People forced to attend pro-Putin rally in Chechnya
"grani.ru",
October 25, 2007
The participants of the rallies in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which took place in Chechnya on 24 October, were brought there by force. Such was the conclusion the Kazkasky Uzel correspondent made from interviewing Gorzny’s residents.
This Wednesday, the ChR President’s press-service released the information that a number of rallies took place over the republic under the motto ‘We are with the Russian president”.
The demonstrators demanded to amend the Russian Constitution so as to allow Vladimir Putin to run for presidency for the third time in a row. As a result, a resolution was adapted on the establishment of an all-Russian movement ‘For Putin!’. According to Ramzan Kadyrov’s press-service, over 30,000 people took part in the rallies, including 20,000 who gathered in Grozny stadium.
However, the university students interviewed by the Kavkazsky Uzel correspondent said that their participation in the demos was not voluntary. A student called Visyt says: ‘When we came for our lessons yesterday morning, it was announced that all the lessons were cancelled. Instead, all of us must go to take part in a rally in support of Putin. Then we were put in buses, given flags, Putin’s portraits, various posters, and brought to the stadium, where that so-called support rally took place.’
‘Such things happen regularly here,’ another student, Rakhman, says. ‘If the authorities decide to carry out some demo, for example to celebrate the May Day or Victory Day, all the lessons are cancelled, we are loaded into buses and brought into the city. Then they announce that “thousands of young people went out to the streets of Grozny to celebrate, to support”, and so forth. In reality it is just a show. I would never voluntarily go to support Putin, whom I believe to be one of the culprits of the massacre of my countrymen; nor would most of my peers.’
The other students interviewed by the journalist spoke in a similar spirit. None of them risked to name their second names, because, according to one of them, ‘we were told that those who fail to attend would be expelled from university, or get in some other trouble.’
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