Protest Blasts Kremlin, Warns of Dictatorship

About 100 people took part in a protest against irresponsible government and a looming sense of dictatorship in the central city on Saturday.
Organized by the Civil Action group, the protest featured members of the democratic movement of 1980s and 1990s, including representatives of Yabloko and Union of Right Forces parties, the Memorial human rights organization and the group Conscience, which supports businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The group filed a petition demanding that President Vladimir Putin take responsibility for corruption and bureaucrats' abuses of their authority. "The notorious power vertical that is being convulsively strengthened after another act of terrorism can't protect us from terror, from the arbitrariness and corruption of authorities," the petition says.
Demonstrators held posters saying "KGB, take your hands off the administration," "Clean up the FSB from terrorists of the KGB!" and also a portrait of Vladimir Putin with the slogan "That's enough!" written on it.
"Who is punished for the Beslan tragedy? Only little people are being held to blame. The people who brutally killed [Alexander Pumane], a valuable witness suspected of terrorism, are getting awards. Bribery and theft are flourishing. Terrorists are walking freely in our cities. They have never before felt as free as they do under this power vertical. What is going to happen when this vertical is finally at full strength?"
"The power vertical is being strengthened at the expense of our rights, political, social and economical, that we gained through a hard struggle in recent years. The country is being dragged back into its past of blood and poverty," the petition says.
The demonstrators demanded the regime quit the Kremlin if it is "not able to take Russia forward."
"We demand that those who made law enforcement harm the public but favor criminals be punished. And we have had enough of blaming the predecessors, it's time to answer for five years of work."
Putin became prime minister in 1999 and has virtually been the top official in the country since then.
Members of human rights organizations called for the prosecutions of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to be halted, protested against the war in Chechnya and asked St. Petersburgers to participate in a march against hatred planned in the city for Oct. 31.
Yuly Rybakov, a human rights advocate and former State Duma lawmaker who did not participate in the meeting because he was out of town, said "a government formed of the KGB has got what it wanted by making people scared."
"I will try to be there [for the march against hatred] because hatred is what the government uses to raise fear and subordination in society," Rybakov said Monday in a telephone interview from a village outside St. Petersburg.
"This is the foundation that the current FSB-based government is using to build a new empire that will lead to the end of Russia," he said. "If multinational Russia starts fighting against itself, that will be it."

(From : St Pertersburg Times)