In Astrakhan, opposition rally in defence of Article 31 of Constitution passed without incidents

On May 31, the action of united oppositional forces in defence of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, stipulating the freedom of assembly, passed without any clashes with the police; no arrests and provocations were fixed.

As reported earlier by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, according to Sergey Kozhanov, coordinator of the Astrakhan regional branch of "The Other Russia", this time the organizers of the action within the "Strategy-31" campaign did not apply for a picket, since all the previous attempts ended in a failure. This, according to organizers, gave rise to law enforcement bodies to act against the protesters.

According to Dementiy Dzyno, head of the press service of the Astrakhan regional branch of "The Other Russia", the opposition rally passed without arrests and provocations and was attended by several dozens of activists from various political movements in the region, while "the police behaved very correctly."

The action was also attended by representatives of "Spravedlivaya Rossiya" and CPRF, as well as of "The Other Russia", "Solidarity", People-Labour Union of Russian Solidarists and several other associations.

Mr Dzyno said that during the action nobody banned photo and video filming, unlike previous actions. "The astrakhan journalist Alexander Tokarev has symbolically laid flowers at the place of the death of his photo camera, which was broken by a female-bureaucrat from the city administration a year ago at the same action, who was indignant that he was filming the event," he said.

"Many remember an episode, when an Orthodox priest was passing by the picketers; he asked us what we were doing. Someone told him why we were standing there. Then he blessed us with his cross and said that we did a right thing," said Dementiy Dzyno.

According to his story, such pickets will take place in the future.