Opposition activists staged on Thursday a rally in downtown Moscow to protest the arrests of 13 people over riots at a previous rally in May.
City police said some 800 people attended the event at Novopushkinsky Square, 300 of them journalists. Ridus.ru news website put the figure at 3,000 to 4,000 people. A string of opposition rallies held in Moscow between December and June attracted tens of thousands of protesters each.
“We’ll do everything we can to get these guys out of jail, but everyone understands there is little hope of this while [President Vladimir] Putin is in power,” liberal politician Ilya Yashin told reporters before the rally’s start.
The event was dominated by left activists, many sporting T-shirts with the face of Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, a co-organizer of most recent rallies who took the stage at the rally’s end to call for weekly protest events at the office of the Investigative Committee, which is behind the protesters’ arrests.
Speakers, who included few prominent public figures, read out letters from the detainees from the stage. Some of detainees’ relatives also gave speeches.
A rally at Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on May 6 ended with clashes between protesters and police, who briefly detained some 650 people, according to rights activists’ figures.
Thirteen people were taken in custody in June on suspicion of instigating the riots or attacking police. Two more were held on the eve of the Thursday rally.
The opposition has denounced the arrests as an intimidation campaign.
The crowd at the Thursday rally also chanted “Free Pussy Riot!” Three members of a female punk group were held over an anti-Putin “punk prayer” at an Orthodox Christian cathedral earlier this year and face jail time for hooliganism. Group supporters call the case against it political persecution.
“I’m ashamed of our legal system, which just does what the authorities tell it to do. And I’m afraid that the arrests of protesters and Pussy Riot is just the start of even worse repression, housewife Tatiana Mudrova, 33, said at the rally.
The rally ended peacefully, though one person was detained for trying to smuggle a knife and some flares through the metal detectors at the venue's entrance, city police said.
Some 60 people attended a similar rally in St. Petersburg, which ended without any incidents before the start of the event in Moscow, local police said.
