Police detained dozens of people at an anti-Kremlin protest on New Year’s Eve, including 82-year-old human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who was dressed as the Snow Maiden.
Alexeyeva, one of 2009’s recipients of the European Union’s top human rights award, was among those seen being pushed into five buses as police broke up the protest on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad several hours before midnight on Dec. 31.
The detentions drew criticism from U.S. and EU authorities.
“I am profoundly and personally touched when I think that this very respectful 82-year-old woman spent the night of New Year’s Eve under Russian arrest,” European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said, RIA-Novosti reported.
“The United States expresses dismay at reports that authorities in Moscow prevented Russian citizens from exercising their right to assemble peacefully,” Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, said in a statement released in Washington.
The head of President Dmitry Medvedev’s human rights council, Ella Pamfilova, intervened to get all the protesters released.
Alexeyeva had arrived at the New Year’s Eve protest dressed as the Snow Maiden, the companion of Grandfather Frost. Other protesters dressed as Grandfather Frost. Police had forbidden the protest on the grounds that it would interfere with New Year’s festivities.
Small groups of protesters shouted “Freedom” and “End Putin’s Reign” before being detained or shoved away from the square.
The protest was a repeat of actions held on the 31st of July, August and October. The timing is a nod to the 31st Article of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees the right of assembly.
City authorities banned all the protests and sent police to break them up. But the New Year’s protest was the first time that police have detained Alexeyeva, a leading Soviet dissident who has continued to lead the fight for democracy and human rights in Russia as the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Opposition leader Eduard Limonov, who co-founded the banned National Bolshevik Party, was detained as he approached the square, as he has been ahead of previous protests, activists said. He spent 10 days in jail in November on charges of organizing the Oct. 31 protest and resisting arrest.
The New Year’s protest ended an hour after it started when 40 helmeted riot police joined the hundreds of city police in clearing the square.
“They’re breaking the law by doing this,” said Viktor Shenderovich, a well-known political satirist and opposition activist. “They are violating our constitutional right to assembly.
Police spokesman Arkady Bashirov said more than 50 protesters had been detained. At least 100 people were seen being taken away in police buses.
(AP, MT)