photo copyrightSotaVision*
Last Saturday, hundreds of young people and teenagers, including minors, were detained in the Kitay-Gorod area in central Moscow. According to media reports, about 300 people were taken to police stations. Moscow police called the arrests “preventative measures.” Some of the teenagers told reporters that they were detained harshly, with force and threats. Human rights activists said that some of the detainees were given summonses, and young adults were persuaded to sign a contract for military service. The BBC spoke to several of those detained.
What happened?
On the evening of November 7, police carried out mass arrests of teenagers and young people in the Kitay-Gorod area in central Moscow. According to media and human rights activists, about 300 people were taken to police stations during the raid, many of them minors.
The raid took place near Gorka Park on Bolshoy Spasoglinishchevsky Lane, near bars in the Kitay-Gorod area and on Chistye Prudy. As eyewitnesses told the media, more than ten paddy wagons drove up to the Gorka park, riot police officers cordoned off the park at about 19:15 and left only one exit, which led to the paddy wagons. Almost all teenagers and young people who were in the park were detained.
Why were teenagers and young people detained?
Moscow police explained the arrests as “preventive measures” aimed at ensuring public order, preventing and suppressing administrative offenses, including “related to drinking alcohol in public places.”
As the telegram channel “Caution News” reported, the police paid attention to those who were “informally dressed.”
The detainees and their relatives told RusNews that some were indeed taken into paddy wagons because of their “informal appearance.” According to the publication, one girl was detained because of a hat with a British flag, others were detained on the way to a concert by the group intouchwithrobots at the Mesto Mesto bar.
However, according to media reports, police mostly detained young people without explanation.
The Telegram channel “Caution, News” spoke with a girl who, according to her, was taken into a paddy wagon at Chistye Prudy when she and her friends were filming a video there for TikTok. A woman who came to the Tagansky police station told reporters from Beware News that she entered the store, and the children decided to wait for her on the street, and while she was in the store, her children were detained and taken to the department.
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The young people who were detained near Kitai-Gorod told RBC that they were going to a clothing store, “did not drink, did not smoke,” but they were still detained without explanation.
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Among those detained were many minors, including schoolchildren under 14 years of age. The Telegram channel “Caution, News,” citing the words of parents who came to the Tagansky police station, reported that among those detained was a 12-year-old schoolboy.
Use of force and threats
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The detainees and their relatives told reporters about the use of force and threats during the arrest. “Caution, News” cites the story of a teenager who was detained by security forces while he was walking in the Kitay-Gorod area. According to the teenager, the employee grabbed him by the arm, pushed him against the wall and demanded to see the contents of his backpack. His friend, whom he saw in the paddy wagon, according to the teenager, was hit with his head on a trash can during the arrest.
“They detained my son. I know from him that they were walking around the center. Out of nowhere a car pulled up. My child began to show a little resistance. He was hit twice in the stomach,” the mother of one of the detainees told RBC.
The detainees were taken mainly to the Basmanny and Tagansky police departments. As one of the detainees told the telegram channel “Caution, News”, the paddy wagons were overcrowded and it was very stuffy inside. After arriving at the station, according to the young man, none of the detainees were given the opportunity to drink water or go to the toilet. Later, everyone’s passports were taken, 80 people were lined up in the courtyard and left to wait on the street. RusNews, citing eyewitnesses, writes that the security forces shouted at the detainees and threatened to beat them.
image copyrightSotaVision
Ekaterina Mizulina: “I don’t understand why parents aren’t allowed in”
As media reported, parents of minors who came to police stations were not allowed to see their children for a long time and did not explain why they were detained. At the Basmanny police station, adults demanded that the teenagers be released.
The head of the Safe Internet League, Ekaterina Mizulina, also drew attention to reports that parents are not allowed to see their detained children.
“I’m now watching videos from police departments published by the media. I don’t understand why parents of minors are not allowed in,” she wrote in her Telegram channel.
At the same time, Mizulina called the detentions “not surprising.” According to her, the raid was carried out due to numerous complaints from local residents about the noise and behavior of young people. She claims that videos from China Town often appear on social networks, “depicting fights, hooliganism and people allegedly using drugs.”
What teenagers themselves say
Several detainees told the BBC about what happened in the Kitay-Gorod area on the evening of November 7. According to 18-year-old Ivan (the names of the BBC interlocutors have been changed), he was sitting with friends on a park bench when two police officers approached them and “started threatening.”
