Kommersant
Hundreds detained in post-election protests in Moscow
Police in Moscow detained nearly 1,000 people over two days of protests against election fraud. They are charged with resisting police and can be held for 15 days. The Moscow city court has said it would prioritize the hearings on these cases. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on Russian authorities to release the detainees.
ITAR-TASS said 569 people were detained during Tuesday’s action at Triumfalnaya Square, where up to 1,500 protested against alleged fraud in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Interfax said 17 people requested medical assistance and nine were hospitalized. The police have not confirmed that 569 protesters were detained; saying only that over 300 had been taken into custody. On December 5, about 300 opposition protesters, including a senior member of the opposition movement, Solidarity, Ilya Yashin, and blogger Alexei Navalny were detained at Chistiye Prudy. Yashin and Navalny have contested the 15-day detainment ruling, which was not overturned. Their lawyers failed to convince the court to view the videotapes of their detainment.
Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, the Other Russia movement leader, Eduard Limonov, the head of the human rights center, Memorial, Oleg Orlov, and several journalists were released on Wednesday. But more than half of the detainees are still waiting for court hearings. Moscow city court press secretary Anna Usachyova said the hearing schedule would be accelerated but said it would still take at least a week.
International human rights organizations are concerned about the developments. Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Arresting peaceful protesters and imposing jail time hardly speaks well for the government” and called on the authorities to “release everyone arrested at peaceful protests on December 5, 2011, who did not engage in acts of violence.” Amnesty International earlier wrote about the police mistreatment of peaceful protesters and said the protesters at Chirtiye Prudy are “prisoners of conscience.”
Russia’s Public Chamber, a government oversight committee, will issue a statement on the detainment of the protesters. Olga Kostina, chair of the Moscow Interior Department’s Public Chamber, said the chamber was discussing the events but it needs more time to “develop a common stand.” She did not say if a meeting had been called to discuss police actions but did say that they had made a proposal to the Moscow court and the Supreme Court on ways to optimize the registration of the detainees. “Unlike the police, the courts do not work round the clock,” she said. Several human rights activists were recently replaced by actors and retired police officers in the Moscow Interior Department’s Public Chamber. The reformed chamber’s first decisions indicate a resolve to protect the police, not the protesters.
Kostina said the courts will work longer hours on December 10, when a protest is to be held at Moscow’s Revolution Square. Over 15,000 people are planning to attend, according to social network sites.
Izvestia
Russian Communists demand investigation into election observer’s death
Sergei Babenko, an election observer from the Communist Party in the Krasnodar Territory, has been found dead in his home. Hours earlier Babenko had a conflict with a chairperson of the local election commission who had refused to provide the observers with copies of the final election protocol. Now Communists demand an independent investigation into his death.
Communist MPs have written to President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Chairman of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov, Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika and Head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, stating the details of the observer’s death and expressing their distrust of the local law enforcement agencies, which have refused to launch an investigation.
Babenko, 55, was found dead on December 6, when he failed to attend a meeting with observers from other political parties. The protocol was finally handed out 24 hours after the election and the observers had agreed to meet to write up their remarks to the protocol. When Babenko did not show up, his colleagues went to his home and found the body. The observers made statements to the police that they found Babenko dead, possibly strangled.
“Sergei Babenko was not a member of the Russian Communist Party but a supporter. He was a very responsible person and this was his first time working as election observer,” said Nikolai Borovkov, head of the Communist Party’s Belorechensk District Committee. He said Babenko was in good health although talk of his possible murder were premature.
Babenko observed the elections in his home village of Shkolnoye. His neighbors said he lived alone since his wife’s death several years earlier and that he did various odd jobs.
Valentina Lotnikova, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and its representative in the rural election commission, said she had not witnessed any conflict at the polling station but confirmed that commission chairperson Gayane Bakhireva had failed to complete the protocols on time.
Ivan Savvin, another election commission member, said the observers had not received the protocols the following day either.
“Babenko threatened to inform the authorities about all the violations, including the fact that during the election Bakhireva’s husband acted as a commission member with the right to decisive vote. It later turned out that he was not a member. The next day, we found Babenko dead,” Savvin said.
Voter turnout in the Krasnodar Territory is estimated at 72.7%. United Russia has received 56% of votes, or 5,000 more on 2007. The Communist Party has received 100,000 more votes and is supported by 17.5% of the electorate. The LDPR and A Just Russia are backed by 10.4% and 10.8%, respectively, and have received over 100,000 additional votes each.
A high-placed official at the Investigative Committee’s Belorechensk District investigation department said this death was not crime-related and that Babenko had died of natural causes.
Kommersant
City Hall fails to ease Moscow traffic
A year into Mayor Sobyanin’s traffic optimizing effort, City Hall has spent nearly $6.5 billion on roads and public transport improvement. Yet traffic has become even heavier, if anything.
When Sergei Sobyanin replaced Yury Luzhkov as Moscow Mayor, President Dmitry Medvedev instructed him to help the Transport Ministry ease traffic in the city. With the metro 40% overloaded and the average speed of vehicles 22 kmh (about half of that in metropolises around the world), the City Hall drafted a series of priority measures for 2011 worth 203 billion rubles.
Over 60% of financing went into road construction projects, most of them inherited from Luzhkov, including roads running from the center to the Moscow Region, several overpasses, cloverleaves and a 10-lane bridge.
However, one of Luzhkov’s most ambitious projects, the Fourth Ring, was dropped because it would have cost 500 billion rubles ($16bn) and replaced with several smaller “lateral road” projects which would directly connect some of the outlaying suburbs with each other.
Roads were widened where possible, and 500,000 parking spaces were created, mostly by destroying public lawns. Several park-and-ride lots have opened.
Another 30% of financing was spent on improving the public transport system. Sobyanin’s idea is to discourage driving and encourage people to use public transport instead. City Hall doubled investment in the metro improvement. New stations have been built, and better trains and buses acquired.
All went well until the authorities tried to redirect transport flows in the city. To make buses and trolley-buses more efficient, priority lanes were introduced taking space away from private vehicles because it was either impossible or too expensive to widen the roads. In September, new markings appeared everywhere making the seasonal increase in traffic worse than ever.
That caused an outrage in the blogosphere, while human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov condemned the policy as violating drivers’ rights. City Hall responded by adjusting plans from 225 km of priority lanes to 100 this year.
Echelon Geolife, a satellite geopositioning services provider, analyzed Moscow traffic for Kommersant in November. It appeared that the average speed of traffic fell by 4%-15% year on year. “Excluding seasonal and weather factors, it should be admitted that driving conditions in the city center have significantly deteriorated,” the analysts said. “The drastic steps taken by the city government have either been ineffective or need revision.”
A recent research by Yandex suggests that public transport is still less efficient than private vehicles. It appears that residents of many Moscow districts can get to their destinations faster if they drive than by using public transport. Several neighborhoods with extremely heavy traffic were the only exception; it is more efficient to use the metro there.
Next year the City Hall will launch a new five-year transport development program worth over 2 trillion rubles ($64bn). Sobyanin and his team say improvements should not be expected sooner than in two or three years. Muscovites only hope it won’t get worse in the meantime.
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