Moscow - Opposition activists, journalist and human rights
defenders rallied under the rain in central Moscow Sunday to
commemorate the one-year anniversary of the murder of investigative
journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and to appeal for fair elections.
A fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, Politkovskaya had won
international acclaim for her reporting of human rights abuses
against civilians in war-torn Chechnya.
For Russia's beleaguered opposition groups, her death in a
contract-style shooting in the front of her Moscow apartment has come
to symbolize the lack of civil liberties and safety for government
critics under Putin's rule.
About 1,000 people filed through a police checkpoint and stood
with carnations for under umbrellas and protest slogans in
Pushkinskaya Square on Sunday for a dissenters' march called by
former prime minister and opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov.
While authorities said 800 policemen including OMON riot police
were deployed, Moscow city hall had granted permission for a maximum
500 to attend the march, Kasyanov's Spokeswoman Tatyana Razbash said.
Early Russian media reports Sunday cited 200 participants.
Speaking in front of images of Politkovskaya, her newspaper's
former editor and chief Dimitry Muratov announced Novaya Gazeta was
reactivating Politkovskaya's cell phone in hopes of reviving the
stream calls about official malfeasance.
'This number stopped answering on October 7 last year,' Muratov
said. 'On this number, people called her to set up meetings during
which she was given extremely important information on corruption in
the Russian Federation.'
Muratov credited Politkovskaya article in 2000 for the European
Court of Human Rights Thursday ruling against Russia in three extra-
judicial killings of Chechen civilians.
Kasyanov thanked activist worldwide who gathered to
Politkovskaya's 'political assassination,' and said her name had
joined the ranks of 'our society's highest moral authorities'
alongside Soviet rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov and veteran
activist Lyudmila Alexeyevna.
Alexeyevna, 79, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, also spoke
Sunday. 'Politkovskaya struggled against lawlessness and against
violence. Her destruction confirms the truth she wrote,' she said.
Kasyanov also decried 'manipulation' and 'propaganda' by the
'Russian Federations' current totalitarian state' to give a semblance
of democracy and called the upcoming December parliamentary elections
'a farce.'
Following his speech the crowd briefly took up a chant of 'Russia
without Putin,' and waved party signs reading '336 days without
Politkovskaya' and 'No to political censure.'
Led by Kasyanov demonstrators then marched up Lisnaya Street to
place flowers in front of the apartment building where Politkovskaya
lived and was murder.
Earlier in the day former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, the
presidential candidate for The Other Russia, an opposition coalition
which Kasyanov quit earlier this year, had lit a candle at
Politkovskaya's home, saying it was 'not a day for politics,'
according to his spokeswoman Lyudmila Mamina.
Dissenters' marches in her memory were also held in St.
Petersburg, Nizhny Novogorod and several other Russian cities.
Using what rights groups have described as bullying tactics,
authorities have increasingly cracked down on the wave of dissenters'
marches held across Russia to call for a fair elections through the
March presidential vote.
At Kievskaya train station, where activists often meet before the
marches, police were letting in only passengers with tickets in hand,
and about 200 from the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi rallied outside
in celebration of Putin's 55th birthday.
On Saturday, police detained five Western rights activists and
interrogated organizers of a memorial conference for Politkovskaya in
the city of Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometres east of Moscow. The
conference was cancelled after organizers' funds were frozen by
authorities.
The five activists - three Spaniards, a Briton and a German
employee of Amnesty International - were later released and fined for
a routine violation of registration regulations, a regional police
spokesman said, Interfax reported.
Conference organizers complained that the detention was part an
official intimidation campaign to stop the meeting, where
participants planned to discuss the investigation of Politkovskaya's
murder and the state of journalism in Russia today.
The state-run newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta also on Saturday
reported that a Ukrainian mafia boss had been detained in connection
with Politkovskaya's murder.
Ten alleged members of a Chechen criminal group, including four
law-enforcement officers and a member of the state security service,
were arrested in connection the case in late August.
Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika hailed the detention last
month of the former head of a district in Chechnya as a major
breakthroughs in the investigation.
But suspicion that the Kremlin could be linked with her death have
only grown deeper as several suspects have had alibis and have now
been released.
Politkovskaya was one of 13 journalists slain in contract-style
killings in Russia since Putin came to office in 2000, according to
the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists.
No suspects have yet been charged in Politkovskaya's murder.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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