Action to support Grigory Pasko

On January 25, 2002, at the birthday of a famous Russian singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky (1938-1980), who was one of the symbols of freedom in Soviet times, Russian enviromnental and human rights NGO organized actions entitled "Memorial Day of the Freedom of Speech" in Moscow, Kaliningrad and Yekaterinburg.

In Moscow at the Pushkin square students and singers (including the well-known songwriter Vladimir Lantsberg) read Pasko's poems and sang their own songs devoted to "dead" freedom of speech in Russia. Unfortunately the municipality didn't help the organizers to get access to the electric net, so microphones were inactive and the singers should rely on their voices only. More than 100 people filled in the forms of personal guarantee which could allow to free Pasko before the cassation proceedings. The guarantees are directed to the Military Board of the Russian Supreme Court.

In Kaliningrad the main participant of the performance was Justice in chains conducted by a street musician with a title "FSB" (Federal Security Servise) on his chest. Justice danced to the musician's instrument and cried: "Everybody should be in jail!" "I am here because I don't want to live in the totalitarian state. The freedom of speech is too valuable to keep silence about the outrage we can see now," said Pavel Malyshev, a member of the council of the "Ecodefense!" group that organized the performance.

In Yekaterinburg at the local FSB office activist Alexander Zimbovski from the Movement against Violence dressed as an executor offered to the participants of the meeting "to be a spy for a while", because if the FSB would not find 25 spies a month the officers lose the bonus. Also the symbolic "cutting off the head" of the Radio Liberty Yekaterinburg correspondent Sergey Kuznetsov took place during the action. Kuznetsov express in the interview his concerns of the recent FSB activity. "It seems FSB is out of control and it's a very dangerous tendention," Kuznetsov said.

Pictures from Moscow action

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