In flagrant violation of the right of peaceful assembly enshrined in its own constitution, as well as in international conventions to which Russia is a signatory, the Russian authorities continue to stamp down on any opposition to the present regime

As feared, riot squads [OMON] used force to detain dozens of opposition activists in Moscow on Saturday 14 April, including the former world chess champion and leader of the United Civic Front Garry Kasparov.

In any democratic country such a march is a normal event. However the Russian State has over recent years been moving further and further away from the principles of democracy and has become ever more cynical in disregarding the rights and freedoms of its citizens. In today’s Russia opposition marches are banned and violently dispersed.

The Belarusian opposition has prepared a “Small Constitution” – a Draft of constitutional reforms which it plans to send to the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission for its assessment

According to many observers, the Kremlin is trying to neutralize the real opposition.. Parties and politicians wanting to retain any public presence are being asked to publicly ostracize all those who really are in opposition. This taming of some and marginalization of others, experts say, is virtually ravaging the Russian political field.

A rally was held on Saturday 7 April at Pushkin Square in Moscow to show solidarity for victims of repression. Those present remembered Anna Politkovskaya murdered six months ago today, as called for the release of Russian political prisoner Mikhail Trepashkin who turned 50 today.

It is unclear where ex-colonel Yury Budanov, serving a sentence for the murder of Elza Kungaeva, a young Chechen woman*, is at the present time, or whether in fact he is still imprisoned.

The International Helsinki Federation’s annual report is particularly critical of Russia’s human rights record recently It speaks of attempts to limit the influence of opposition forces and politically motivated persecution of opponents; misuse of anti-extremism legislation to put pressure on civil society; and restrictions of the rights to freedom of speech, assembly and association.

The Central District Court in Minsk imprisoned the Ukrainian woman for three days for distributing leaflets with a picture of opposition leader Aleksandr Milinkevich on 25 March (Freedom Day!)

The race was used to symbolize the policy of the Belarusian President and to express protest that Ukraine’s President Yushchenko is holding dialogue with Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The Belarusian opposition’s protest on Sunday in Minsk to mark Freedom Day ended with its being broken up and some of those participated being detained.

According to the Deputy Governor of the region the march was "not of interest". One wonders whether that’s why 20 thousand police and riot police were mobilized, the action dispersed and more than 200 people detained, some apparently beaten up

The Basmanny Court’s (unprecedented) ruling upholding the law and right for people to be charged where the alleged “offences” took place, and the constitutional right to defence, one would have thought difficult to contest, however …

Moscow’s Basmanny Court on 20 March accepted that the investigation had to be carried out in Moscow where the activities Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev are charged with allegedly took place and stated hat transferring the criminal investigation to Chita was a violation of the constitutional right to defence

An appeal for a worldwide reading of Anna Politkovskaya’s reports on Chechnya. The journalist and critic of Putin was assassinated on October 7, 2006.

On 19 March a year ago, tens of thousands of people came out onto October Square to protest against the arrests that had taken place just before the elections. 1,318, as it later became known, spent that day behind bars. A year later youth activists decided to remember that date and honour those who suffered repression.

Russian human rights defenders and public figures have addressed an appeal to President Putin, asking him to pardon the scientists Igor Sutyagin and Valentin Danilov, sentenced to 15 and 13 years respectively on charges of spying.

A year after the rigged presidential elections in Belarus which led to mass protest and repressive measures from the authorities, the opposition is adamant that it will not be cowered

"When [those who persecute us] find out and see that it’s not just some inexplicable opposition supporter whom you can give the order to “squeeze”, and that it’s really a person whom others remember and who get letters from all over the world – that totally changes their attitude.”

They call it “a brutal, cynical and demonstrative act of reprisal against an opponent of the system, coated in the form of a court ruling”.