Court in Tambov awards activists compensation after local police overplay their hand against single-person pickets

A court in Tambov has awarded 5,000 rubles (about $88) in compensation to activists from the liberal opposition party “Yabloko,” ruling that police illegally detained two demonstrators on December 7, 2017, at a rally in support of Grigory Yavlinsky, the party’s founder.

The activists originally applied for a permit to stage a single-person picket, but the city told them that no permission was necessary. When party member Ludmila Fomina actually came out to demonstrate, however, officers detained her and fellow party member Yana Zenkina, holding them for at least 11 hours.

Police in Tambov have a history of detaining activists who stage single-person pickets. In November 2017, local journalist Evgeny Pisarev launched a petition on Change.org calling for an end to the arrests of local political activists. At the time of this writing, the petition had 421 signatures.