За Вашу и Нашу Свободу - For Your Freedom and Ours

There are many problems with this blog (what blog, I hear you say, you call this occasional bit of flimsy posting a blog?) but the one thing I have never worried or felt uncertain about is the title, as I wrote in the very first posting. I was reminded again about its essential rightness on Monday when I attended an event of great interest at the Legatum Institute.

We watched They Chose Freedom, a film written and produced by the journalist, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who, as I have pointed out before, has written some of the most interesting and sensible articles about the situation in Ukraine and Russia in the last few months. The film follows, in four parts, the history of the Soviet dissident movement from its tentative beginnings in the 1950s to its supposed triumph in 1991 when the USSR collapsed at least partly because of the constant undermining of it by the dissidents with support from the West.

A crucial episode in that history took place in 1968: three days after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia eight protesters,Larisa Bogoraz, Konstantin Babitsky, Vadim Delaunay, Vladimir Dremliuga, Pavel Litvinov, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Viktor Fainberg, and Tatiana Baeva, decided to show the world or, at least, their own masters that there were some people in the Soviet Union who did not support the "fraternal assistance" so generously given to the people of Czechoslovakia. With a courage that few of us can even begin to understand they made some posters and went to the Red Square where they sat down at what the film kept referring to as the Place of Skulls that is Lobnoye Mesto, the place of past executions, and unfurled them for all to see.

The demonstration did not last long: they were surrounded by KGB men, badly beaten, and marched off to the Lubyanka. The subsequent trial created a sensation abroad; some were sentenced to hard labour, some to internal exile and two, Gorbanevskaya and Fainberg, were incarcerated in a lunatic asylum, the first of many dissidents to whom this was going to happen.

One of the posters,held by Pavel Litvinov, also interviewed in the film, had those words on it: За Вашу и Нашу Свободу (For Your Freedom and Ours). An important moment in the fight for freedom in the Soviet Union, the Communist world and Russia.

Despite the film consisting largely of interviews with a few short news reels inserted here and there, it was fascinating to all, those who could remember and those who have merely heard about the long struggle.

Then we came to the last section, sadly and predictably entitled History Repeats Itself?. Is history repeating itself in Russia? Well, not precisely, not even as a farce, thought an analysis of that will require several long postings but it is undoubtedly true that the high hopes of the collapse of the Soviet Union, of the lowering of the Red Flag and raising of the Russian tricolour, of the defeat of the 1991 coup, were soured in very short order. One reason, I have told some of my Russian oppositionist friends in London, why it is difficult to get people in Britain to support their events and demonstrations is the widespread feeling that there is no point in it: whatever happens Russia will end up with a nasty dictatorship that is oppressive, aggressive and economically illiterate. Thankfully for all concerned, Putin is no Stalin but then the Russia of today with its economic problems, its low birthrate and ever lower life expectancy as well as the high level of emigration is not the Soviet Union either, merely its echo, dangerous because it is so angry in its powerlessness.

The discussion afterwards with Vladimir Kara-Murza and Vladimir Bukovsky was considerably less interesting than the film though it revolved round the present situation. What hope is there for Russia was the gist of much of the discussion and the responses were various with the two speakers sometimes agreeing but more often contradicting each other or even themselves.

Some things are clear. It is no longer eight people but 50,000 who come out to demonstrate against Russian aggression as we saw in Moscow over Ukraine and Crimea; people are ready to come out in their thousands to demonstrate against what they see, rightly, as fraud in elections; oppositionists appear to be winning against the apparently mighty Putin government, who, in return, snarls and constrains ever more what is left of the independent media. And yet, there is a feeling that this is not going anywhere.

The fourth part of the film mourned the fact that while in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and Czechoslovakia, there was a real regime change and dissident leaders came to power (sadly both Lech Wałesa and Václav Havel turned out to be of considerably less use as political leaders than as dissidents), in Russia the same apparatchiks took over with, as the film did not mention, a number of the old security services and their families becoming the first beneficiaries of privatization. A few dissidents were allowed to sit in the new parliament or accompany Boris Yeltsin on his trips abroad where he garnered the West's applause. Not to put too fine a point on it, the dissidents were had and a number of those interviewed in the film said so.

