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Ukraine: violent protest for right to nonviolent protest

Jonathan Lindsell, 20 January 2014

Removing the right to peaceful demonstrations in Kiev has removed the last constraint that held back Ukrainian opposition activists. Now damned if they do, damned if they don’t, the level of hostility and destruction in Ukraine’s capital has escalated severely. There have been charges of police lines, use of Molotov cocktails, flares, fireworks and broken pavestones. Police vehicles were overturned or torched. Police returned fire with stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets. This was the first time in Ukraine’s history that water cannons have been deployed.

Opposition leaders such as Vitali Klitchko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk decried the violence as the work of ‘provocateurs’. The boxing world heavyweight champion was actually sprayed by a fire extinguisher as he tried to calm the crowd. 70 policemen were injured and 40 hospitalised – protesters wielded clubs and chains. The flashpoint for these tensions occurred on 16 January when MPs supporting President Yanukovych rushed through numerous anti-protest laws by a simple show of hands, even as opposition MPs demanded order from the speaker’s platform.

The new laws include:

– 5 years in jail for blockading public buildings; in general, heavier fines for public disorder

– Illegal for protesters to wear masks or helmets

– One year’s ‘corrective labour’ for slandering politicians

– Ban on unauthorised public installation of tents, stages or amplifiers

– Ban on protests using over five vehicles in convoy

– Internet controls and bans; limits on internet anonymity

– Restriction on availability of disposable mobile phones (used to organise protests)

Yulia Tymoshenko’s website describes this action as a ‘blatant crime…deliberately killing [the] parliamentary system’. It incensed protesters, who have continued to congregate in the hundreds of thousands every weekend to agitate for the president’s removal, an end to corruption, the release of Tymoschenko, and a pivot from Russia to the European Union. Yanukovych had refused to sign the EU’s ‘Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement’ in Vilnius last November. There are deep structural reasons for Ukraine’s instability: the linguistic-ethnic divide, Russian oil control and the communist shadow.

Ex-military figures have exhorted troops to disregard illegal orders. Admiral Ihor Tenyukh announced, ‘Tomorrow the regime will enslave you’, agreeing with Klitchko that the new laws amount to a coup d’etat. EU, Swedish and Polish diplomats have condemned the recent developments.

If Ukraine ever does join the EU, Britain won’t be migrants’ destination of choice. Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May jointly announced new anti-migrant moves today – come April, EU citizens claiming JSA won’t be allowed to claim social housing too.  At a guess, this measure will be as functionally useless as November’s crackdown, but it still sends a symbolic, hostile message to the continent. Cameron is haemorrhaging EU allies. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the new German foreign minister, has condemned the Coalition’s immigration policies, making an Anglo-German renegotiation partnership ever less likely.

By the time the Ukraine joins the EU, Britain might not be in it.

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