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futurejournalismproject:

Face Off: Boy vs Russian Police

Via the NY Daily News:

The New Yorker and Foreign Policy magazine correspondent Julia Ioffe snapped the photo with her iPhone during violent protests by anti-Putin demonstrators on the day before Putin’s inauguration, ABC News reports. She tweeted the photo to her more-than-6,000 followers with a reference to Tiananmen Square.

Ioffe was referencing the huge pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, China in 1989, iconized by a photograph of one man standing still in front of a row of tanks.

At least 20,000 people rallied Sunday at Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square in protest of Putin’s election.

Violence erupted as the protesters marched toward the Kremlin and police fought back with clubs, injuring several people and leading to more than 400 arrests, reports the Associated Press.

pantslessprogressive:

“Evolution, Not Revolution.” This is the leading slogan from the recent protests in Russia - a phrase that has sparked my interest tremendously over the past couple weeks (and has been widely used to describe Morocco).

The white ribbon opposition showed up in the thousands across Russia on December 10th - with 50,000 showing up in Bolotnaya Square - making it the largest day of opposition rallies since Putin came to power in 1999.

The Kremlin was noticeably silent following challenges to the December 4th parliamentary election results, but within two weeks, both Putin and Medvedev responded to the protests. The tone from the strongman has not led the anti-Putin groups to back off, though that’s not to anyone’s surprise when you hear Putin joke about mistaking the white ribbons for condoms. This weekend, Medvedev has set a somewhat different tone: he acknowledged the country’s dissatisfaction by calling the current political system “exhausted,” though he dismissed the recent rallies as “foam” on the surface of this dissatisfaction and warned against “delegitimisation of the authorities.”

The feasibility of change in the Duma, with the willingness of Putin’s United Russia being the key, remains to be seen. Amidst these anti-government protests sweeping the world this past year, what we may find exceptionally intriguing with the protests in Russia is not the demand for revolution, but the call for evolution.

[Photo: Opposition supporters hold a structure showing Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev in a prison cell during a rally to protest against the parliamentary elections in St. Petersburg on December 18. Credit: Alexander Demianchuk/Reuters]

newsflick:

People Power: TIME magazine revealed the 2011 choice for its iconic Person of the Year cover live on TODAY Wednesday. The Protester is this year’s choice. As it has for the past 84 years, the weekly newsmagazine selected the person (or sometimes group, or thing) that its editors deemed had the single greatest impact during the past year, for better or for worse. (TIME)

caraobrien:

A Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin’s Russia

One cannot read these journals without the awful knowledge that their author, Politkovskaya (1958-2006), paid for them with her life, shot in the head in front of her Moscow apartment on October 7 (President Vladimir Putin’s birthday). Internationally known as one of the few Russian journalists fearless enough to report Russian news independent of Kremlin spin, she was a relentless and vociferous critic of Putin, reporting on his abuses in the Chechen war and his attempts to retract Russia’s fledgling democratic freedoms. Covering December, 2003 to August, 2005, Politkovskaya records with dismal and sardonic exactitude the encroaching power of the State, dismantling private businesses, shuttering media outlets and squeezing more money out of its citizens, practically plunging the country into Communist-era conditions. Both the farcical policies and individual crimes of the government are documented and scrutinized: instituting life sentences for suicide bombers, as well as the attempted cover up of an 18-year-old Private beat to death by his superiors. Rounding out the bleak scene are opposition parties that prove fractious, disorganized, craven and predictably willing to sacrifice principle for power. Politkovskaya suffers nobly-and eloquently-in this semi-daily account, yet one must wonder how similarly she would have suffered amidst the capitalist excesses of the West. A rare and intelligent memoir-if an entirely depressing one-this will give readers a detailed look into Russia’s everyday march towards totalitarianism. 

nezua:

hyperallergic:

Banksy’s Anonymity Cost Russia’s Voina Group Their Bail

by Marina Galperina for Animal NY

When Voina artists’ pre-trial incarceration was extended another month on Friday in St. Petersburg, the judge declined their bail offer – $66,500 for each, adding up to the exact amount Banksy’s aid — citing “lack of information about the person providing the money.” And there it is, Banky’s anonymity, worth a million yet useless in court. VIDEO of the trial below. 

Then again, this isn’t your regular court. This is the third month that the Voina artists are in jail since their arrest, with no date set for trial to determine whether turning over a cop car is a hate crime or an artistic act of protest.

Voina’s lawyer: The artists have been held in prison without trial for an unlawful period of time. No one comes to question the artists in jail, papers are constantly misplaced and the whole investigation seems deliberately stagnant. The situation is ludicrous.

Voina’s second lawyer: To equate damage to police property with violent extremism is ridiculous. Moreover, the prosecutor’s claims that the act was a hate crime against the police implies that the police is a social group and a minority requiring special protection, while in reality, the police is not a social group and is protected more than anyone else.

Voina’s president Leonid Nikolayev (Bucketman): The police cannot be treated as a special interest group because their own law enforcement doctrine states they should have no special interests.

Voina’s lawyer: They treat the artists like dangerous criminals and are determined to keep them in prison, regardless of the evidence or bail money offered. This is clearly a political gesture.

Voina’s idealogist Oleg Vorotnikov: When arrested, Oleg has been kept in a room with spike-surfaced walls which were outlawed by human rights groups. They intended to intimidate and torture him. Oleg smiles because the prosecutor says he’s never heard of Voina before.

Voina’s witness, a respected professor, sociologist and economist, expert on political dissent: Only the other day, the president of Russia has called out the police force for corruption and promised to deal with it. Some people protest by publishing books, shooting documentary films or writing poetry. Voina’s artistic methods of dissent are highly social and direct, aiming to confront directly the elements that hurt Russia’s goverment and its people. It is not a traditional form of protest, but if they are to be legally punished for their actions, then the process has to be lawful and just. They have never, ever hurt another human being. This is an important chapter in Russia’s political history.

Artists wage spiritual guerrilla warfare on corrupt and oppressive systems. These reactions prove the power art wields, striking fear into the minds of even the well-armed.

scottnolansmith:

Russia marks the New Year at Red Square in Moscow, with the Kremlin and St. Basil’s cathedral in the background.