Over 600 individuals were arrested in Russia during an unauthorized demonstration in the midst of police violence allegations.
Protesters collected in the Russian capital after several opposition applicants were excluded from participating in local elections by the police.
Leading activist Lyubov Sobol was detained, attended by 1,500 individuals, before she could achieve the gathering.
The rally’s video demonstrates policemen making arrests using their batons against protesters.
Initially, Russian authorities said there were only 30 arrests and 350 participants.
Monitoring group OVD-Info, which operates a hotline to report arrests, had maintained a running toll that rose quickly from a few dozen arrests to several hundred.
Riot gear officers had shifted to the city previously and advised individuals not to protest. Russian news agency TASS revealed that while making an arrest, one police officer was wounded.
But demonstrators also claimed police mistreatment.
Footage broadcast on Russian television and communicated on social media showed individuals punching or using batons on the floor by the police. One man informed Dozhd TV channel that after requesting policemen to define themselves, one such individual was taken from the police car for a beating.
Banned from rallying, this was named by the organizers as a Saturday “walk” along Moscow’s boulevard ring with various meeting spots.
So who was protesting wasn’t always evident. On the seats, the ancient women? The guy who walks his dog? The supplier of meals, right in the center of it?
It did not seem to matter much to the riot police, out in enormous amounts in suits and body armor. Metal barriers were built and blocked off highways.
Then the voice of a woman went across a loudspeaker to say that conscripts were included by the safety troops. “Among them are your children!” she said. Then individuals were swooped and caught by those conscripts-and the experts. I saw that one person was still strapped to his bicycle upside down.
Once again, hundreds have been detained. The police mainly held their batons attached to their belts this moment, though. But the defiance I heard from protesters suggests they’ll be back.
Alexander Svidersky, a representative of the electoral commission for the district, said he was detained while out with his dog, which he was able to transfer to a friend before being put into a police car. OVD-Info revealed that, before being pushed to another car, he said he was subsequently carried out and struck around the kidneys.
Detainees at one police station also told OVD-Info that if they didn’t enable their fingerprints to be collected, they were threatened with getting their fingers “cut off.”