There are many reasons why post-Communist history developed differently in different countries (yet more postings are needed) but one opinion is ever more frequently voiced and it upsets some Russians. In particular, it upsets Vladimir Kara-Murza. Russians, one hears it over and over again, do not have democracy in their DNA. Mr Kara-Murza considers that insulting as well he might. How can a culture that produced the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky not have democracy in its DNA, he asked rhetorically. It is, of course, irrelevant comments like that, which make one feel that, regardless of DNA, there is no real understanding of what democracy might be in Russia and among Russians. (To be absolutely fair, that problem arises in countries that have had some form of democracy for many years as well.)

What, one might ask, has the existence of great writers who flourished under an authoritarian system and who, for different reasons, had no time at all for democracy, to do with that political system and whether the people have it in their DNA or not. So far as I know nobody asked it, being far too polite.

Mr Kara-Murza's other argument was slightly more weighty. Look at the three more or less free elections Russia has had, in 1906, in 1917 and in 1991. The results, according to him, proved that Russians, when given a chance, vote against tyranny. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper, to quote Evelyn Waugh's great novel, Scoop. Who, one has to ask, is it who makes sure that Russians get so few chances to have anything resembling a free election?

Of the three elections cited, it was only the first one, in 1906 that could be said to have inaugurated a period of rapid development in that country, in political and economic terms, but that was only partially because of the Duma elections that did, indeed, result in a victory by the liberal Cadet party. There were many reasons why that happened, not least the fact that some socialist parties boycotted the whole process. In any case, subsequent Dumas were elected under greater government control. Nevertheless, the period 1906 to 1914 did see a growth in freedom in Russia, not just in the Duma but in local government (zemstvos), newspapers and publishing, the existence of political parties and a rapid development in privately held and controlled business. Prime Minister Stolypin's reforms tried to change the whole concept of land ownership, which, had the process been allowed to run its course, would have changed Russia for ever. In other words, elections matter less than many other factors and it is these factors that were missing both in 1917 and in 1991; they are missing still, though a great part of the economy is now in private hands.

The 1917 elections took place after the Bolshevik coup and were, therefore, hardly free, what with Cadet politicians being murdered and meetings broken up. Nevertheless, it is true that the Bolsheviks did not win, the Socialist Revolutionaries did by a large percentage. Mr Kara-Murza did not mention this as he would have had to explain that, as a matter of fact, the SRs were not exactly great believers in democracy or freedom either. In any case, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the Bolsheviks after a day and a half and that was the end of that for more than seven decades.

That leaves us with the 1991 Presidential election, one that many of us remember. Standing as an Independent, Boris Yeltsin won by a large percentage (though if one added up the votes cast for all the various Communist candidates, that percentage became somewhat smaller). It was, indeed, a vote against a Communist system and for a man who, though himself a former Communist apparatchik, seemed to stand up against that system, to represent the great Russian future.

As we know, the great hopes of the Yeltsin era shrivelled to nothing. There are many possible "what ifs" we can ask. What if Boris Nikolayevich had been a stronger person? What if the price of gas and oil, which was very low throughout those years, had been as high as they became under Putin, thus enabling Yeltsin or the people around him to sort out the Russian economy  in the nineties? What if the speedy privatization, strongly insisted on by a number of Western advisers and implemented by a Russian politicians like Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais had not turned into a grab-as-you-can catastrophe but had been conducted in an orderly and legitimate fashion? What if so many of the so-called "democrats", that is supporters of Gaidar and others had not been seen as having their eyes on the main chance as well? And so on. The fact is, that many of those questions do lead us into the difficult territory of Russian attitudes to matters such as private property, legal protection for it and freedom under the law.

Somewhere in Vladimir Bukovsky's book about his life as a dissident, To Build a Castle, he discourses on the theme of why has it been so difficult to build a more or less free society in Russia. After all, he says, we Russians understand the concept of rights as well as anyone else. [I quote from memory.] Even when I read that book, soon after its publication, I thought "yes, so you do, and that has been proved on various occasions, but do you understand the concept of duty". Certainly the dissidents understood it very clearly and, one imagines, so do the present-day oppositionists as well as the people who go out on those demonstrations again and again, their duty to their conscience, to their country and, as Pavel Litvinov's poster proved, to other people.

