US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday called for an end to the “persecution of independent voices” in Russia after the arrest of around 200 participants in an opposition forum in Moscow.
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AFP
“We call for an end to the persecution of independent voices,” Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter. “The Russian government has arrested nearly 200 municipal and political officials, including political activists Vladimir Kara-Mourza and Yulia Galiamina, on questionable grounds,” said the secretary of state.
Participants came from all over Russia on Saturday for a conference on future regional and local elections, at the initiative of a group supported by exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a detractor of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Moscow police said they arrested 200 people. She said that the forum was organized “in violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules” and that “among the participants were members of organizations with undesirable activities on Russian territory”.
Pressure before the legislative elections
The forum, the first of its kind in Russia, was organized by the “United Democrats”, a project by Mikhail Khodorkovsky which aims to promote the election of independent deputies in local elections. A number of the arrested activists announced on Saturday evening that they had been released but were called to appear in court later.
This unprecedented police operation in Russia comes as the authorities tighten the pressure on opponents ahead of the parliamentary elections next September.
Posted today at 02:12
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