Krasnodar, Russia: New repressions against anarchists

Posted by Reverend Chuck

Infoshop News
May 15 2004

Lyosha Cherepanov, one of the most active militants of Autonomous
Action of Krasnodar got drugs planted on him on Wednesday. Lyosha does
not use drugs, not even grass which freely flourishes in every other
yard of Kuban. He is freed from army for health reasons, but got a
letter from draft commission to come to “re-register” in Wednesday. In
middle of the road, he was arrested by police. He was allowed to make
few phonecalls, so he was able to inform that he was planted drugs and
sentenced to “9 days of administrative arrest” for “a refusal to follow
orders of Gosnarkokontrol”, which is a new ATF-analogue in Russia.

Whole thing seems not to have a slightest legal pretext,
Gosnarkokontrol is a new structure, which does not even have any laws
regulating its powers yet . Cops often frame random people for drugs
in order to have their quotas fulfilled in Russia, but they do not do
that in middle of the road, and they do not send letters from call-up
commission in order to get victims. So this thing has a strong FSB
flavour in it. Seems like they decided to finish off at once with the
group of Autonomous Action in Krasnodar, which already has severely
suffered from repression, Dimitri Ryabinin from the same group was
sentenced for half years after another framed-up case 4 months ago.

Lyosha has now a lawyer, but it is difficult to do something during
week-end. We will try to have police phone numbers posted soon to make
pressure, I think they are now just trying ice, how far they may go,
and if not given red light they will make something more serious.

Also a bit more old news… Stanislav Markelov was assaulted
in Moscow metro 16th of April, beaten up, mugged and stolen many
documents, including lawyer’s license. Markelov is not an anarchist,
but has been a friend and close to anarchist scene for more than a
decade and given priceless legal help in many difficult situations.
Last year Markelov was a national celebrity when he was for a short
while working around gase of Yuri Budanov, a Russian colonel accused
of raping and murdering a teenage Chechen girl. He was defending
interests of the family of murdered Elza Kungaevo for a short while
before he got ousted from the process. I did not wrote before about
attack on Markelov since it was unclear to me if it was connected
to his professional activities, but currently Stas seems to suspect
that it might have been. Such intimidation tactics are quite often
used against lawyers, journalists and human rights activists in Russia.

I would also like to use opportunity to correct some details from
the last Moscow ABC bulletin (#2), after people protested them in
a Russian list… at first, attempt to burn Armenian children did
not happened in Kolomna but in Kostroma. Also, circumstances around
death of a punk in Minsk are unclear, but many believe that fascists
were not involved. I was also informed that punk killed by nazis in
Yekaterinburg was member of National Bolshevik Party.