We need to go beyond that, though, and ask ourselves whether there are any political ideas coming out of the oppositionist movement. There was a great deal of discussion of whether Putin has an ideology or merely some kind of a vague world view that he can offer to people inside or outside the country. There was no discussion of whether any of the oppositionist leaders have anything of the kind. I was going to ask about it but put my hand up too late as the Moderator decided to wind up the formal proceedings.

This was the problem with the dissidents, by and large. They knew very clearly what they were against but few had any ideas of what they wanted in its place. The ideas that did float around were contradictory and often rather weak. The one exception was presented by the Andrei Sakharov, who outlined some very cogent ideas that, if put into place, might well have placed Russia on a path to a democratic state with a strong legal structure. This, together with the dissidents' inability to form functional political parties, contributed to the unfortunate developments in Russia after 1991.

The problems is that I cannot see anything coming out of the oppositionist movement (in so far as there is one) that goes beyond the negative: largely demands for honesty in politics and economics and a destruction of the corrupt autocratic regime. Nothing wrong with that and we, in the West, are duty-bound to support those demands and those movements. But, suppose the regime collapsed as the Soviet one did? Which people, which organizations, which ideas would come to the fore?

Well, there are the National Bolsheviks in their various guises, all under the leadership of Eduard Limonov, who may be said to have some coherent ideas but as these consist of bits of those ideologies that destroyed millions of people in the twentieth century, they are not going to get a great deal of support even in Russia where political ideas are scarce. (At least one hopes so.) Apart from them, the only person who is slowly building up a sequence of ideas and actions, seems to be Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the man Putin was going to destroy a decade or so ago but who has clearly triumphed over the President. Will he become the new Alexander Herzen? As his appearances in Ukraine (where he spoke in Russian, incidentally, and was greeted with huge ovations) show, he is certainly one who understands the slogan "For Your Freedom And Ours".

ADDENDUM: Readers might find a couple of old postings interesting: this one about the Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya and this one at my old blogging home about a discussion on the subject of Samizdat at the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies.

Russian criminals use EU banks. Shock!

Given how many different bits of regulation the EU has imposed on its member states and how many other bits of legislation and regulation those member states imposed on their citizens, all in order to prevent money laundering, it may come as a surprise to readers of this blog to find out that none of them manage to prevent money, stolen from the Russian people and Russian businesses from being laundered through EU banks. Well, it may. Personally, whenever I hear stories like that I recall Captain Renault:

  Mind you, that wonderful scene also shows what a complete numpty Victor Laszlo was and how unlikely it was for the resistance to get anywhere under his idiotic leadership but that's another story.

Back to those EU banks and Russian money. Bear in mind that the EU makes all sorts of noises about the terrible state of affairs in Russia. The noises are not loud enough to make any difference. For instance the killers and torturers of Sergei Magnitsky, found guilty of "fraud" several years after his death, happily come and frolic in EU countries. This is known as sophisticated soft power that is different from the rough and tough American foreign policy (though we don't hear so much about that under Barack Obama's presidency.)

The next well known Russian dissident to go to prison will be the anti-corruption blogger and protest organizer, Alexei Navalny. To be fair, a number of other Russian dissident dislike him but that has ever been so. There are no dissident movements anywhere that do not spend more time fighting each other than the enemy.

Meanwhile Navalny is trying to tie up some lose ends before he is put out of action for six years if the prosecution gets its wish, which is quite likely as the judge in question has never presided over an acquittal.

On Tuesday (16 July), he, and his group of other young jurists, unveiled the secret business empire of Vladimir Yakunin [in Russian], a government official who runs Russian Railways, the country's state-owned train operator.

According to their information, Russian Railways has channelled millions upon millions of taxpayers' money into businesses owned by Yakunin's wife and two sons.

The businesses include hotel chains, blocks of flats and marine ports.

But the Yakunin connection is hidden behind layers of offshore firms, dozens of which are registered in EU member state Cyprus.

That would be the Cyprus that has recently been bailed out by the rest of the EU, I take it.

Here is the Yakunin story on the BBC Russian Service that is easily translated into English, on Forbes (ditto) and on Kommersant. Apart from EUObserver there seem to be no English-language media accounts. (Sorry, there is one, the Moscow Times.)

Navalny told EUobserver by email from Moscow on Tuesday that the EU's frequent statements on lack of rule of law in Russia "are, of course, a good thing."