“It’s like we’re breaking the law. They are harassing us, it’s six o’clock in the evening, they are trying to kick us out of the site. We answer that you are doing this illegally, since we do not violate or shout. The cop says, if you don’t leave here now, we’ll put you in a car, you’ll pay a fine of 100 thousand [rubles], we’ll even put you in jail. Don't argue. I'm not arguing. Give me the document. I say give me a reason. They don't answer. I give my passport and say: will they return it to me? They answer: “No,” says Ivan.
The police took him to the Central District Internal Affairs Directorate. The young man says that the Ministry of Internal Affairs officers printed out a QR code on paper and demanded that he pay 500 rubles using it. Ivan paid. He doesn't know where the money went. “My passport was not returned. They laughed at me. I will write a statement,” says the young man. He left the department at 10:20 p.m.
16-year-old Roman recalls that police buses began arriving at about seven in the evening.
“They started packing up everyone who passed near the Zig (a site next to the Zigzag rock store - BBC), the Shayba (a flowerbed in the Kitay-Gorod area - BBC) and in general in the Kitay-Gorod area. The area on the “zig” was closed and people began to be taken out one by one. Physical force was used. And quite rudely. The first time, when I tried to leave the park, a policeman at the entrance with a tirade ... (obscene equivalent of “left here” - BBC) pushed me away, I flew into the grass. Then they were taken to the Basmanny department. They marinated for three hours in the police station yard and were released,” the teenager describes the events of that evening. According to his calculations, more than a hundred young people stood like that in the yard.
According to Roman, the police did not copy the personal data of minors and did not ask them to sign anything. However, some young people over 18 years of age were persuaded to sign summons to the military registration and enlistment office. This happened to a friend of Roman’s. The teenager showed the BBC a screenshot of the correspondence, where his acquaintance tells how they tried to persuade him to sign a summons, but the young man managed to leave the police station earlier.
Schoolboy Ilya says that the police cordoned off the “Ziga” - where teenagers usually gather - at about 19:40.
“They closed all the exits and started taking away one by one. For no reason. They treated me harshly, I don’t understand why,” says the teenager. Ilya was taken to the Basmanny district police department at approximately eight o'clock in the evening. According to him, he and many of the detainees were sober.
“They took everyone out to the park and kept everyone in the cold,” says Ilya. Everyone was released only at 22:30, when their parents arrived to pick up the children.
Agendas and contracts with the Ministry of Defense
In the departments, as some detainees told reporters, young people who were already 18 years old were handed summonses or persuaded to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense.
“We were detained on the street a little further from Kitay-Gorod. The three of us went with friends. Didn't drink, didn't smoke, nothing. We walked to a clothing store. The police came up and asked his age, we answered. They told me to go with them. They took more girls. They loaded us into a paddy wagon. We sat in the paddy wagon for about an hour and a half. They brought me to the Tagansky department. We stood on the street, then they took us to the department and gave us military summonses,” one of the detainees told RBC.
Project “Walk through the forest!” (in the register of “foreign agents” in Russia) said that at the Tagansky police station, detainees were given summonses to the military registration and enlistment office, including female students.
Two detainees during the raid near Kitay-Gorod contacted human rights activists. Both received summonses for November 9 at 09:00 at the Unified Recruitment Point on Yablochkova. At the same time, one of them has health problems, but there are no medical reports on hand. The second detainee was given a summons to clarify the data directly at the police department, despite the current deferment for graduate school.
One of the detainees told Beware News that young people over 18 years old in the paddy wagon were persistently asked to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense.
Photo copyright: Mikhail Metzel\TASS
Meeting place for informal youth
For many years now, Moscow teenagers and young people aged 12 to 20, belonging to informal subcultures, have been gathering in the Kitay-Gorod area. They dress in colorful or unusual clothes, and some of them have many tattoos and piercings.
Last year, the media reported on informal teenagers gathering in the Kitay-Gorod area. Some owners of cafes and bars in the area attributed the decline in attendance to noisy groups of teenagers. As journalists from the independent association “Bereg” said, since the summer of this year, the police and the National Guard began to patrol the outskirts of Kitay-Gorod more often and conduct raids.
As the journalists said, apparently, they decide who to detain based on the appearance of the young people and their informal clothing. At the same time, informals gathering in the Kitai-Gorod area sometimes themselves give reasons for arrest - they start fights, make noise and get drunk.
*Photos of the online publication SotaVision, included by the Russian authorities in the register of “foreign agents”, were used in the design of the material.
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