April 15, 2016 – The Russian Reader

Hello! One of the main events of the past week for us was not Putin’s “Direct Line,” but the arrest of a man who spoke with Putin a year ago. Anton Tyurishev, a construction worker at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, complained to the president that he and his mates were not being paid their wages. Putin promised to get to the bottom of it, but a year on nothing had changed. Tyurishev promised that in response protests would kick off. Later, he was summoned to the police station, where the “Law on Rallies” was read out to him. The day before the “Direct Line” broadcast, he was detained and sent to jail for five days, allegedly, for swearing in public.

Criminal Prosecution

The new defendant in the Bolotnaya Square Case, Maxim Panfilov, who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome and yet was taken into police custody, is not getting the medicines he needs. Instead, he is being administered substitutes that do not alleviate his condition. Panfilov has been appointed an outpatient psychiatric examination. The investigator has agreed to let defense attorneys attend it.

Ildar Dadin, convicted of “multiple violations of the rules for holding public events,” was convoyed from Moscow to Petersburg right on his birthday, which means he will serve his sentence in Leningrad Region.

Last week, it transpired that Magomednabi Magomedov, imam of the Eastern Mosque in Khasavyurt, had been arrested, accused of incitement to terrorism and inciting religious and ethnic hatred. Magomedov, who was transported from one place of confinement to another over several days, complained he had been tortured. Pretrial detention facility officers had beaten him and forced him to kneel, demanding that he confess to the charges.

Euromaidan participant Alexander Kostenko, convicted of harming a Berkut riot police officer, was transferred to solitary confinement shortly before a hearing where his request for parole was to be examined. Naturally, Kostenko’s parole request was rejected.

It seems soon Alexei Navalny will have no allies who are not undergoing criminal prosecution. Ivan Zhdanov, head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s legal service, and a candidate for the council of deputies in the Moscow suburb of Barvikha, has been charged with evading conscription.

Freedom of Assembly

In Ulyanovsk, police diligently searched for activists who had blocked a road in connection with construction of a residential complex. They visited one activist at work, and telephone another and asked him to report for questioning. When he demanded an official summons, they threatened him with criminal charges. Administrative charges have been filed against three people.

In Volgograd, the leader of the regional Union of Entrepreneurs and Freight Haulers has been slapped with three administrative charges for calling people to a protest rally before the rally was authorized. The court threw out two of the three charges, while the third resulted in a fine.

The confrontation continues in Moscow’s Dubki Park. Defenders of the park, who oppose construction there, are fined for disobeying the police. A female journalist’s arm was injured when an assembly of defenders was dispersed. When he was detained, one of the activists, Dmitry Boinov, was beaten so badly that he has been in hospital for a week recovering from fractures.

Beatings

In Podolsk, three men attacked Maxim Chekanov, a past participant of protest rallies. The incident began when they called Chekanov by name, asked him questions about the “Kiev junta,” called him a “Banderite scumbag,” and then invited him to go round the corner. During the ensuing fight they smashed Chekhanov’s face.

Popular Chechen singer Hussein Betelgeriev, who disappeared in late March, has returned home beaten. It is unknown where he was all this time. Relatives and friends suggest he was abducted, and connect the abduction with his comments on social networks and the fact he ignored the call to attend a pro-Kadyrov rally on March 23.

Reading

Olga Sutuga, mother of anti-fascist Alexei Sutuga, currently serving time at a penal colony in Irkutsk Region, talks about the international aid project Political Prisoners University.

Thanks for your attention!

_________

OVD Info is an independent human rights media project dedicated to political persecution in Russia. We are engaged in daily monitoring of detentions at public events, and publish information about other kinds of political persecution. We believe that information liberates and protects, and analyzing the data we collect can help change the situation for the better in the future.

Editor’s Note. OVD Info sends out a weekly email news roundup, in Russian, to its supporters. I thought that, despite its brevity, this week’s roundup provided a fairly eloquent picture of the state of affairs in this country at present and not just this particular week. You can sign up to the mailing list by going to the bottom of any page n the OVD Info website and entering your email address where you see the phrase ПОДПИСАТЬСЯ НА РАССЫЛКУ.

On His Way to Meetings in Russia, Director Expelled from Country
Radio Ozodi
April 13, 2016

Seeing stamps from Ukraine, Turkey, and Georgia in the passport of famous Tajik director Barzu Abdurazzokov, Russia border guards denied him entry to Moscow.

Russian border guards did not allow the famous Tajik director Barzu Abdurazzokov entry to the country. After detaining and questioning him for an hour, he was expelled to Tajikistan.

Abdurazzokov had flown to Moscow with a company of Kyrgyz actors, and from Moscow he was scheduled to fly to Saint Petersburg, where he was staging a production of Ballad of a Mankurt at Meetings in Russia, an international theater festival of CIS and Baltic countries.

The famous theater director told Radio Ozodia in an interview on April 13 that the actors of the Chingiz Aitmatov State National Russian Drama Theater were judged the best at the festival and won the Kirill Lavrov Prize, named in memory of the People’s Artist of the Soviet Union.

The play Ballad of a Mankurt is based on Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years. Abdurazzokov was the production’s director, script writer, and musical director.

The festival, which was held for the eighteenth time, also featured another production by the Tajik director, Classmates: Life Lessons.

Abdurazzokov said that over the past six years he had traveled to different countries with his passport and had encountered no problems, but Russian border guards took issue with his papers and expelled him.

”We flew from Bishkek to Moscow, whence we were supposed to fly to Saint Petersburg. When we arrived in Moscow, the Russian border guards examined my passport, in which there were numerous stamps from Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, and Iran, for a long while. An FSB officer came up, took my passport, and made a photocopy. I was told there were inaccuracies in the document and was detained. I wanted to call the Russian Ministry of Culture so they would know about the difficulties one encounters, but the border guards didn’t let me call,” said the director.

Abdurazzakov said he was held at Domodedovo Airport around an hour and then sent home to Tajikistan on the next flight from Moscow to Kulyab.

“On the day the festival opened, I was already in Dushanbe, and my company was performing there without me,” he said.

Abdurazzokov has already received a new passport and should leave the country in a few days to continue working. He believes his sudden arrival Tajikistan was no coincidence. He had a ticket for an April 10 flight from Petersburg to Dushanbe, because he wanted to visit his mother immediately after the festival.

“Fate decided to speed up our meeting,” he said, laughing.

Honored Artist of Tajikistan Barzu Abdurazzokov was born in 1959 in Dushanbe. His father is the famous actor Habibullo Abdurazzokov; his mother, the actress Fotima Gulomova. In 1980, he graduated from the directing department at the Tajik Institute of Arts, and in 1987, from the directing department at Lunacharsky State Institute for Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow.

In 2009, his production Madness: The Year 1993, staged at the Russian Dramatic Theater in Dushanbe, was banned by the country’s culture ministry. Subsequently, Abdurazzokov was unable to get work in Tajikistan, but Bishkek was happy to have him. Since 2013, he has worked at the Aitmatov Theater, and for two years in a row he was awarded Kyrgyzstan’s best director award.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo courtesy of Radio Ozodi

Day: April 15, 2016

It’s Been a Quiet Week in the Motherland (The News from OVD Info)

Renowned Tajik Theater Director Barzu Abdurazzokov Expelled from Russia