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(G8 russia) update 21st July

Piter.Legal | 21.07.2006 19:02 | G8 Russia 2006

Today was a meeting to resume the summit activities in moscow with around 40 people, in Piter there are still 4 people in prison.

After the arrested of the blockade action on sunday where all released allready till wednesday morning and all foreigners had to leave the country in 2 days, there are still people in prison, who were sentenced befor the summit started. One of them, a Ukrainian boy under the age of 18 was for days missed, it is unclear, when police will release him. He was arrested during the raid of the flat with the bycicle activists. Two other russian people will be released on tuesday, they were sentenced befor the summit started as well.
The fourth person is the one, who was beaten up on sunday and went to hospital. Police said he had not been in jail for two days as the court decided so right now after being in hospital for days they want him to stay in prison the time he did not befor, so they will release him tomorrow (satureday) morning.

The meeting in moscow was about what went good in preperation and what went wrong.
There was discussed that a lot of plenaries in St.Petersburg were with few results and exhausting. coordination was missing and it was problematic that actions were clandestine prepared but on the other side if it would have been less, then probably there would have been more repression befor action could happen.
The activities in moscow seemed to be better prepared than the one in St.Petersburg, there was a lack of infrastructure and proper preperation on local level. The social forum was seen from the beginning as bad place to coordinate because it was located as a prison on an island surrounded by police.
There were nearly no posters or graffities in the city and it was hard to find places to meet and discuss. All in all to many people were in fear of repression so that not so much could happen but it was very good that at least actions took place, even if repression was hard.
Befor people expected that nothing would happen at all in Piter, so it was good result, even it is not clear if more hard repression might follow.

There is a new law against "extremists", which might be used and also one person from sibiria, who went to St.Petersburg was arrested for taking "extremists" material with him. This is still not finished, the person is back home but he might still be sentenced. Also other people are in danger the next month, to be graped and even yesterday there were "visits" by secret service at homes in St.Petersburg.
So watch out and organise solidarity if repression continues in russia!

Piter.Legal
- e-mail: Piter.Legal@yahoo.com
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