2006-07-24

24.7.2006 St. Petersburg

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Unterstützung für einen minderjährigen politischen Gefangenen in St. Petersburg!
(DE)Aleksej Jakovlev heute erneut in Petersburg verhaftet
Mrs. Blair, Lawyers Support Activists (St. Petersburg Times)
Hottest July Day Ever in England

Endlich (nach 9 Tagen!!) gelang es uns Anton Pavljukevich ausfindig zu machen. Er befindet sich, wie zuvor auch andere minderjährige Gefangene, im "Zentrum für zeitweilige Isolierung minderjähriger Straftäter" (ZVINP) unter der Adresse ul. Sedova 54, k. 3, Metro Jelizarovskaja.
Er wurde am 10. Juli unweit jener "unschönen Wohnung" (wo es vor dem G8 noch weitere Festnahmen gab) festgenommen und erhielt nach einigen Angaben (Anwalt und Abschnittsbevollmächtigter der Miliz, der zu seiner Mutter kam und ihr die Lage 8 (!) Tage nach Festnahme erklärt hat) 30 Tage Haft aufgrund einer erfundenen Beschuldigung (geringfügiger Hooliganismus, gemeint ist unflätiges Geschimpfe an einem öffentlichen Ort) bis ihn seine Eltern oder ein anderer gesetzlich bevollmächtigter Vertreter abholt (diese Information stammt aus dem ZVINP und entspricht anderen identischen Urteilen bei Minderjährigen. Wenn diese innerhalb von 30 Tagen nicht abgeholt werden, werden sie in ihre Heimatstadt gebracht und dort von den Mitarbeitern des ZVINP den Eltern übergeben). Seine Eltern können aufgrund verschiedener Umstände ihren Sohn nicht abholen.

Auf diese Weise bleibt öffentlicher Druck als einzige Möglichkeit ihm zu helfen, früher in Freiheit zu kommen und in seine Heimatstadt gebracht zu werden.

Ruft deshalb an beim
- ZVINP +7 (812) 569-65-06

Fragt nach ob Anton noch dort festgehalten wird und wann er zu seinen Eltern gebracht wird etc.

Related
* http://ru.indymedia.org/newswire/display/15259/index.php

[http://int.ru.indymedia.org/newswire/display/148/index.php]

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(DE)Aleksej Jakovlev heute erneut in Petersburg verhaftet

Heute (20.7.) tagsüber wurde Aleksej Jakovlev, Anarchist aus Naberezhnye Chelny erneut in der 28. Abteilung der Miliz in St. Petersburg festgenommen.
Er hatte an der Aktion am Radisson Hotel am 16. Juli teilgenommen. Bei jener Festnahme wurde er verletzt und in das Marinskij Krankenhaus eingeliefert. In der 28. Abteilung blieb sein Pass zurück. Das Krankenhaus hat er nach der Untersuchung verlassen. Bei dem Versuch heute seinen Pass abzuholen wurde er festgenommen und dem Richter vorgeführt. Und was glaubt ihr? Er erhielt 2 Tage Haft! Im Augenblick befindet er sich in der Zaharjevskaja ulitsa 6. Da ihm für die erste Festnahme lediglich zwei Stunden angerechnet wurden, kommt er nun erst am Samstag den 22. Juli raus.

[http://int.ru.indymedia.org/newswire/display/147/index.php]

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Mrs. Blair, Lawyers Support Activists (St. Petersburg Times)

An article in St. Petersburg's English-language newspaper covering repressions.
Russian lawyers say that the government repressed antiglobalists and opposition activists during the G8 summit, as they tried to reach an alternative event.

But on Monday, Russian human rights advocates received the help of Cherie Blair, a human rights lawyer and the wife of the British prime minister, who offered them the help of her legal chambers.

Activists were detained en route to the city or during the Second Russian Social Forum, a protest gathering of opposition forces intended as a satellite event for the G8 summit on July 15-17, the lawyers said.

