What The Goobersmooch Is REALLY About..

Authorities Use

Force to Avoid

Awkward Questions

at Putin’s Live

Conference

MoscowNews.com


Local police in the Russian northern city of Vorkuta have beaten a human rights activist who wanted to ask President Vladimir Putin a question during a live nationwide teleconference Tuesday, Ekho Moskvy radio station quoted the town’s local branch of the Memorial human rights group.

Policemen stopped the head of a local society that defends the rights of pensioners and his wife when they tried to approach the site where a monitor broadcasting Putin’s address to the nation was placed. Several people in civilian clothes, who identified themselves as security, asked whether the Khaidarovs had passes and when they received a negative answer, pushed the elderly man over, dragged him over the ground before punching him in the face, knocking one of his teeth out, the radio station reported.

Police also detained two women — the head of the Vorkuta teachers’ union and a human rights activist who supports female miners.

Witnesses say that at the personal request of the city mayor, Igor Shpektor, special passes for the site of the broadcast were issued and even local opposition MPs were barred from addressing the president.

However, the Radio Free Europe reported that the incident took place not in Vorkuta, but in the town of Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic.