Meshchansky Fort

Protest


Supporters and opponents of Mikhail Khodorkovsky continued to stand in front of the Meshchansky Court building waiting for the sentencing in the YUKOS affair. Like the day before, the only authorized picket was a group of private individuals who had applied to the district prefecture to hold a picket with the slogans “Khodorkovsky must go to jail!” and “Khodor, your money smells of blood!” A small group of Khodorkovsky's supporters were able to stand only behind the 100-m cordon. Police arrested two picketers.


Yesterday morning, like the day before, reinforced ranks of police (patrol service, OMON, and traffic police) cordoned off Kalanchevskaia Street in a 100-m radius from the Meshchansky Court. Across from the building, people with placards urging the court to give Khodorkovsky the strictest possible punishment continued their picket. Organizers of the picket again received permission from the prefecture to stand with placards from 9.00 to 15.00, although neither the picketers nor the police could name these organizers. A police major on duty at the metal detector frame explained to the Kommersant correspondent that a group of private individuals, who were absent at the moment, had applied to hold the picket, but he didn't remember their names. Meanwhile, at the prefecture of the Central Administrative District, they showed Kommersant the permit to hold the picket with the signature of Deputy Prefect Sergey Vasyukov. A certain S.A. Michurin living on Proletarsky Prospekt was named in the document as the organizer of the picket; however, when the Kommersant correspondent called the home number given in the document, he was told that the Michurin family hadn't lived in that apartment for eight years.

This time, there were considerably more picketers than on previous days (about 300 people). Students and workers from the budget offices joined the pensioners who had picketed on Monday and Tuesday. When the Kommersant correspondent asked them how they were able to find the time to take part in the picket on a work day, they replied that they had managed to get leave from work or that it was a day off. “Why are you writing lies about us?” one of the picketers asked indignantly. “No one brought us here; we came to express our opinion – “Khodorkovsky is a thief and must go to jail!” There were also slogans like “Khodorkovsky, give back what you stole!”, “Khodorkovsky, your money smells of blood!” and others were written on good-quality placards made of banner cloth. When asked how much they cost, one of the picketers replied emotionally “How much do my hands cost? I made this placard with my own hands!”

An elderly man in a jean jacket and sunglasses holding a placard with “Putin, protect us from Khodorkovsky!” at first tried to convince the Kommersant correspondent that he had made his placard himself, but then under his breath admitted that “a young guy in a suit who looked like a businessman drove up in a car in the morning and distributed the placards to the picketers.” According to the picketer, the same young guy promised to pay each participant 300 rubles per day after the series of pickets ended.

Meanwhile, beyond the cordon at the building of RAO Russian Railways on the corner of Kalanchevskaia and Bolshaia Spasskaia streets, stood a small group (no more than ten people) of Khodorkovsky's supporters, whom the police had not allowed near the courthouse, despite the fact that, on their arrest [Kommersant reported on this yesterday] the day before, several of them were holding notices of appointment to the Meshchansky Court, which was supposed to consider the question of an administrative infringement, i.e., “violation of the rules for holding demonstrations”. Their picket was actually spontaneous. A group called Conscience (Sovest), which had organized a demonstration in support of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, refused to hold pickets at the courthouse after a scuffle between picketers and OMON on Monday [Kommersant reported on this on May 17]. Gary Kasparov, the chairman of Committee 2008 and an active supporter of Khodorkovsky, had gone to Novosibirsk. Left without a leader, the Khodorkovsky supporters behaved peacefully, which didn't stop police from arresting two young men with the excuse that they were wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Free MBKh” [Khodorkovsky]. Since the arrested men already had subpoenas, the police took them into the courthouse, where they received new subpoenas for today. Once again they were charged with violating the rules for holding demonstrations.

by Oleg Kashin

(Kommersant 5.19.2005)