Police in Moscow have detained and beaten opposition politicians, along with protesters, in an attempt to disperse a demonstration against the refusal of election officials to register several opposition figures as candidates in municipal elections. Moscow police said they arrested more than 1,000 demonstrators around the unsanctioned rally on July 27 amid a heavy security presence in the Russian capital.
Several opposition figures and would-be candidates were among those detained-including Ivan Zhdanov, Ilya Yashin, and Dmitry Gudkov. Lyubov Sobol, an opposition leader whose bid to run in the municipal election was rejected by the city’s election commission, and Moscow City Duma deputy Yulia Galyamina were detained by police on July 27 on their way to the rally in central Moscow.
Sobol, Yashin, Galyamina, and Zhdanov were released in the early evening of July 27. But Sobol, Zhdanov, and Galyamina were rearrested later the same day, along with dozens more demonstrators, near the Moscow Metro’s Trubnaya station after they issued calls for protests to continue there.
Aleksandra Parushina, a Moscow City Duma deputy from the opposition A Just Russia party, told the Russian-language Current Time television network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA that she was struck in the head by riot police from Russia’s OMON force who “brutally” dispersed a crowd that was attempting to form near the Moscow mayor’s office on Tverskaya Street, one of the city’s main thoroughfares.
The brutality shown by the police in Moscow represents the reaction of police in Third World nations instead of one of the oldest nations of Europe. This despicable act is reminiscent of the Soviet era where the NKVD and the KGB would brutally suppress all dissent. Democracy without dissent is not democracy. While no one can say that Russia’s quasi-oligarchical style is anything remotely resembling democracy the actions of Moscow’s police represent a new descent into darkness by Putin’s henchmen.
Socialism Russian style is back in full action. The opposition has no chance of coming to power. He who is in power is powerful. Under socialism the ownership of the country does not belong to the people. The government is master. There is no difficulty in using the police and other agencies to punch the opponents of the government.
Russia is a great power militarily but why it cannot strive to achieve greatness as a nation for tolerance to criticism. If the government is doing good for the people as a socialist country then there should not be any need to fear peaceful opposition.
State terrorism is nothing to be proud of. Socialism, though claims to be real government of the people, but it survives through intolerance of the opposition. Socialism must have a human face to be able to govern human beings. Old ideas must die.
