Hundreds Rally in Central Moscow, Voice Support for Khodorkovsky

Russian liberals gathered in central Moscow Sunday to voice their support for the jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported.

Over 2,000 people took part in a rally in Lubyanka Square held under a slogan “I have forgotten what fear means”. Protesters voiced their support for the Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and all the other people jailed on politically motivated charges, the station reported.

Viktor Shenderovich, a popular satirist and one of the organizers of the rally, told Ekho: “Since early 1990s we have lived in a country without fear. It was our country and it was as though we had never imagined our future to be any different… We must stop being afraid. We have to understand that to be afraid is simply dangerous.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, were sentenced to nine years in prison each in late May, in a case their supporters said was politically motivated and aimed at stifling Khodorkovsky’s political ambitions.

(Moscow News, 6.12.2005)