"What happened on Bolotnaya square?"

20/02/2014
Press release
en ru

FIDH, along with other international human rights groups, recently commissioned a group of experts to study hundreds of oral, written and recorded items of evidence, including testimonies of the events of 6 May 2012 on Bolotnaya Square. These experts have concluded that whilst there were single episodes of violence, there is insufficient evidence to qualify the whole event as "non-peaceful" and even less to qualify them as “mass riots”.

Moreover, the report “6 May 2012 Events on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow: Expert Evaluation” notes that the protests on Bolotnaya Square took place in conditions that were likely to provoke violence: a large number of protesters were cordoned off by police in a small compressed space for a long time. Video evidence suggests that the police used disproportionate force on numerous occasions and arrested a number of demonstrators who were not involved in the violence, but happened to be nearby when the police advanced into the crowd. Following the clashes, a few hundred protesters were detained, including some activists detained in other parts of the city.

To read the report “6 May 2012 Events on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow: Expert Evaluation”

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