Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 19 – Darya
Polyudova, the first Russian to be charged with challenging the territorial
integrity of the Russian Federation and to serve time in the camps upon
conviction, now faces new charges for a repetition of that crime and also for
promoting terrorism again on the basis of her posts and videos online.
But there is a twist. When the
Moscow court told Polyudova of the new charges last week, she, her lawyer and
two friends and colleagues were required to sign non-disclosure agreements that
mean that none of them can talk about the case or even that it existed (region.expert/poliudova/).
Apparently, the Tallinn-based Region.Expert
portal says, “with the beginning of Putin’s ‘constitutional reform,’ the powers
that be are seeking not simply to suppress regionalists movements in Russia but
to portray them as ‘non-existent’ as well. Otherwise the non-disclosure
requirements make no sense at all.
Polyudova got in trouble in 2014 for
rejecting Moscow’s claim that it had legitimately absorbed Ukraine’s Crimea.
Her problems this time around appear to spring from her call for the Kurile
islands to be returned to Japan. A
member of the Left Resistance, she takes a very different position than what
Region.Expert says is the “imperialist” one of the KPRF.
In an earlier interview with the
portal, the activist said had taken part in the Siberian Anti-Regionalist
March, an action which not only denounced not only Moscow’s land grabs in a
variety of places but also called for the independence of Siberia and other
regions and republics in the Russian Federation that want to leave (region.expert/darja/).
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