12 May: Kirill Ulchuk and Lyudmila Kharlamova are detained for posting leaflets; Ulchuk cuts open his veins.
*****
A 20-year-old girl is in Russian jail because of her political work.
Separated from her family and friends, who, in turn, are detained when desperately trying to help her.
And she is being bad-mouthed by the biased Russian media.
Demonstrations for her sake are put out. By pressurizing the people in charge.
Once again I must feel sorry for anyone trying to fight for justice in that wretched, corrupt system in our huge neighbouring country.
But I have a lot of respect for all of those who do so.
Please read the story as a whole, written by Russian journalist.
Lyudmila Kharlamova
by Oksana Chelysheva, Nizhny Novgorod
Lyudmila Kharlamova lives in Orenburg. She became twenty on 25th September. No birthday party is being planned as Lyudmila’s birthday will come when she is in Orenburg investigatory prison.
Lyudmila graduated from a teaching college with all excellent marks. She can work as a teacher for deaf and dumb children. However, she can’t find any job in her native town. She gets sacked in one or two weeks, her mother tells me on phone. The reason is simple. Lyudmila is an activist of the Other Russia joint coalition and used to be the leader of a local branch of the banned Party of National Bolsheviks.
Kharlamova is a member of a steering committee of the primaries to select a candidate from the “Other Russia” coalition to run for the presidentship. She has been elected to become a candidate for the elections to the State Duma in December. Lyudmila has participated in several Marches of Dissent. She used to be the leader of National Bolsheviks in Orenburg, one of the parties recently banned in Russia under the law on Counteracting extremism.
On 13 September Lyudmila was stopped in a street by servicemen of the Department to Fight Organized Crime. It was around 9 pm. The UBOP searched her bag. Lyudmila managed to reach her family on phone and tell that one of the UBOP servicemen, Nikitin by surname, put a small bag into her pocket. Thus, they managed to organize a pretext for the girl's detention. Then they took her to the UBOP quarters and searched her there. When Lyudmila claimed that she had not seen or touched the packet with two grams of heroin, the police refused her from holding an expertize to establish signs of drugs. They didn't take the samples of substances from her hands or fingerprinted her.
The following day, September 14, the same police department searched Lyudmila's flat where she lives together with her mother, Irina Nikolaevna, and her younger sister Elena. Both of them claim that the bag had been planted by the UBOP people. The witnesses were brought by the police. They obediently signed all the papers.
Irina Nikolaevna, the mother of the detained girl, tells on phone that her daughter Elena and she were shocked to see another packet with some substance that the police took out of a bag. The policemen declared it to be some drug. Lyudmila’s mother claims that her daughter has never been a drug addict. The substance was found by the policemen in a bag that was not Lyudmila’s. That bag belongs to her younger daughter Elena but she has not used it for long.
Lyudmila was taken away. On September 15th Irina Nikolaevna was called to attend a court trial that was to set a preventive punishment for Lyudmila. Her mother had lodged complaints to the prosecutor’s office. To attend the trial, she came together with her other daughter. Three young friends of her daughters came with them to support their friends.
Irina Nikolaevna tells, “I have brought some documents to hand over to a lawyer”. What papers? She brought a reference letter from their neighbors to show what kind of person Lyudmila is as well as her diploma with excellent results.
Their small group was waiting for a lawyer outside the court building when a car drove up to them. Several policemen demanded to show their IDs. Then they told both Lyudmila’s relatives and friends to get into their car. Instead of being near her daughter, Irina found herself caged in the police station of Leninskiy district of Orenburg. No explanations… They were ordered to turn off cell phones. No connection with the outside world. No information about the fate of her other daughter. Then a policeman demanded that they write their explanations what the purpose of their staying at the court building was.
All the five of them were kept in the police station for some two hours. Then they were released. Again no explanations. Some chief officer came out to them. “I don’t know what their ranks are and he didn’t introduce himself either”, Irina tells. But she heard other policemen calling them by his surname Nyrov. He announced, “You were kept in custody on suspicion of being involved into preparing an act of terror”.
The court trial on Lyudmila turned out to be closed for public due to such vigilance of the police in preventing acts of terror. There was nobody there to observe it. When Lyudmila’s mother was let to leave the police station, she learnt that the court had ruled to take Lyudmila into preventive custody for three months.
It was just the beginning of another story of punitive “democracy” established by Putin.
On 21 September Lyudmila's relatives lodged a complaint to the prosecutor's office of Orenburg Region demanding to initiate a criminal case against the police and journalists they publicized the information form the criminal case which is prohibited by the law.
A defamation campaign has also been launched. On 19 September the local Orenburg TV channel aired video footage of the search in Kharlamova's flat. Journalists developed it in an absolutely biased way as the opinion of the side of the defense was completely ignored.
On 21 September (2006) Lyudmila Kharlamova's relatives lodged a complaint to the prosecutor's office of Orenburg Region demanding to initiate a criminal case against the police and journalists they publicized the information form the criminal case which is prohibited by the law.
A group of people tried to get authorization to hold a rally in Lyudmila's support on 24 September. The plans have been destroyed as organizers, the League Communist Youths (SKM) and the Communist Party of Russia (KPRF) had received threats, according to the press-service of the Other Russia.
(by Oksana Chelysheva)
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