Saturday, December 10, 2011

Russia: Election Protests more Widespread

As the situation with the Russian election results and the country's detained protesters has not yet been resolved (see Global Voices coverage 1, 2, 3), people in many cities are preparing for demonstrations on Saturday 10 December, 2011.
Early on December 8, user mitingmap created a map [ru] that summarizes the protest groups in the Russian cities. Novaya Gazeta has assembled a list [ru] of planned protest events.
Pressure on Vkontakte
Social media groups that have appeared in almost every major city are regarded as a threat. On December 8, LiveJournal user Edvvvard wrote [ru] that some strange things had started happen to his Vkontakte group Rospil (dedicated to support blogger Alexey Navalny's award-winning project rospil.info).
Protest activity map. Screenshot from Yandex.maps
Protest activity map. Screenshot from Yandex.maps
Initially, he thought it might be the policy of Vkontakte users to prevent protesters to communicate. Then, however, he received a response from Pavel Durov, the founder of the social network, saying that the group had reached the daily limit of comments and that he was working on fixing it.
Later on, Durov added [ru]:
Global Voices

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2 comments:

  1. jbpazDecember 10, 2011 at 2:00 PM

    Thousands Gather to Protest Russian Vote

    It looks like Russia's attempts to deter protesters from coming out today haven't succeeded. Police say at least 15,000 protesters gathered in Moscow to protest alleged fraud in Sunday's vote by Vladimir Putin's party. At least 50,000 police have been deployed in Moscow to control the rally, which is relegated to a small island south of the Kremlin. The protest is poised to become the largest in Russia in two decades, but it is unclear whether it will be large enough to truly trouble Putin, who is expected to win the presidency in March.
    Read it at BBC

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  2. jbpazDecember 10, 2011 at 2:20 PM

    I invite readers to compare the Global Voices coverage of the Russian election protests to the pathetic BBC treatment accorded them.
    When last we looked, Russia has the nuclear capacity to destroy the world at least ten times over. Voter fraud is a major issue in rogue nations such as Russia and the USA. Properly funded any mad fiend can gain public office.

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