Record numbers of people have been detained at anti-war protests across Russia since the country’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
Although mass coordinated protests have been hampered by the Russian authorities’ wholesale attack on opposition organisations in recent years, people are still coming out to protest against the war – with pickets, unsanctioned rallies and statements online. In response, the police have detained protesters and passers-by en masse, and subjected them, on occasion, to brutal treatment.
On 6 March, 2,500 people were detained in Moscow in connection with several anti-war protests in the Russian capital.
One incident, in particular, caught the public eye: the treatment of 25 women and four men who were detained near Moscow’s Krasnye Vorota metro station and placed in two police vans. After one of the vans overturned en route to the city’s southern outskirts, all 29 detainees were placed in a single van. On arrival at a police station in the suburb of Brateevo, they were subject to humiliation and beatings, as documented in an audio recording made secretly by one of the women.
“Putin is on our side. You are the enemies of Russia. You are the enemy of the people. Now we’ll f*** you up here, and that’s it. It’s a done deal. We will even get a bonus for this,” one police officer shouted.
Mediazona, a Russian media outlet that focuses on the country’s law and justice system, attempted to create a complete picture of what had happened to the protesters in Brateevo. openDemocracy provides a translation and abridged version of the article below.
Mediazona asked the press department of the Moscow Ministry of Internal Affairs for comment on the incident. It refused, asking Mediazona to submit an official request instead (a process that takes 30 days).
Below is a translation of Mediazona’s article, originally published on 9 March 2022.
“It was really hot, we all stripped down to our T-shirts. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to breathe.”
This is how Tatyana, 19, a web designer, described the scene as 29 protesters were crammed into a single police van, late in the afternoon of 6 March. The other van had crashed near Moscow’s Komsomolsky Prospect, en route to Brateevo, and police had pushed everyone into the same vehicle. There were 29 people in total: four men, 25 women.
“You’re holding on to the roof of the van, but it’s all wet and you’re just flying around. We had to hold on to one another,” Tatyana said.
Nikita Sologub
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