Moscow Mayor's Office bans rally timed to 60th anniversary of Stalin's deportation of Chechen people

The Moscow Mayor's Office has forbidden to hold on 23 February, in Lubyanskaya Square, a rally dated to the 60th anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Chechen people. A number of Moscow human rights and political organizations - the Transnational Radical Party, For Human Rights movement, Committee for Antiwar Actions, Russian Radicals movement, Antiwar Club, and Andrey Sakharov Public Center - are among the organizers of the rally. They were going to commemorate the victims of the Chechen genocide, to urge the political settlement of the Russian-Chechen conflict and establishment of a United Nations interim administration in Chechnya. The Prefecture of the Central Administrative District of Moscow informed the organizers of the rally that the entire center of Moscow was "reserved" for 23 February holiday celebrations on the occasion of Day of the Fatherland Defenders.

Nikolay Khramov, chairman of the Moscow branch of the Transnational Radical Party and former activist of the Democratic Movement in the USSR, announced his organization would hold the rally in any case, regardless of the fact if there was the Mayor's Office approval or not.

Editors note: See also the article "23 February is International Day of Actions Against War in Chechnya".