Update II:
The State Department has released a statement expressing “deep disappointment” by the sentences handed down Monday in Moscow in the cases of eight individuals arrested after the Bolotnaya Square protests in Moscow in May 2012. It points out that the individuals — which include students, an artist, a physicist, a former soldier and an athlete — endured more than a year of detention and a politically-motivated trial marked by a lack of due process, and that seven of them now face prison sentences of up to four years.
The statement further says that “this is another example of punishment of Russians for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and assembly” and calls upon the Russian government to demonstrate its commitment to the rule of law by correcting this injustice.
The statement concludes
The United States is also disturbed by the large number of detentions made at peaceful demonstrations in support of these defendants on Friday, February 21 and Monday, February 24. In Moscow alone nearly 800 people were detained, and political figures such as Boris Nemtsov and Aleksey Navalnyy were arrested and will spend up to 10 days in jail. We call upon the Russian government to respect the rights of all citizens to exercise the fundamental freedoms and universal human rights.
Update I:
Read at The Daily Beast Michael Weiss’ description of how “Just 24 hours after the Sochi Olympics ended, two former members of Pussy Riot were arrested by police along with hundreds of others protesting the government’s harsh sentencing for Putin protesters. The latest crackdown just shows Sochi’s feel-good fraternity was a façade…”
~~
Original post:
As mentioned here, most people would agree that, despite the security concerns, despite the initial “horror stories” about hotel accommodations in Sochi and despite the weather sometimes making things slushy on the Sochi slopes, the Russians put on — as the New York Times said — “a Games that ran seamlessly, at times even exuberantly.”
With the exception of the incident where members of the Russian band and protest group Pussy Riot were beaten with horsewhips by Cossacks helping patrol the Winter Olympics, the Russian security apparatus behaved rather well — as far as we know.
However, it may all have been a façade
The Guardian reports that, before the Sochi Winter Olympics, Putin’s “prestige project, Putin “changed tack” and engineered “the release of two women from Pussy Riot and the former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was widely seen as a political prisoner after more than 10 years in jail.”
Then there is this:
In May 2012, on the eve of Putin’s inauguration for a third term, a large protest took place in Moscow and 28 people were arrested and most of them have been held in custody since then, according to the Guardian.
On Friday, while Putin was still basking in the success of the Games, eight defendants were found guilty of taking part in mass riots and hitting policemen, but the court postponed the sentencing “in a move viewed by the opposition as an attempt to avoid publicity during Sunday’s closing ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi,” says the Guardian.
Then, like Kremlin clockwork, on Monday, after the Winter games closing ceremony, we read in the Guardian:
A Moscow court has handed down prison sentences of up to four years for seven people who took part in a 2012 protest against Vladimir Putin. An eighth defendant received a suspended sentence.
Hundreds of their supporters gathered outside the courthouse to condemn the trial and the Kremlin’s crackdown on opponents. Police detained more than 100 of them, accusing them of violating public order.
“Amnesty International called Friday’s guilty verdict a ‘hideous injustice’ and condemned the hearings as a ‘show trial’,” says the Guardian.
Read more here.
Now that the Games are over and as Ukraine joins a long list of human rights and democracy issues, the question on everyone’s minds is, “Will it be back to business as usual?”
Image: www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.