Marching Orders

From the New York Times-

MOSCOW, Nov. 24 — Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and opposition leader, was arrested Saturday and sentenced to five days in jail after trying to lead a march to the offices of the federal election authorities.

Mr. Kasparov was taken into custody during a scuffle between protesters and security officers on the route to the offices, where he had intended to present a letter asserting that the parliamentary election on Dec. 2 was biased toward President Vladimir V. Putin’s party.

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On Saturday night, a Moscow judge ordered him to serve five days in jail for holding an unauthorized march. City officials had given his loose opposition coalition, Other Russia, permission to conduct a rally on Saturday, but not a march.

In a statement, Mr. Kasparov said the court proceedings had been “a choreographed farce from beginning to end.” He added, “It was a symbol of what has happened to justice and the rule of law under Putin.”

This retaliation against Kasparov is hardly surprising. Putin has taken measures after much smaller perceived threats to his power than the former chess champion.

Kasparov's jail sentence isn't the complete picture either.

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian police late Friday raided an office of The Other Russia coalition led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov, hours before he was to lead a march in Moscow against President Vladimir Putin.

The coalition's spokeswoman Lyudmila Mamina told AFP that the police did not proffer any explanations for the raid in the office housing the party's website.

"They had no documents, acted on the authority of some secret decree, so they could not say what it was about," she said.

"They wrote down passport data of all our staff, drew a map of the office, and wrote down that they found nothing criminal, no drugs, no weapons."

A very sad state of affairs in Russia. The leaders of the country, The Tsar , Communists, Putin, have changed but real political freedom still barely has a pulse in the country. Other than another people's revolution, can anything be done to change the situation? I'm skeptical, sanctions have at best an erratic history of success. Secondly, most countries in the free world fear Russia because they still possess nuclear weapons. Who wants to say Russia is bluffing on their potential use, when the consequences for being wrong are so dire?

Hat tip- Dr. Taylor at Poliblog
Linked to- Bullwinkle, Leaning Straight Up, Third World County,