Lawyer Love Sable about the "school revolution"
Yesterday on the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and - which is quite unexpected - about a dozen more cities throughout Russia, thousands of people took part in protest rallies. The marches, formally provoked by the well-known investigation of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, became the largest public event of recent years, uniting the “classic” public of such events, and those who rallied for the first time. What began in 2011 as a "dirty shoes rally" six years later became a rally of fashionable sneakers, and the face of this protest has looked much younger. Disappointed citizens were indignant at this, and expressed hope - it seems that a generation has come that can change something. We asked Lyubov Sobol about what is happening, FBK's lawyer and a direct participant in the events.
If you recall yesterday, the most important impression for me was that so many people went to the rally. I have a déjà vu from 2011-2012 - since then there has probably been no such protest. And I also remember how I saw in a crowd of people who were walking along Tverskaya with me in the direction of Pushkin Square, the guys in the Thor Steinar sweatshirts - this is a German clothing brand that nationalists often wear. These guys were obviously nationalistic views, and mothers with small children, people of the older generation, journalists from Ekho Moskvy and so on were walking alongside them. Without any exaggeration, all kinds of people came up with one particular anti-corruption requirement — that really surprised me. It is believed that only the Moscow intelligentsia, which sits on Facebook, listens to the same Echo, watches the Dozhd TV channel, and so on, take to the streets. But in fact this is no longer the case.
Naturally, at some point I was scared: people were screwed in close proximity to me, I was walking with my FBK counterpart Fedya Gorozhanko and snatched him from the crowd right next to me. He was accepted very cruelly with batons. I remember how I thought: "Now they will get to me, drag me to the paddy wagon."
As for schoolchildren, it is only in some simplified model of the world that one can seriously consider that someone can be bribed with “State Department cookies”, zombied after the 25th frame - and they all go outside. So it does not work: schoolchildren have been sitting on the Internet for a long time, they themselves are capable of collecting information and they are citizens of our country just like older people. Simply, if those who are older have an unpleasant experience that does not allow them to bravely go under the batons, then schoolchildren have no such experience. They are more passionate because of their age. I assume that so many young guys and girls were at rallies because the Anti-Corruption Foundation began publishing its investigations in video format and uploading it to youtube - namely, schoolchildren and students sit there, this is a social network of young people. They watch these investigations, each of which can be checked without leaving the monitor, they begin to form their point of view, they begin to see the problems that we are dealing with - and they start to go out. I do not see anything wrong in the fact that a student came out of the tenth or eleventh grade.
You see, after all, these schoolchildren, who came out yesterday to protest, have never seen any other authority than Putin's. They were born under Putin! It seems to me that this well-known patriarchal society plays a big role, when teachers at school silence children, claiming that they do not understand anything and cannot have their opinions. This is a completely wrong story and a big mistake. It only fueled the protest of young people.
In fact, the views of the investigation are now much more than 12 million: if you look at the views in Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, which are not taken into account by youtube statistics, then it is already more than 15 million. In addition, many people do not watch it alone, but with whole families, and it turns out that it was watched by a significant part of society, which in general goes on the Internet. Yes, we were counting on attention to this investigation, if only because we had unearthed a truly unprecedented story. When the prime minister of a country gets billions on obscure grounds and owns huge residences according to complex schemes, this is already a resonance story in itself. That is, it’s not the investigation itself that should shock, but its subject - that’s what happened.
It is completely incomprehensible to me why some accuse FBK of the fact that we turned on Medvedev specifically, and not on anyone else. Over the past five years, the Anti-Corruption Foundation has prepared hundreds of publications about officials of completely different levels: from the level of local self-government, the same mayor of Nizhny Novgorod, who has two apartments in Miami, to the highest, talking about Putin’s palace near Gelendzhik, about Rotenberg, about Timchenko, Patrushev - you can list for a very long time. It is very surprising when we are accused of working for some kind of separate power group. We write about Shuvalov, who is called a liberal, - although, of course, no, he is not a liberal; and at the same time, we are publishing investigations about the yacht of Sechin, which is considered to be the siloviki. We never limited ourselves to any framework. Conspiracy theories are growing either with envy or lack of understanding of the goals of the foundation. People sometimes find it hard to believe that everything is much simpler. In fact, any person who has access to the Internet can make their own anti-corruption fund. All information for our investigations is taken from public sources, and anyone can find and analyze it. As for the last investigation, there was no special insight that came to us from an interested group in the government.