But he is "sceptical" they will prompt change.

Instead, he urged EU authorities to help Russian people by enforcing rule of law in EU member states.

Or, in other words, by stopping Russian criminals from using European banks and offshore structures to conceal their ill-gotten gains.

Noting that the EU's joint police body, Europol, the European Commission and six EU countries are now investigating a money laundering trail linked to the death of Russian whistleblower-auditor Sergei Magnitsky, Navalny said: "This work is fundamentally important."

He added: "Stolen money was smuggled outside my country and re-invested in Europe … If the commission and Europol do their job properly, it will create an extremely important precedent."

He said the EU should go further, by creating new legal obligations for sensitive Russian investments.

It is always rather charming to see people from countries that are considerably more corrupt than the EU (believe it or not) look to that organization for some action rather than just pretty words in the battle they are waging. Sadly, I have to tell Mr Navalny (should he be reading this blog, which is not very likely) that the EU is not going to do anything to upset President Putin and his camarilla and neither will the member states, which is a good deal more shameful.

UPDATE: A day before expected, Alexei Navalny was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, allegedly for corruption but in reality for blogging against the Putin mafia and exposing their corruption. Self-pitying activists and members of the blogosphere, please note: this is what oppression looks like.

Never to be forgotten

Today is the anniversary of the death of one of the greatest fighters for freedom, Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov (1921 - 1989), finally destroyed by the system he fought.

Revenons a nos moutons

Having spent a good deal of time on the Pussy Riot story, aware that there are other stories around, not least in Russia, that may well be of interest I had not intended to return to it quite so soon. Needs, however, must be. What prompted me to change my intentions was the extraordinary amount of ignorant and rather venomous nonsense that has been written about the rather courageous young women. I am talking about ignorance here, rather than deliberate propaganda that is being spread by the Russian authorities, though clearly it has been quite effective with some unexpected people.

The nonsense and the ignorance revolve round some people's inability or reluctance to understand or even try to understand what really goes on in Russia and their equal reluctance to accept that not everything is exactly like their own rather limited experience in life. Thus I have been told by people who have, one assumes, never been near the country or spoken to many Russians that they know exactly how "the Russian people" as a whole feel about the punk prayer. For someone who has studied British attitudes to Russia at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this is all rather old hat. An extraordinary number of people then thought they knew exactly what "the Russian" was like. Those who lived long enough were stunned when "the Russian" started to behave somewhat differently from the way he or she was supposed to, according to the people who knew with such certainty.

Opinion polls show that many people are against Pussy Riot's actions though a number of them distrust the legal case and think the sentence is too harsh, a much smaller number support them and a very large number have no opinion or, much more likely, prefer not to stick their necks out or think too much about a dangerous subject, especially as it is summer and time for berry picking (soon it will be mushroom picking) as well as jam making and salting of cucumbers and tomatoes.

Somewhat belatedly, perhaps mindful of the possibility that the accusations levelled by the young women at the Orthodox Church hierarchy might be looked at by people more seriously, the Church has called for clemency. It is not clear what that might mean at this stage of the proceedings: they should have called for the clemency before sentence was passed not after. Which brings me to some of the silliest comments I have seen on the subject and the suggestions that they should have carried out their protests in a mosque. That, say such commentators with a self-satisfied smirk (it is there in the written words) would have shown them. They would have had considerably worse treatment.

Setting aside the possible psychopathology of people who smirk mentally at the thought of young women (and pretty young women at that) being harshly treated and abused physically, one must ask the question why on earth should they have gone to a mosque? How does a mosque come into the picture? This was not "edgy comedy" as one person described it to me disdainfully of the kind one sees on TV or at Edinburgh, which annoys me considerably as well. This was a political protest. A real political protest against a very nasty authoritarian regime and against the Orthodox Church hierarchy that is the real defiler of the churches and cathedrals, even of the one that was built in the nineties. What would be the point of protesting against their venality, corruption and closeness to the Putin regime in a mosque?

The point that all these people who rush into making comments miss is that the young women of Pussy Riot are Christians and approach the subject from a Christian point of view. Possibly that has become a little hard to understand in the West though I don't think so.

