At least 110 people have been arrested in different cities in Russia in spontaneous rallies in tribute to the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in prison on Friday, reported this Saturday OVD-Info, an organization that ensures the rights of detained opponents. In addition, the Police recognized the personal data of all the participants in those events, including the reporters who came to cover them.
More than half of the arrests (69) were carried out in Saint Petersburg, the birthplace of the regime’s leader, Vladimir Putin. The rest took place in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar and other cities in the European part of Russia and Siberia, OVD-Info states on its website.
On Friday night, across Russia groups of people laid flowers at makeshift memorials at monuments in memory of political dissidents, according to images posted on social media. Given the calls to demonstrate that circulated on the internet, the Moscow prosecutor’s office warned that “organizing or holding unauthorized rallies, calling them and participating in them is an administrative offense.”
Dissent is prohibited
Since Friday, law enforcement forces and plainclothes agents have been trying to remove all memorials created by Navalny’s supporters, both in monuments and to victims of political repression and in improvised places. This is what happened, according to local Telegram channels, in front of the Kremlin, on the bridge where opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered in 2015.
Thousands of Russians in exile took to the streets to protest what they consider a murder commissioned by the Kremlin and called for more actions in European, American and Latin American cities this Saturday. Navalny had survived a poisoning in 2020 and achieved notoriety as an anti-corruption activist, becoming the most prominent figure in an opposition that is reduced to a minimum.
Navalny, 47, died regretfully on Friday in the Arctic prison where he had been since last December, according to the Russian penitentiary services. Navalny, who served a sentence of almost 30 years in prison, was transferred in December after announcing a campaign against Putin’s re-election in the March presidential elections.
Protests are illegal in Russia, where harsh laws apply to punish dissent, including prison sentences for criticizing power.
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