Natalya Zvyagina, a resident of Voronezh and an activist with Legal Team, a network of lawyers who provided legal support to the forum, said life was made miserable for ordinary citizens and activists who attempted to take to the streets last weekend to demonstrate their critical attitudes to the policies of the world's leading states.

Zvyagina said her organization has collected information about at least 24 cases of "preventative detention" and more than 140 cases of illegal police persecution of the counter-summit's delegates and participants from across the country.

"Eight people were stopped more than once on the way to the counter-summit, with police confiscating their tickets or documents," Zvyagina said. "We know of 26 cases of the police attempting to force activists to sign a written undertaking not to leave a specified location - a document that can only be forced on somebody by a court ruling."

City Hall refused to give permission to an antiglobalist march from Kirov Stadium to the cruiser Avrora, as well as an anti-war meeting and a Communist march on Nevsky Prospekt during the summit.

Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who attended the alternative summit, said marches were banned for the sake of everyone's security. "Nobody can guarantee the safety of the march's participants and local citizens," she said. "Besides, any street activity is hugely disturbing to citizens and if I'd have allowed it the public would have been mad at me."

But activists argue that City Hall's "arbitrary behavior" violates the Russian Constitution that declares the people's right to hold peaceful gatherings.

Dmitry Makarov, a lawyer with Legal Team and a resident of Oryol, said that during the summit St. Petersburg was in an emergency state de facto.

"Police cordons at every corner, illegal searches in people's apartments, endless document checks with no reasons given - what is that if not an emergency state," he said. "It was an illustration of just how easily and how fast repressive methods are implemented when they are needed by the state. It also shows that the police here do not find it necessary to use legal methods to keep order."

Makarov claimed to have knowledge of several cases of the police telling people directly that they were detained "in connection with the summit" and that they would be released "as soon as the summit is over."

"The problem is that the law enforcement agencies follow what they regard as expediency and they can easily ignore the law," the lawyer said.

Environmentalist Ivan Ninenko was in St. Petersburg on July 10 when his apartment in Moscow was invaded by the police. "An officer dressed in civilian clothes rang my apartment and introduced himself to my roommate as a neighbor whose apartment we 'flooded'," Ninenko recalls.

"He opened the door and a police squad stormed in, and when my friend tried to reach for the phone, he was hit, and his phone was confiscated.

He was then escorted to a police station, questioned about the counter-summit and people involved in preparing it. He was asked to give a written note confirming that he was not going to attend the alternative summit. All that with no protocols or explanations."

An offer of legal help arrived unexpectedly on Monday this week, when Cherie Blair, a prominent human rights lawyer who works for the Matrix legal chambers, paid a visit to the offices of Citizens' Watch human rights group instead of attending a scheduled visit to a handicraft exhibition. Citizens' Watch is an outspoken critic of the Kremlin.

Mrs. Blair's meeting with the organization was closed to reporters, but Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of Citizen's Watch, said the British prime minister's wife volunteered to help with legal support when the discussion touched on the topic of the new law concerning the funding of non-governmental organizations.

The law, which came into force in April, opens the way for restrictions on foreign funding of human rights groups. Its critics say that the law creates major bureaucratic obstacles to the registration process.

"This law was masterfully written and is meant to be used as a powerful weapon with a telescopic sight against the most irritating groups," Vdovin said. "Mrs. Blair asked us if we have any plans to send an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and offered the help of her chambers, should the need arise."

According to a statement provided by Human Rights Watch, Mrs. Blair said at the meeting that she "believes passionately that civil society is very much a part of civilized society."

"As a human rights lawyer, I came here to hear your experiences and to celebrate the work you carry out," she was reported as saying.

Related
* http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=18297

[http://int.ru.indymedia.org/newswire/display/151/index.php]

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Hottest July Day Ever in England

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor for The Independent -

Published: 20 July 2006
Britain experienced its hottest-ever July
day yesterday, as much of the southern
half of the country sweltered in blazing
sunshine.

