Past Is Present

From DW:
"'Chilling echo' of Soviet past in latest Russian trial"

A Moscow court has sentenced a 37-year-old man to indefinite forced psychiatric treatment after he took part in a mass demonstration in 2012. Human rights groups fear the ruling marks a return to Soviet-style justice. On a spring day in May 2012, Mikhail Kosenko, an unemployed 37-year-old former soldier, headed out to a rally on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square near the Kremlin. He was there with thousands of others to protest the return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency - a demonstration allowed by Russia's constitution and which had been sanctioned that day by Moscow's authorities.

But when rioting broke out between protesters and police, Kosenko soon found himself one of more than two dozen Russians arrested and charged with "inciting mass riots" in an attempt to overthrow the government. To most observers, the state's case against Kosenko looked flimsy: video footage appeared to show Kosenko as a bystander to the melee. In addition, the officer Kosenko was allegedly said to have attacked refused to testify against him. Still others noted the prosecution was being unusually cruel: an invalid after abuse he suffered in the army, Kosenko was refused access to medication. Doctors for the prosecution testified that he was insane. And his pre-trial detention lasted 16 months, during which time his mother passed away. Authorities refused to let him attend the funeral. After months of hearings, a Russian court this week convicted Kosenko on all charges and confined him to a psychiatric ward, and forced psychiatric treatment, indefinitely. The case has once again raised charges of a lack of impartiality within Russia's court system.  "Kosenko is not guilty of anything. He has done nothing wrong," his lawyer Valery Shukhardin told DW. Shukhardin said Kosenko and human rights activists implicated in the so-called "Bolotnaya Affair" are being punished for their political views in a return to Soviet-style policing. "That there's no justice in Russia? We already knew that. But now it's like the 1930s all over again. They round people up, they put them under arrest, and that's how they instill fear in the public. The message is if [you] go [and] protest against the government, you'll end up like them," said Shukhardin. Rights group Amnesty International has declared Kosenko a prisoner of conscience, and human rights workers point to his case as the latest in a series of politically motivated prosecutions that includes the conviction of members of the punk band Pussy Riot and former business tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In his closing statement to the court, Kosenko noted that "freedom is the greatest value in our society," adding "our people are used to suffering." The announcement of his conviction was met with chants of "shame" by hundreds of Kosenko's supporters outside the courtroom.

^ This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone (Russian or foreigner.) The country has been going backwards in time for over a decade. The same people who prospered during Soviet times have remained in positions of influence and power with the only thing they changed was their party name. ^

http://www.dw.de/chilling-echo-of-soviet-past-in-latest-russian-trial/a-17152984