Having understood the scheme, we ourselves were surprised, because in public Medvedev is considered, let's say, not the biggest corrupt, harmless person. We also thought that Dmitry Medvedev was probably such a funny character: he twisted balloons, fell asleep at public events, and so on. But if we look at his case, then we understand that he is a clear personification of the current system.
I do not belong to that part of society that divides people in government into siloviki and liberals and is looking for good people there. I believe that the system is quite rotten and there are simply no people left in the top, who could stand out from the general number of individuals. Our investigation, in fact, showed that Dmitry Medvedev is the same as everyone else, and he is no better. I am surprised to hear that part of the so-called liberal Facebook was skeptical about the rally, they say, we serve someone's interests. At this rally, people do not go beyond Navalny and not against Putin - they go beyond themselves, defend their dignity, defend their rights and rightly indignant. And indeed, it was not so much because of the investigation that came out - it was rather the last straw.
# DimonReply # MoneyNoToHere Hold on pic.twitter.com/OaAllyi0Nm
- Sable Love (@SobolLubov) March 26, 2017
It must be said that this protest is different from what happened in 2011 and 2012: this time an unprecedented number of people came out not only in Moscow and a couple of major cities. This can be seen even in the presidential campaign of Navalny: when we open regional headquarters in a city with a population of 200 thousand people - more than a hundred people register with volunteers (and not just supporters). These are people who are ready to devote their time, money and energy to the candidacy of Navalny. They are really tired and they really want change - and they are ready to do something for it. Those who are skeptical - I feel sorry for them, even hurt that they were disappointed. But I understand where it comes from. It seemed to me in 2011, that somehow everything would happen faster, that there is a big demand in society and it is simply impossible for nothing, nothing at all to change. Yes, it annoys me that in the seventeenth year I am also going to rallies, as in the eleventh year - to the Swamp. I'm tired too, but I want change too much to sit back.
Now there is a chance that there will be a large criminal case, as it was after the 2012 protests. It is still difficult to suggest how events will develop in the legal plane. As far as support is concerned, indeed, several human rights organizations are involved in all the detainees, including OVD-info, Agora, and Open Russia. But what was happening yesterday was, of course, utter chaos. Yes, we were preparing for mass detentions, my FBK colleagues previously hired more than a dozen lawyers, a multichannel hotline was organized.
But the authorities were also preparing, and I am sure that yesterday we observed a targeted action with mass arrests. They specifically did the site "ATS-info", it was impossible to get through to them - they put this line. The detainees were deliberately taken to more than fifty ATS throughout the city. This is the most massive detention lately, even in comparison with 2012. The police went to the harshest measures and at some point they said, for example, that they would allow one lawyer to one detainee. And since more than a thousand people were detained, finding a thousand lawyers, especially on Sunday evening, is simply unrealistic. They invented anything to complicate our work, for example, they carried the detainees endlessly from one ATS to another. Lawyers literally ended the warrant - the authorities systematically sabotaged their work.
I know that some small part of the detainees left the ATS on their own - the system simply cannot cope with the processing of such a number of detentions, and people left the ATS with their feet, literally. Someone was released with the obligation to appear in court. Those that still remain in the Department of Internal Affairs - most likely, this is a story about a large criminal case being prepared. Those who were kept under clause 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses have already been released, those who are accused of clause 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses “Disobedience to the lawful demands of police officers” are left behind — this can lead to a big common cause, like the Swamp Case.
In general, cities feel - fortunately - a big tide of inspiration. A lot of people come, contrary to the opinion of those envious who say that Navalny is only watched by the “Moscow party”, he writes in blozhiki and is of no interest to anyone. And this is not the case at all!
Photo: Sable Love / Facebook
