Russian police detain nearly 300 protesting against pension reform rights group
RUSSIA - Thousands of supporters of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny protested across Russia yesterday against planned increases to the pension age, with a rights group saying at least 291 of them had been detained by the police.
The protests, which police sometimes broke up by beating participants with batons and dragging them away, were a challenge to the authorities who were hoping for a high turnout at regional elections also being held on yesterday, despite widespread anger over the pension move.
The proposed pension changes, which are currently going through parliament, have shaved around 15 percentage points off President Vladimir Putin’s popularity rating. They are the most unpopular government measure since a 2005 move to scrap Sovietera benefits, which led to nationwide pensioner protests. Navalny, barred from state TV and prevented from running against Putin for president earlier this year, hopes to tap into public anger over the reform. He had planned to lead a protest in Moscow yesterday, but a court last month convicted him of breaking protest laws and jailed him for 30 days. Navalny said the move was designed to derail the protests which took place in more than 80 towns and cities, including Moscow and St Petersburg.
OVD-Info, a rights organization that monitors detentions, said 291 Navalny supporters had been detained by police yesterday in nineteen towns and cities, including some of Navalny’s closest aides. In Moscow, where the authorities had rejected an application from Navalny’s supporters to protest, around 2,000 people gathered in the central Pushkin Square, the authorities and Reuters reporters estimated.
Some of them chanted ‘Russia will be free’ and ‘Putin is a thief’. Riot police ordered them to disperse or face prosecution. Some of the protesters then marched through central Moscow before riot police halted them with metal barriers and sometimes rough detentions.
Despite the nature of the protest, many of those who took part were young.
“I have come here to protest against the pension reform, I have to live in this country and I want to have hope for the future and a good old age”, said 22yearold Nikolai Borodin. (Reuters)