5.6.2006 14:30 MSK
Provocateurs replace Democrats
Russia’s democratic forces are faced with a new danger. This danger does not emanate from the OMON, or the FSB, or from one or the other various internal law and order forces. Nor does it come from the ranks of “Nashy”. These forces have been around since the late 1980’s and the democrats have grown accustomed to them. We are today threatened by false friends and allies with their dreams of Nazi or Bolshevik paradise.

One year ago, the democrats surrounded the Basman courthouse, in order to demonstrate their solidarity with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, who were being read their unconstitutional sentences. Ultimately, the OMON came and broke up the demonstration, but the point was made both at home and abroad: Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were prisoners of conscience, and Russian democrats were defending and supporting them.

Today, 31 May, democratic forces wanted to demonstrate on Pushkin Square in Moscow in support of the above-named prisoners of conscience from Yukos, along with others including Vladimir Danilov, Igor Sutyagin, Mikhail Trepashkin: all of whom had been struggling for a just cause.

However, there were others on Pushkin Square: National-Bolsheviks with their Nazi symbols. Their pretext for being there was to demonstrate in support of their arrested comrades. The organisers of the Democrat demonstration showed passivity, allowing the National Bolsheviks to take part in the demonstration. Members of the Democratic Union were compelled to leave, so as not to dishonour their banners and beliefs by standing alongside the National Bolsheviks.

We wish to remind our colleagues in the democratic movement that being in prison is not an end unto itself: only arrest for a just cause is considered a merit. Thus not every political prisoner is a prisoner of conscience deserving corresponding support. From a formal point of view political prisoners include even members of the Baader-Meinhof gang or those standing trial at Nuremberg.

Before protecting a person as a prisoner of conscience, it is necessary to read that person’s political manifesto. The NBP’s is of such a type as to make the Putin era seem like a golden age: there would be nobody left to take part in demonstrations as all democrats would have been destroyed.

We would like to draw attention to the fact that in the USSR, the dissident movement only defended worthy individuals: members of the Helsinki groups, or representatives of national liberation movements. We never organised petitions in support of Stalinists or fascists. Equating Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Igor Sutyagin with convicted members of the NBP would be nothing less than a humiliation for the two men.

We wish to offer the Democratic movement a congress or round table, in order once and for all to exclude all cooperation with extreme left and nationalist forces. Alternatively, the democrats will lose the right to call people to rise up under their banners.

Chairman Valery Novodvorskaya

Statement Democratic Union
http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/articles/2006/6/5/36191.html