Allow me to link to two excellent pieces on the subject, both published on the other side of the Pond by two people who have actually looked at what the three defendants said in their closing statements. Having read some of their letter from prison and translated one of them into English I can see that the statements confirm what was said in the letters. Here is Charles Cameron on Zenpundit, one of the best sites around and John O'Sullivan, a man who has been quoted several times on this blog, in the NRO Corner.

Oh, and here is another fun story some people might like to read. It tells a few possibly unpalatable truths about the Church hierarchy and, especially, about Patriarch Kirill. I must say I rather like the moniker "Patriarch of Switzerland and all Watches".

Pussy Riot verdict and sentence

15.28: Defence lawyers have announced that they will appeal the sentence, going to the European Court of Human Rights, if necessary.

15.13: Sentence will start from day of arrest, that is March 3, 2012 for Alekhina and Tolokonnikova and March 15 for Samusevitch.

15.04: Again from the Guardian "The judge has said they are sane and should be punished in accordance with the law.

 She has listed attenuating circumstances including children (of two defendants), a lack of previous crime and positive character profiles.

 The court concludes that it is not possible to change the charges and make them less grave, "there are no exclusive circumstances to do that".

 And at the same time the motives of the crime and the attitude, the court deems that to restore social justices if they serve a real jail sentence.

 And... they will serve jail sentence in prison, the judge has said." The BBC Russian Service implies that they will be serving their sentence in a penal colony.

14.57: Finally the sentence - two years in ordinary regime camps. Could have been a good deal worse.

14.46: From the Guardian update: "The judge has outlined three specific elements for finding guilt:

 1. The choice and timing of venue

 2. Their continued performance and resistance to be taken outside by security and cathedral parishioners

 3. And the defendant's conduct and their accomplices afterwards." In fact, they left when asked to do so and were not arrested till a week afterwards.

14.39: From the Guardian update: "Posting of the video was proof of the band trying to gain publicity by their hooligan actions, the judge has said adding,"They have deliberately placed themselves against Orthodox believers." She's also said that the "jerking of limbs" during the performance was further proof of hatred towards Christians.

14.33: From the judges summing up: feminism is not a crime in the Russian federation. (That's a relief.) On the other hand, the girls of Pussy Riot did undermine the state's constitutional structures. Also, while one cannot deny the shock and pain experienced by those who were there and who have provided the testimony against the girls, the defence argument that Pussy Riot were not motivated by religious hatred cannot be accepted. Looks bad.

14.17: The judge has been reading the verdict for two hours and everyone has to stand while listening to it in a hot and stuffy court room. Goodness knows what it must be like in that glass cage.

14.12: Oh this is priceless: apparently during his arrest Kasparov bit a police officer who has now gone to seek medical assistance.

UPDATE 13.51: More arrests outside the court though it is not clear what people are being arrested for. As the old NKVD saying had it: give us a man and we shall have a case. Or for my Russian readers: Был- бо человек, дело найдётся.

UPDATE 13.45: One of the defence lawyers, Nikolay Polozov, had tweeted that the judge seems to have read about a third of the papers in front of her. This can run and run. It is 16.45 in Moscow.

UPDATE 13.39: Guardian: "In summing up the prosecution case, the judge is saying that prayers in a Russian cathedral can only be offered by a priest and not by ordinary members of the public so making their protest-as-prayer against church rules anyway."

UPDATE 13.30: Arrests are continuing. Three carloads have been taken away. Garry Kasparov's Facebook page confirms his arrest and publishes picture.

UPDATE 13.25:One anti-Pussy Riot twitter has demanded that they should be punished according to their deserts. It's a pity, the tweet continued, that the sponsors and organizers will not be punished. Because young women would never, never have been able to think of a political action.

UPDATE 13.18: One twitter comment refers to the vocabulary of the verdict - references to satanism, people being filled with spiritual pain, being mesmerized, etc. "We are waiting for the fire to be lit in the centre of the court."

UPDATE 13.06 "For Honest Elections" has tweeted a summons to all who can to come to the court as soon as they can finish work in order to support the girls. Moscow is three hours ahead of us.

Apologies for not timing the previous updates. I knew there was something wrong.

UPDATE 12.55: More arrests outside the court among supporters of the group. Some of the police inside have now come out.

