Bombs, Knives & Batons, Not Food, in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg, Russia :

Activists Prevented From Giving Away Food
Evgenia Ivanova
The St. Petersburg Times
Fenruary 27, 2007

Volunteers giving food to homeless people and street children in central St. Petersburg were stopped by police on Sunday, Fontanka.ru reported.

Members of the “Food, Not Bombs” group were giving out food outside Vladimirskaya Metro Station when the police intervened.

“All the activists who were at the square at the time — around 15 people — were detained by plain-clothes policemen,” a purported witness claimed on Indymedia Piter, an activist web site on Sunday.

No independent confirmation of this account was available Monday.

“Without being given a reason for the detention, with [the police] merely presenting their IDs, [the participants] were pushed into [police] vehicles and taken to the station,” the Indymedia account continues.

A participant of the event contacted by The St. Petersburg Times, who declined to be named, agreed with the details of the account published on the Indymedia Piter website.

However, the police are reported to have said that the activists were not formally detained but taken in for a “talking to.”

“Law enforcement representatives maintain it was not a detention, but a preventative undertaking,” Fontanka.ru reported on Sunday. “The participants [in the ‘Food Not Bombs’ event] were invited to the station for a chat.”

All those involved were released the same day.

In early February a bomb exploded under a flower stall outside Vladimirskaya Metro Station on the same day that a [FNB] event was scheduled to take place there. The explosion left the stall’s salesperson with minor injuries.

In January, 21-year-old Ivan Yelin was seriously injured in a knife attack on the way home from participating in a [FNB] event.

In November 2005, anti-fascist campaigner Timur Kacharava was stabbed to death by unknown [boneheads] outside a bookstore on Ligovsky Prospekt after being followed from a [FNB] event.

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2) Tuesdays : 7.30pm, Cnr. Gertrude & Brunswick Streets, Fitzroy

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