Source: HRO.org (info), 28/02/12

· Persecution of activists  · Protest movement  · Moscow city & Moscow region

Solidarity activist Nadezhda Nizovkina from Buryatia has been released from the psychiatric hospital where she had been involuntarily detained. A day earlier, Preobrazhensky district court had ruled that Nadezhda Nizovkina should be forcibly kept at the psychiatric hospital until the arrival of her mother. The report comes from Nizovkina’s colleague Vera Lavreshina, who was also detained after Sunday’s events on Red Square.

According to Lavreshina, fellow activist, Nizovkina continues to remain silent under police and judge questioning. Her mother is in Ulan-Unde, reports Grani.ru.

On Sunday, Nizovkina and Lavreshina held one-person pickets on Red Square, bearing placards displaying the messages "Lubyanka must be destroyed" and "We are for a Constitutional Convention”. The activists stood 30 metres apart from each other. They were immediately pounced on by men in uniform and flung to the ground. The two women resisted the attacks and for a long time the men were unable to detain them.

In Kitai-gorod police station the activists refused to identify themselves, however when a lawyer, Violetta Volkova, arrived and gave Lavreshina’s personal details, the latter was released following preparation of an official protocol. However, a psychiatric ambulance was called for Nizovkina.

In the hospital Nizovkina was strapped to a bed, but she was later untied. She was allowed to make one phone call and she told fellow activist Pavel Shekhtman that staff “wanted to do some procedures or other."

On Tuesday Nizovkina и Lavreshina had been detained at the protest "Let’s Stop Dictatorship!" in front of the Central Election Commission, where they chanted slogans, tied to each other with climbing ropes. Lavreshina and Nizovkina refused to identify themselves. Lavreshina was removed and taken to Gannushkin Psychiatric Hospital. The next morning she was released after an assessment consultation.

In all, more than 20 people were detained, four of whom were sentenced to terms in prison for administrative violations, with Tatyana Stetsura being sentenced to the longest term of 10 days. From the moment Stetsura was detained she began a ‘dry’ hunger strike in the detention centre on Simferopol Boulevard. According to the testimonies of other detainees, Stetsura was extremely weak and was taken away by an emergency ambulance, but she was returned to the prison. On Saturday, Nizovkina and Lavreshina, together with fellow activists, held an unsanctioned picket in support of Stetsura, and were again detained.

Nizovkina and Stetsura, leaders of the Buryatia division of Solidarity, are former political prisoners and regular participants in protests and pickets. In prison they went on hunger strike and were force-fed.