'Night Watch' Picket Attended by a Few Dozen
On April 26, the pro-Kremlin group Night Watch organized a picket on Freedom Square in Tallinn to mark the passing of five years since the so-called Bronze Soldier was relocated to Tallinn's military cemetery.
The hour-long event began at 19:00. According to the editor for rus.err.ee Aleksei Ivanov who was present at the gathering, 20-30 people participated in the picket. "Among them, there were several children aged nine to twelve," said Ivanov.
The demonstrators held in their hands photographs that had been taken on April 26, 2007, and for the most part, depicted police officers' actions in detaining the rioters. Vladimir Lebedev and Dimitri Klenski were also among those present.
Ivanov noted that there were, in fact, more journalists than demonstrators. "Everything is going peacefully," he said. Later, the demonstrators headed to Tõnismägi, where the Bronze Soldier monument originally stood, and from there on to Tatari street, where the 20-year-old Russian citizen Dmitri Ganin was stabbed to death during the riots.
The North Prefecture had previously announced that it would be doing routine law enforcement work on the day in question and that it had no plans to mobilize additional forces. Meanwhile, the organizers of the picket had said that they expected up to a hundred people to attend the event.
Sigrid Maasen