Paul Goble
Vienna, June 2 – After transferring thousands of Interior Ministry officers from the fight against organized crime to the struggle with extremism, the Russian government has broadened the application of “extremism” charges to keep them busy, a trend that threatens the rights and freedoms of every more law-abiding Russian citizens.
In the third of her articles in “Yezhednevny zhurnal” on how Moscow is conducting its fight against extremism, Irina Borogan of Agentura.ru today points out that “since the spring of this year, thousands of militiamen throughout the entire country have been forced to occupy themselves with the search for extremists” (www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=9133).
But, she continues, “it is already obvious that there are not enough extremists for all of them,” and consequently, the authorities want “to boost the number of extremists” in order to justify the new direction of ...