–Due to the work of lawyers like Agora’s, we can feel safe to be a bit crazy activists, said Olya Kurachyova in her speech in Bergen at the Rafto Prize ceremony to Agora in 2014.
And during the football World Cup final there were probably few who managed to miss the crazy stunt she and three other activists of Pussy Riot carried out when they stormed the pitch early in the second half, wearing police uniforms. The goal was to make Russian authorities free the many political prisoners in Russia, stop imprisoning people for “likes” on social media, stop arrests during protests, allow genuine political competition, and stop fabricating criminal cases and jailing people for no reason.
Olya and the other activists got 15 days imprisonment and are banned from attending sports events for three years. A hidden recording from the police station shows how a police officer expresses his discontent that the year is not 1937. (When Stalin’s purges were at their worst and he could have executed them on the spot.) Immediately after their release they were imprisoned for another night, and new accusations await them. But attention, they got.
During the football World Cup, Russian authorities had prohibited distribution of negative news. Nothing should harm Russia’s image when the whole world was looking at the country. According to the news outlet 7×7, there were for example registered 115 «negative criminal acts» like murder, robbery, drug crimes or extortion in Murmansk region in the month before the WC, whereas there during the WC was not one single crime registered.
The month of World Cup and extended ban on protests was also exploited to introduce one of the most disputed reforms for a long time – increase of the pension age from 55 to 63 years for women and 60 to 65 for men. The announcement was met with great protest, and has led to a decrease of support to Putin in a poll after the World Cup. Only 64% of those polled support him now, the lowest since before the annexation of Crimea in March 2014. In addition, only around 48% of the polled think that Russia is now headed in the right direction.
So where the international community is praising Putin for a successful championship and most of the visitors are left with good impressions of Russia and Russians, the President has lost supporton his home turf.
–What do I need pension for when I’ll be imprisoned for a repost as young?
The unpopular increase in pension age is one of the reasons for Putin’s fall in popularity. But even more so, it is due to an increase in popular protest against precisely those issues that Pussy Riot were drawing attention to in their stunt at the World Cup arena:
Political prisoners
The Ukrainian movie director Oleg Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment without any evidence in 2014 after protesting the Russian annexation of Crimea. He has now been on hunger strike for three months in order to make Russia release all Ukrainian political prisoners in the country, and is seriously ill. 182 other political prisoners languish in Russian prisons on political or religious grounds, according to Memorial.
«Likes»
Over the last months, people have been arrested all over Russia for posting, liking or sharing content on social media like the Russian VKontakte. In Barnaul, 200 local citizens protested recently against the court procedures against three young citizens – one of them a student of 19 who posted a photo of Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow sporting a halo on his personal page. According to the prosecution, this is extremism and insulting the feelings of religious believers. He risks up to 6 years imprisonment.
Demonstration
The two Memorial veterans Svetlana Gannushkina (76) and Oleg Orlov (65) protested in the middle of July in the centre of Moscow against the groundless arrest and trial of their colleague Oyub Titiev in Chechnya. They were standing for five minutes with each their poster demanding the release of Titiev. Shortly thereafter the two were taken to the police station in «unusually polite manner due to the presence of tourists and football fans everywhere” according to Memorial on Facebook. They risk fines of 10 – 20 000 roubles for “illegal demonstration”, and Titiev’s custody is prolonged until 22 December.
Political competition
On 9 September, there are local elections in 43 different subjects of the Russian Federation – candidates to local and regional assemblies, supplementary elections to the state duma, and direct elections on the supreme leader of 22 subjects. The observers in the organisation Golos observe the registration in advance, and criticise the procedure of so-called “municipal filter”, where candidates need to get signatures of support from existing members of the municipality before they can be approved for registration. As most of these current members are members of the “United Russia” Party, it is very hard for independent candidates or candidates from opposition parties to secure the necessary signatures. (Even in regions where the opposition parties are strong, for example the Communist party, they will not enter an election campaign, but rather make other deals about lucrative positions or economic benefits rather than publicly challenging the current authorities.)
Fabricated cases
In Moscow, two teenage girls have been in custody since March, accused of having organised the extremist organisation “Novoe Velichie”. Anna Pavlikova (18) has most likely become sterile due to the poor conditions in prison and transportation, whereas Mariya Dubovik (19) is about to lose her vision. Four guys in their twenties are also accused of the same criminal act, based on documents that are written by the very same FSB agent who infiltrated and exposed the group. Conveniently, these documents contain all the elements necessary for the organisers of an organisation to be found extremist. The case has garnered substantial attention and provokes parents who are concerned that the next victims of the police’s provocations and fabrications will be their own children. A large support protest was organised without arrests in Moscow on 15 August called the “March of Mothers”, and the authorities have finally responded to the people’s will and allowed the girls to move to domestic arrest instead.
The lawyers of Agora have far from rested on their laurels since they received the Rafto Prize in 2014 and the Conservative Party’s Sjur Lindebrække Award in 2017. They defend the Pussy Riot activists, Oleg Sentsov, the opposition politician Alexey Navalnyy, the teenage girls of «Novoe Velichie», one of the so-called internet extremists in Barnaul, and victims of abuse in over 600 cases all over the country.
An increasing number of disgruntled citizens take to the streets and internet in protest against state policies and actions. Many of them are detained or imprisoned, whereas human rights lawyers and activists make sure that they have the necessary information about their rights and the legal protection they need in case of interactions with the police.
In the meantime, Putin focuses on trying to convince the people that the pension reform was not his doing, but Medvedev’s.