Power, Money and People

[Translation of an article published on IKD.ru on 15 March.]

In a Yakutia prison camp, the imprisoned trade union leader Valentin Urusov was beaten up, to make him cancel a meeting with journalists.

Valentin Urusov, the convicted trade union activist serving a six-year sentence in no. 3 prison camp at Verkhniy Bestyakh, has been put under pressure because of a planned meeting with journalists from NTV television company.

Maksim Mestnikov, the head of the Sotsprof trade union in Yakutia, told the Institute of Collective Action (IKD) information agency that the NTV journalists were preparing a programme about trade union activists who faced harassment due to their campaigning activity. The meeting with Urusov had been planned as part of the project.

In the spring and summer of 2008, Urusov, having set up a trade union at the Aikhalo-Udachninsky ore enrichment combine, which is part of the [diamond mining] giant Alrosa, organised a series of protests. In September of that year he was arrested, allegedly for possession of drugs, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. A broad campaign began in support of Urusov, and demonstrations expressing support for him were held across Russia and in other countries.

The director of corrective prison camp no. 3, Yevgeny Koada, had previously agreed that trade union representatives would meet with Valentin once every three months during his sentence, in the first place to check up on the state of his health, Mestnikov said. “The prison authorities always came to an agreement with us. The last time we saw him was in December last year.”

Mestnikov explained that a request had been made for Urusov to meet the NTV journalists in a letter to Aleksandr Reimer, head of the Federal Service for Corrective Punishments of Russia (FSIN). By way of an answer, a letter arrived, signed by Valentin Urusov, in which he refused the request for a meeting.

In Mestnikov’s view, the letter was signed under compulsion. “The prison authorities in Yakutia make widespread use of trusties and narks. The trusties were given the task of beating up Urusov so that he would sign the letter refusing the request to meet the TV journalists”, Mestnikov stated.

The next meeting between Urusov and his trade union colleagues was due to take place on Monday 21 March, and Mestnikov said that the it might be postponed on one pretext or another, so that the visitors would not see the physical evidence of the pressure put on Urusov. [Up to today, 23 March, no further report has been published by IKD. As soon as one appears, it will be posted here. Translator.]

It is easy to guess why the prison authorities might be concerned about Urusov meeting journalists. Either the management of the prison camp, or the FSIN, may be worried that the truth about prisoners’ conditions will get too much public attention. It is also entirely possible that the pressure to prevent a meeting between Urusov and journalists has come from his former employers at Alrosa. It is worth recalling that Valentin Urusov has several times said that “the company” is keeping an eye on him, even during imprisonment, and that “it is by no means certain that they will allow him to be freed alive”.

The renewed interest in Urusov’s case from journalists has coincided with a new bout of campaigning in his defence. In February 2011 in Moscow demonstrations were held demanding his release, to coincide with the submission of a supervisory review by his lawyers.

Note. International supporters of Valentin Urusov are asked to follow the example of the National Union of Mineworkers in the UK, and many others, who have written to President Dmitry Medvedev at the Kremlin, demanding that the case be reviewed and Valentin Urusov be released.

Please copy and paste this information wherever you can!

This week Maxim Solopov and Alexei Gaskarov, two activists from Khimki near Moscow who have been involved in a campaign against a motorway construction project that will wreck local forest land, were released from police detention.

 That’s a short term victory, say their supporters. But a campaign in their defence continues, since they still face trial on charges of “disorderly conduct”, arising from their role in organising a day of mass civil disobedience on 28 July against the road project – which has incurred widespread local opposition.

 As their supporters point out on their website http://khimkibattle.org – which has plenty of English-language pages – there have been previous cases where victims of Russian police “justice” have been freed at one stage of legal proceedings but then hit with lengthy jail sentences. That’s exactly what happened to Valentin Urusov, the jailed miner whose campaign I have written about before, here https://spirani.wordpress.com/free-urusov/

The Khimki motorway, a toll road to link Moscow and St Petersburg, is a real piece of corporate vandalism. There are perfectly good proposals to reroute it in such a way as the impact on the forest and the local community would be reduced, and the local council does not listen.

The Khimki local authority will not be winning any prizes for defending civil rights any time soon. There’s an amazingly high rate of physical attacks on people who criticise it, such as the local newspaper editor Sergei Protazanov (killed in 2009), the journalist Mikhail Beketov (severely beaten in 2008) and the campaigner Albert Pchelintsev (severely beaten in 2009).

There’s a well-coordinated international campaign to support Gaskarov and Solopov. Get involved. http://khimkibattle.org/?p=1593&lang=en

 If you’re in or near London, don’t miss the exhibition, The Urgent Need To Struggle, by the radical Russian arts collective, Chto Delat (What is to be Done) at the ICA, at Carlton House Terrace, right near Buckingham Palace. It’s on until 24 October, and features films depicting protest movements such as that mounted in opposition to the construction of a giant tower in St Petersburg by Gazprom, Russia’s largest company. There are photos and copies of Chto Delat’s multi-lingual newspaper.

It’s free, but it’s not open every day. Check it out here: http://www.ica.org.uk/25668/Visual-Art/Chto-delat-What-is-to-be-done-The-Urgent-Need-to-Struggle.html

On Friday 10 September the collective did a “learning play” in the manner of Bertolt Brecht. It was rough and ready, but thought-provoking … and definitely not following fashion.

Chto Delat makes you optimistic about Russia. These are people who take radical and revolutionary ideas seriously, who think about their art in a social context … and can equally do irony, self-irony and plain slapstick. Whether or not they always hit your buttons in terms of their artistic production, they will make you think.

If you’re nowhere near London – or St Petersburg, where they are based – don’t worry, they are on the web here: http://www.chtodelat.org/

And there’s a blog, which I’ve previously described as the best source of information on anti-fascist and other movements in Russia: http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/