20 January 2014

Source: HRO.org (info)

• Irkutsk region Kirov region Коми Leningrad region & St. Petersburg Nizhny Novgorod Sverdlovsk region Human rights defenders

Several hundred people took part in a procession in remembrance of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in Moscow.

Grani.ru reports that at 14:30 on 19th January 2014 a column of marchers set off from Novopuskinsky Square along Tverskoi Boulevard in the direction of Prechistenka where Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova were shot dead. During the procession the participants chanted anti-fascist and anti-capitalist slogans.

The procession was divided into several columns. It was headed by a column of no special designation by columns of LGBT activists, Yabloko party members, and anarchists from the Black-Red Bloc. Flags were prohibited at the procession.

The procession concluded with flowers being laid at the place where Markelov and Baburova were shot. The procession took place almost without incident. Eye-witnesses reported on Twitter that the single instance of trouble was a provocation in relation to the LGBT column.

After the procession had ended, unknown people attacked three anti-fascists who were returning from the procession on Lubyanka Square, Kirill Medvedev, one of those attacked, told Kasparov.ru. He said that his colleague Mikhail Griboedov had been seriously beaten in the face.

Unprecedented safety measures were taken over the street procession. The number of law enforcement officers was several times higher than the number of those attending the procession. Police lined the length of the route of the procession.

Acts of remembrance of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova also took place in Nizhny Novgorod, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kirov, Tiumen and Siktivkar. Commemorative acts also took place abroad in Athens, Berlin, Munich, Paris, Cairo, Dublin and Sevastapol.

The lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the journalist Anastasia Baburova were fatally shot on 19th January 2009 in Moscow on Prechistenka immediately following a press conference in which Markelov had taken part. According to the trial jury at Moscow City Court, Nikita Tikhonov and his civil wife Evgenia Khasis committed the crime because of Markelov’s active participation in the anti-fascist movement and because of his work as a lawyer defending anti-fascist activists. On the basis of the jury’s guilty verdict, the Moscow City Court sentenced Tikhonov to life imprisonment and Khasis to 18 years imprisonment.