UPDATE: The judge summed up with the following words, which are surprisingly accurate though she obviously does not think so:

It was a small act but maybe not a very elegant act but they consider that it is the country which is sick. For them, individuals are not important, they consider that education in Russia is still in the Soviet mould. And that there is still cruelty in the country and that prison is a miniature of Russia itself.

UPDATE: More police outside the court and more arrests are reported. Everything is still uncertain.

UPDATE: The judge seems to be heading towards a stiff sentence in her emphasis on the conspiracy and thorough planning of the punk event. The police has closed round the glass cage in which the defendants are sitting.

I am trying hard to follow what is going on in Moscow inside and outside the Khamovnichesky court. The verdict is still being delivered but the girls have been found guilty of hooliganism, which is not a surprise.

Outside there are scuffles between supporters and opponents while the police seems to be arresting various supporters of the group. Already gone is Left Front opposition leader Sergey Udaltsov and, apparently, Garry Kasparov.

More on Pussy Riot

It is important not to forget all the other people who have been imprisoned, attacked or harassed in Russia but, for the time being, attention is focused on three young women who are stoutly defying the ever more authoritarian rule of Vladimir Putin (or Vlad the Impaler as he is sometimes known).

This article in Der Spiegel gives a good analysis of the girls' background and role as well as the Russian situation at the moment. It acknowledges the obvious fact that the opposition is not capable of waging a clear political fight at the moment. However, the case of Pussy Riot has excited a great deal of attention inside and outside the country and can be compared in dissident terms (though not, in my opinion, in artistic ones) to that of Sinyavsky and Daniel in 1966, which is seen by all as the real beginning of the dissident movement in the later years of the Soviet Union. It all ended badly for the system and President Putin should be paying attention. It would appear that at least one of the accused, Maria Alyokhina, is aware of the parallels with the dissidents of yore. In fact, the three young women seem remarkably knowledgeable and well educated.

One more point needs to be made. As the article points out, Russians do not like being lectured by the West, which is an attitude that can be understood though they have no particular compunction about lecturing others themselves. But the idea that any of this can be interpreted as the West being anxious to cut a newly strong Russia to size is preposterous and even in Russia there are people who see that. Russia under Putin is not strong either economically or politically; she has not managed to create a network of alliances that could have bolstered her international position; the economy is considerably weaker than it ought to be, given Russia's wealth; and, finally, a state that has decided to display three young women as monstrous enemies, cannot be described as strong. A bully, yes. But a terrified bully.

The state that takes on female punk rockers

The fact that I have not written about Pussy Riot and their trial so far does not mean that I was not following it. Several demos and meetings, postings on various forums and translations of documents by and about them later I can say I probably know as much about these women as anyone. I can also say that this article in the New York Times by Michael Idov sums up the situation as far as they and Russian liberals (as confused as they can be) and other pop stars is concerned. It is not long and worth reading.

Apparently, President Putin, who is clearly weighing his options (should I show myself merciful or should I pretend that I have no say about the way our courts decide sentences for political crimes?) said rather crossly that in other countries the women who lip-synced to a punk song in a church for 40 seconds while wearing colourful ski masks over their faces would have fared even worse in other countries.

One wonders which countries he has in mind. In Britain, when Peter Tatchell behaved in a somewhat worse fashion in St Paul's Cathedral he was fined £18 [it's there somewhere in that self-indulgent piece]. That fine is derisory, I agree, but had it been, say, £100 it would still not be in the same category as to what these young women are going through and are possibly facing.

Let me recap on that: they have been in prison since March in large cells with serious criminals who, it would appear, have treated them well if with some disdain and lack of comprehension; they have not been allowed bail and thus have not seen their young children; they are being deprived of sleep and proper food; during the trial they are kept in ridiculous glass cages; and, should they be found guilty, they are facing sentences of seven years hard labour.

Their cause has become a celebrity cause. I am not sure what I think about that. On the one hand, it is good to keep public attention on this tragicomical performance; on the other hand, all this celebrity support (even the New Statesman!) allows the Russian authorities to proclaim that Pussy Riot are clearly foreign agents. Furthermore, focusing on just one group of victims we forget many others, such as the people who were arrested after the May 8 demonstration or the people who are in prison and labour camp already for not being obedient enough or for getting in somebody's way. We need to pay attention to all of them.

The case has come to and end and verdict and sentence are expected on August 17.