The July record, nearly a century old, was breached at a Met Office weather recording station at Charlwood in Surrey, where just after 1.30pm the thermometer reached 36.3C, or 97.3F.

The old record of 36C (96.8F) was set at Epsom, Surrey, on 22 July 1911, and has only once been closely approached in the 95 years since then - when 35.9C (96.6F) was recorded at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on 3 July, 1976, in another famously sweltering summer.

Besides the new national record, local records for July were equalled or broken in many places, including Heathrow airport (35.3C) and the London Weather Centre (33.9C), while Wales equalled its July record with 33.6C (92.5F), recorded at RAF Valley on Anglesey.

Scotland, however, was not so blisteringly hot, with a maximum of 31C recorded at Prestwick airport, south-west of Glasgow; the Scottish record for July is 32.8C. North-eastern Scotland was distinctly chilly, with the temperature in Shetland not exceeding 15C - "drizzly and horrid", said the Met Office.

But in southern England the temperatures were higher than in many tropical resorts - British temperatures this week have outstripped holiday destinations including Athens, Bermuda, Rio de Janeiro and Rome - and across the country there was a rush for products designed for keeping cool.

The electrical retailer Comet sold a fan every two seconds - its highest ever rate - while customers snapped up one air-conditioning unit every 30 seconds and a fridge-freezer every 17 seconds. The trend was echoed by Argos, where customers spent nearly �1m on fans and cooling systems yesterday.

Forecasters had indicated that this week there was a 30 per cent chance of exceeding the all-time UK record of 38.5C (101.3F), reached in Kent on 10 August 2003, but yesterday afternoon temperatures in the present heatwave were considered to have peaked. More unsettled weather will gradually approach from the west - it was raining in parts of Cornwall yesterday - but for the next few days, at least in the South-east, it will still feel "pretty hot", said the Met Office.

Scientists have repeated this week that the rising temperatures being experienced around the world - attributed to man-made global warming with increasing confidence - make reaching or exceeding previous maximum temperatures far more likely.

Hot spots

* Keepers at Colchester Zoo in Essex, gave animals specially made ice blocks yesterday. Lions were being given ice blocks flavoured with blood in their enclosures, and monkeys, blocks containing fruit.

* At Edinburgh Zoo, Britain's only captive polar bear, Mercedes, took refuge in her pool. Her keepers freeze food into ice blocks in her enclosure so she has to work to get at her lunch of berries, but the 25-year-old has not had to wait long for it to melt this week. Mercedes is the only polar bear in a British zoo since the death three years ago of Mandy at Flamingo Land Zoo and Theme Park in North Yorkshire.

* Officials at the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire have suspended visitors' rights to veer from footpaths, fearing the hot weather could cause fires in dry woodland areas. It is the first time access to the moorland has been restricted since open access under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act in 2004. Sean Prendergast, the head of access and recreation, said: "People are welcome to walk all over the National Park as long as they stick to public footpaths."

* Central London schools are adopting continental hours this week to try to keep children cool. Ten primary and secondary schools will be closing at 1.30pm, two hours earlier than usual, and others have called off their traditional summer sports days.

* Water was offered to motorists stuck on the A14 trunk road in Cambridgeshire following two accidents. Members from the rescue service Spartan Rescue used quad bikes to get water to drivers.

* In the House of Commons, the Speaker, Michael Martin, relaxed the strict dress code which compels reporters to wear jackets in the Press Gallery. Journalists can now attend in shirt-sleeve order.

* The heatwave is starting to cause problems in continental Europe. In France, the heatwave has probably caused the deaths of nine people this week, a Health Ministry official said. Authorities there are on high alert because of soaring temperatures; some 15,000 mostly old people died in the 2003 heatwave that caught health services and politicians by surprise. Most of the nine deaths this week were in the south-west, where the temperature reached almost 40C (104F).

news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1187005.ece

[http://int.ru.indymedia.org/newswire/display/150/index.php]