendants don’t even remember most of them, but that doesn’t matter.
Conviction is almost certain.
So goes the trial of the Bolotnaya 12, a dozen once-ordinary Russians who were arrested at a demonstration on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as president in May 2012. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...lotnaya-square-alexei-navalny-sergei-udaltsovMost of them are charged with rioting and assaulting police on Bolotnaya Square, not far from the Kremlin. Nearly all are in jail, denied bail despite a lack of previous criminal records.
That protest was just one in a string of large demonstrations against dishonest elections and government corruption that had begun five months earlier. All the previous protests had proceeded peacefully. Detentions, when they happened, had lasted for only days.
But the May 6 march to Bolotnaya was a direct challenge to Putin as he was about to reclaim his Kremlin office, and this time the response was severe. About two dozen protesters in all were charged, but the Bolotnaya 12 are the first large group to go on trial.
The defendants’ supporters describe the proceedings as theater of the absurd, contending that the 12 were plucked out of obscurity to serve as examples of the peril of opposing the Putin government. The ***** Riot case of last year, in which members of a punk-rock group were sentenced to two years for staging a protest in a Moscow cathedral, sent a similar message, but the Bolotnaya 12 defendants are remarkable for their anonymity and the seeming randomness of their arrests.
Since they were charged, Moscow’s protest movement has withered. On Sunday, perhaps 10,000 people turned out to call for the freeing of political prisoners, the Bolotnaya 12 prominent among them. Earlier protests had drawn several times that.
Just as the arrests marked a turning point, ushering in a period of repressive laws and revealing a more vindictive Kremlin, so are the verdicts expected to provide a signal of what lies ahead. Will the authorities decide they have made their point, impose suspended sentences and send a conciliatory message? Or will the defendants receive the full sentences — up to 13 years?
More at link: Trial of Bolotnaya 12 seen as a warning against challenging the Kremlin - The Washington Post
By Kathy Lally
IN MOSCOW — The defendants sit in glass cages, bored or distracted, paying little heed to the case. It’s as though they’re extras in a tedious experimental theater production.
The prosecutors, two young women with bouncy ponytails who teeter on spike heels, appear to adhere to a script. The policemen testifying against the defendants don’t even remember most of them, but that doesn’t matter.
Conviction is almost certain.
So goes the trial of the Bolotnaya 12, a dozen once-ordinary Russians who were arrested at a demonstration on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as president in May 2012. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...lotnaya-square-alexei-navalny-sergei-udaltsovMost of them are charged with rioting and assaulting police on Bolotnaya Square, not far from the Kremlin. Nearly all are in jail, denied bail despite a lack of previous criminal records.
That protest was just one in a string of large demonstrations against dishonest elections and government corruption that had begun five months earlier. All the previous protests had proceeded peacefully. Detentions, when they happened, had lasted for only days.
But the May 6 march to Bolotnaya was a direct challenge to Putin as he was about to reclaim his Kremlin office, and this time the response was severe. About two dozen protesters in all were charged, but the Bolotnaya 12 are the first large group to go on trial.
The defendants’ supporters describe the proceedings as theater of the absurd, contending that the 12 were plucked out of obscurity to serve as examples of the peril of opposing the Putin government. The ***** Riot case of last year, in which members of a punk-rock group were sentenced to two years for staging a protest in a Moscow cathedral, sent a similar message, but the Bolotnaya 12 defendants are remarkable for their anonymity and the seeming randomness of their arrests.
Since they were charged, Moscow’s protest movement has withered. On Sunday, perhaps 10,000 people turned out to call for the freeing of political prisoners, the Bolotnaya 12 prominent among them. Earlier protests had drawn several times that.
Just as the arrests marked a turning point, ushering in a period of repressive laws and revealing a more vindictive Kremlin, so are the verdicts expected to provide a signal of what lies ahead. Will the authorities decide they have made their point, impose suspended sentences and send a conciliatory message? Or will the defendants receive the full sentences — up to 13 years?
More at link: Trial of Bolotnaya 12 seen as a warning against challenging the Kremlin - The Washington Post
