Geneva Stands in Solidarity With the Rally on Bolotnaya Square
also New York City, St. Petersburg, Washington.
On Saturday, December 10, in solidarity with protesters in Moscow, a rally against the fraudulent Russian parliamentary elections took place in front of Geneva’s Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. About two hundred people came to show their support for fair elections in Russia.
The Geneva rally was organized by a Russian student Elena Tétaz and her Swiss husband, Jean-Marc Tétaz. The two created a Facebook group and got the Geneva police to sanction the protest. As it turned out, getting police approval was not an easy task. According to the organizers, on Thursday, December 8, the police gave a preliminary approval, only to turn it all around next morning, suddenly refusing a final authorization. According to some reports, the rejection was due to the negative reaction of the Russian Embassy in Bern. Finally, after lengthy negotiations, the event was authorized, though under rather unusual conditions. First, the protesters could not come within 80 meters of the Mission’s entrance. Additionally, only five women – and not all of the peaceful protesters – were allowed to lay white flowers by the Mission’s entrance.
Immigrants who left Russia during Soviet times were also among the two hundred protesters of the Geneva rally, proving that Russians deprived of his/her citizenship upon emigration from the USSR, are not indifferent to the fate of their „old country“.
The rally attracted the attention of the local media, including publications like the Swiss Russian-language site Nasha Gazeta and the regional newspaper Tribune de Genève, as well as the TV channel Télévision Suisse Romande.
Participants actively shared their opinions on currect events in Russia. Russian endocrinologist Elena Gulyaeva shared an account of how she went to a 1991 demonstration in Moscow with her then five-year-old daughter. Elena said, she wanted to show her daughter how the country’s history was created and shaped, despite the considerable risk of joining such a rally. Gulyaeva also complained that the changes over the last 20 years were now practically invisible, and that after the November 4th Duma election, she felt that "nothing had changed." At the same time, Gulyaeva is hopeful that with the help of social networking sites and first-hand accounts from protestors made available on the Internet, Russian society could come together again and begin to fight for its rights and freedoms.
Ilya Novikov, a student of Foreign Relations at the University of Geneva, agreed with Gulyaeva, stating that the revival of Russian civil society could become a major event in modern history.
Another speaker noted that the Russian government officials who "stole millions of votes at the elections on December 4, were the same people who wrapped barbed wire around the walls of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation. We want Russia to be democratic and open for the entire world, and to make sure our voices are not stolen. We stand for free elections and an open Russia!", he exclaimed.
During the hour and a half rally participants were in an elated mood, with people sticking around after the official part was over, to continue discussing election results and Russian politics at large. This is when protesters witnessed a minivan with security officers drive up to the entrance of the Permanent Mission, quickly collect all the flowers, and drive away, only a trace of petals left on the sidewalk.
Still, the feeling that Russians are willing to join together and defend their rights for fair elections and for free and independent media, remained.
